Valentine Gets Yet Another Style Redesign in Skullgirls

We hope youre not too hung up on iconography in your fighting games. Valentine, the ninja-style nurse of Skullgirls, is undergoing yet another design change. And yes, for the same reason as last time.

The developers of Skullgirls, a popular 2D fighting game, made an announcement recently on the games official blog. In it, they reveal that one character named Valentine will be undergoing a new design update. The character, which features an outfit resembling that of a nurse, will have the various medical crosses on them replaced with the shape of a shuriken. She will maintain her pink color scheme. Her eyes, however, will still retain the cross pupil and red color.

Ok, sure. It looks fine and otherwise the same, so why?

The answer is one weve already heard before: legal concerns. Valentines original design had plus shaped crosses on her hat and knees. Her color scheme was also red instead of pink. This was changed a while back, however, and she was given the pink she has now. This was due to concerns with potential legal issues, presumably regarding the American Red Cross.

While its been a while, it seems that the color swap may not have been enough. So now theyre electing for a new symbol entirely. They state that theyre now doing smoothly enough to commit the time to making the change, but that due to the high degree of content. It will still take a while.

This change will mean that at some point in the future every frame of Valentine animation in Skullgirls Mobile and Skullgirls 2nd Encore will be updated with the new design, along with any story mode art or other art pieces included in the Digital Art Compendium. Other characters that feature this cross shape like Ileum and the Last Hope will also be updated.
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Given the scale of these changes, we dont have an exact timeline for when they will start to appear in-game, but in all likelihood they will arrive at some point this year.

Legal matters are one of the most complicated and unpleasant aspects of the game industry. In that regard, they have our sympathy. Fortunately, it appears that these changes are all-in-all pretty minor and no issues will pop up.

By the way, you can see the full body image of the graphic we used in the header at the announcement post. It was released in the post to showcase the new design.