Character Select

Character select is a recurring menu in the Guilty Gear series.

Summary

Character select was first implemented in Guilty Gear -The Missing Link-, and makes an appearances in some form in nearly all games (known exceptions being Guilty Gear Vastedge XT and Pro Jumper! Guilty Gear Tangent!?). Some games which otherwise feature character select contain modes which lack it, such as Guilty Gear 2 -Overture- Campaign Mode and Guilty Gear Isuka Factory Boost Mode.

Character select is used to allow players to choose the character they wish to play, along with other options which vary both by game and mode within the game. Common features include allowing a player to choose a colour palette for their character, as well as the stage and music. Offline play modes such as versus or arcade modes may allow the play to pick features such as the time limit, number of rounds, and level of CPU difficulty. Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- added a new difficulty option known as the handicap system, which can be used to increase or decrease the strength of players or CPU. Some games and modes have more specific options as well, such as the Guilty Gear Judgment story mode character select prompting the player to choose the level they want to begin at; Guilty Gear -Strive- TEAM OF 3 mode character select prompting the player to choose their build; and several Isuka modes requiring choosing a team colour.

Unlockable characters, as depicted in Strive.

Available characters on a character select screen vary not only by game, but by other factors such as region, progression, and possession of DLC. Many games have unlockable characters. Those that do either display them on the character select even when inaccessible (seen often in the case of DLC), or hide them altogether until unlocked (seen often in the case of Secret/Boss unlockable characters).

Details

Names

A notable feature of character select in several of the earlier games, starting with Guilty Gear and last seen in Guilty Gear XX Λ Core Plus R, was characters each having unique visuals for their names. This includes different colours, fonts, capitalization, and scripts.