Where do I start with Provie, one of the new playable characters in River City Girls 2? For players who discover this river town series recently or through the first RCG In 2019, this is most likely the first time they see her. For me, however, Provie has been a very close and dear character of mine for about eight years.
My name is Bannon Rudis and I made a video game many years ago called ” River City Ransom underground. How many bundles of years now. Feels like forever! In this game, most of the main playable characters were based on people I knew in real life at the time. One of those characters happened to be Provie. She’s a friend and was a colleague at the restaurant we used to work at together in Los Angeles. Provie would probably smack me on any part of my body at least 3 times a day and give me endless amounts of sass. If Sass could be converted into a clean, sustainable source of energy, the whole planet would be a utopia just by them. She had to go into my game, no doubt about that. I asked her what fighting style she would like and she said dance. Good enough for me! I originally pushed for muay thai and walked in their muay thai hand and foot wraps.
In this game, Provie struggles with several different breakdance moves, all of which can be chained together in one form or another. This made their fighting style very unique and allowed the player a great sense of creativity. Ironically, the real Provie would get motion sickness if she did anything stimulating like spinning around, riding a roller coaster, or moving too fast in general. So if you used her spinning specials too many times in a row, she’d throw up a projectile! that could hit enemies.
After three years of intensive development of the game, I was offered a job at WayForward. I only had a few months left to graduate River City Ransom underground when I started working at my new job as an animator and director-in-training. Eventually they hired me to design their new and completely different version of river town Series, River City girls, which ended up being quite a success. Hooray!
When we had to keep working River City Girls 2, we really wanted to add to our list of playable characters. We needed two more girls to join the fight. In my head, the only two I could ever think of were Marian double dragon and province River City Ransom underground.
Arc System Works, the licensee, approved both characters and I was allowed to start designing. I mainly wanted to keep Provie intact but update it for the new playstyle. Her moves would be much easier to perform and not as complex as her previous iteration. The controls had to be accessible enough for anyone to select them and join the dancing. Still, she had to give players that creative freedom back Underground. Luckily, it was incredibly easy for them to design RCG series from already having a good, solid foundation. Most of their moves were adopted and felt right at home.
As before, their dance special attacks can blend into each other. She even got upgraded some of her moves. Her anti-air attack Coin Drop can send her at an angle instead of straight up if she performs it while moving forward with one of her other specials. This move can also oppose in their aerial combos.
Her flare spin kick attack is great for starting any of her combos and is her bread-and-butter signature move. It can be canceled into any of their other specials. However, once you get them spinning, it’s hard to stop them, so don’t think it’s spamable!
Your back spin is a great move to gain distance quickly from an idle position. This move can combine ground opponents and still allow Provie to combine into other dances.
Their Broken Propeller is one of my favorites. This allows Provie to gain a mid-air boost that transitions into a devastating spinning attack. It’s great for enemies above her, in the air with her, or below her as she plummets into a split kick landing that can knock fallen enemies back into the air. She can also combine with another broken propeller and even change direction if the player holds the opposite direction she is facing.
Spin Cycle is a special attack zone designed to give the player some space when surrounded. Unlike other AOEs, this move will see her perform another twisting dance move, but in the opposite direction she was facing. This can be done from the start or in the middle of a combo, allowing her to change direction and continue her dance routine onto the enemies sneaking up behind her. You can latch into her other dance moves from this backward moving maneuver.
Provie is a character that allows for a lot of creativity and I hope you have as much fun inventing her various dance routines as I did designing. I absolutely love that we got them to do this River City Girls 2, because it even more bridges the gap between all these different Kunio-kun games in what I affectionately refer to as the Technos universe. Please give her a “spin” when the game launches later this year!
