I don't know how many years Axl Rose spent working on his latest album, Chinese Democracy, but I seem to remember still playing with dollies when the project was first announced. I'd say I was about 13 years of age. Don't judge me.
Axl's hibernation was long, but he had the courtesy to surface every few years and eat a former band member so we wouldn't forget him. Forget him we did not, though perhaps the Japanese deserve the most credit for keeping Guns N' Roses alive through video games.
Capcom in particular was good about reminding us that Axl Rose was more than a scary story parents told their children when they formed an obsession with hair bandanas. GnR's influence flavours the streets of Metro City in Final Fight, haunts X in Mega Man X's Maverick uprisings, and, in Street Fighter III, gives us a glimpse of what Axl might look like if he drank two steroid smoothies every day.
You might have missed Axl and Slash in Final Fight; they were mere droplets in the tsunami of thugs that crashed over Cody, Haggar and Guy. It was an unspectacular appearence anyway. Slash didn't try to hit anyone with a concrete Gibson and Axl didn't have an attack involving a heroin syringe. I'm sorry, I'll show myself out the door.
Appetite for Destruction formed the backbeat for my childhood, which was nice. Nostalgic, I re-discovered the album at the same time I was playing Mega Man X3, so certain links were easy for me to establish.
By Mega Man X5's release in 2001, we were in danger of never caring if Axl showed his face again. Capcom USA said "Noooooo!" and dove for their latest release with a red pen. When they were done, we had eight Mavericks named after Guns N' Roses band members instead of the usual descriptors paired with animals. The subsequent fandom drama was magnificent. "Oh, Capcom USA," they all wept, "How could you apply a name as stupid as 'Duff McWhalen' to a robot whale with legs?"
There are those who argue that Mega Man X5's Guns N' Roses tribute was strictly Capcom USA's candy-crack idea, but they obviously haven't had a good look at the background in Axl The Red's stage.
They're probably also in denial about a certain snot-nosed punk Reploid kid who ran flailing into Mega Man X7, but we can't blame them for that.
So who does that leave? I'm not totally convinced that someone at Capcom wasn't furiously inhaling the hairspray fumes from an eBayed Axl bandana when they came up with Alex from Street Fighter III. We already know Axl's a bad enough dude to pick on security guards, so street fighting would be the next logical step.
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