If Skullgirls is a success, hopefully it will encourage more to take a risk on fighters.

Wholly original fighting games are few and far between, especially so when we're talking about fighting games developed outside Japan.

Skullgirls has been generating positive buzz since it was announced early this year, and Reverge Labs have decided to spend a little more time working on Skullgirls, prompting a delay into early 2012.

"There are a lot of reasons behind this delay, but the overriding one is that we’re just trying to make the best game we can," said designer, producer and community manager Peter Barthalow on the game's website.

"As tournament attendees and forum-goers know, we’ve done extensive tweaking and added new features based on community feedback," he continued. "While many of these things are individually small, they add up over time and can delay other tasks--some companies call this 'feature creep,' but we call it the extra polish that takes a game from 'good' to 'great.'

Barthalow even went ahead and listed out the changes that are coming as a result of the community:

• Gameplay speed changes – 10% faster!
• Lots of new effects and overall presentation improvements
• Upgraded backgrounds to 3D
• Additional music from Michiru Yamane
• Requested color palettes
• Accidental pause prevention option – hold Start for 15 frames to pause
• PlayStation 3 custom soundtrack option
• Button macros to help when playing on a pad
• Innumerable balance and gameplay tweaks
• In-game art galleries

There's no new, specific release date for Skullgirls. For the moment, it's just "early" in the first quarter of 2012, so in the worst case scenario, expect it before the end of March on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.