Avatar: The Last Airbender should be a prime cut of gaming beef. Elements-based martial arts, a wide open world with plenty of established lore, a gorgeous art style, and enough nostalgia to build a franchise on.
Yet despite being such a solid piece of kids’ T.V it transcends its demographic, being a good watch for all ages, Avatar’s never really had a great game attached to it. Sure, there’ve been licensed attempts, but they’re usually middling at best. There’s never been an Avatar game with staying power equal to its roots.
Whether that’ll change with a competitive fighting game is still to be seen, but we sure are getting one. As spotted by Gematsu, Maximum Entertainment’s recent showcase revealed the project at the tail-end of its roadmap.
“We are thrilled to announce that we have entered into a partnership with Paramount Consumer Products to develop a competitive multiplayer fighting game set in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe.” Details apart from that are scant, beyond a promised early access period sometime in 2025.
I’m a touch conflicted by the news. Avatar: The Last Airbender isn’t exactly a story about fighting people—if anything, it’s a story about how violence can’t solve everything. Dunking on someone with your sick airbending skills to climb MMR ranks isn’t exactly on-brand. One does not achieve inner peace by spamming ‘ez’—okay, maybe Avatar Kyoshi would, but she’s built different.
On the other hand, you can’t deny that Avatar has always had sick fight scenes. The core conceit of bending just begs to be used to kick butt in interesting and creative ways. That’s something some studios have tried to capitalise on—like with Rumble, a VR fighting game based around earthbending.
Maximum Entertainment isn’t exactly known for this sort of stuff, either—though it’s more likely it’ll be publishing rather than developing the project.
As for the form it’ll take, I’ve not got the foggiest clue. The cynic in me wants to say it’ll be another platform fighter in the vein of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, though I’m secretly hoping for something a little more creative. A couple of years back, YouTuber FUNKe put forth the idea of a movement-based first person arena shooter based on Korra’s “pro bending” scenes, and I’ve not been able to get it out of my brain. But that might be stretching the definition of “fighting game” thin.
Like most Avatar fans, I’ll be crossing my fingers and whispering ‘please please please don’t suck’ like it’s a prayer. We’ve been starving for some genuinely good gaming from the franchise for years—though I’m not holding my breath. Every attempt so far to break the series’ adaptation allergies hasn’t gone great, but there’s always hope.