Fighting game fans - this one's a keeper! More of just about everything that makes a fighting game fun: More moves, more strategy, great game play, and more. But there's also a down side to this game, and I'll get to that later.
First, about the game. The story goes like this: You are the best fighter from one of nine various time periods, and was killed before you were able to correct an injustice during your lifetime. Now, the Eternal Champion needs to correct his present, and has brought back all nine for a Contest. Only one may win and face the Eternal Champion. If successful, you are restored to relive the last few minutes of your life to correct what initially went wrong and restore the balance of good and evil.
The nine characters are:
Blade: a muscle-bound bounty hunter from 2030 with power wrist
straps.
Jetta: a circus acrobat from 1899 who can boost her metabolism for
speed.
Larcen: a cat burglar from 1920 who uses his tools for fighting.
Midknight: a bio-chemist turned vampire (1967) who is deadly when close.
Rax: a cyborg fighter from 2345 who uses machine limbs for power.
Shadow: a female assassin from 1993 who can teleport from place to
place.
Slash: a caveman from 50,000 B.C. who uses his club to inflict damage.
Trident: a frog man from 110 B.C. with a metal spinning trident hand.
Xavier: a warlock from 1692 who uses spells and a cane for offense.
Within the Eternal Champion's complex, you will find all kinds of ways to bone up on your fighting skills before you attempt entering a Contest. First, there's the Training Room. Here you may get a work out on Dexterity Spheres, Practice Spheres and the Holo-Trainer.
With the Practice Sphere, you choose a position for a stationary chrome sphere that you try to hit. For example, to work on your kicks you set it low. The Dexterity Sphere moves, and attacks you faster and faster as time goes by. You are scored on how many hits you get in before your Life Bar runs out. In the Holo-Trainer, you face a "holographic" image of one of the nine characters, and fight them with normal match conditions - which are changable at the startup screen.
In the Battle Room, you not only face an opponent, but the room itself contains all kinds of booby traps that you choose - there's 18 different kinds! If that isn't enough, there are three different types of Instant Replay available for 1-player Practice Modes!
Once you've honed your skills a bit, you can try a Contest. Here you choose a character and fight against the other eight, then the Eternal Champion himself - in five incarnations. If you want to play against other humans, you may choose one of the multi-player modes. First, there's the normal 2-player mode where you choose characters, the game settings, then hammer away. Or there's three Tournament Modes:
First, the Roundabout. It's for 2 players, and each is given all nine characters. When a character loses, it is removed. The player who loses all his/her characters first loses. Then there's the Single Elimination mode for 3-32 players, and the Double Elimination mode for 3-16. No shortage on variety in this cart!
That pretty much sums up what you can DO in the game. Now to the fighting: First off, each character has about 30 regular moves, and 8-10 unique "Special Moves". Add to that the fact many of the character's regular moves are unique, and that they have individualized strengths and weaknesses really makes for a game requiring strategy - not just a "punch'em 'till they drop" game.
Any fighting game that uses Special Moves has to provide some sort of limitation so you don't use ONLY Special Moves. Eternal Champions has a unique solution to this problem. Instead of just draining the Life Bar each time you use a Special Move, there is a separate "health" indicator for Special Moves. It's called "Inner Strength". As you use Special Moves, the meter drains. It refills when you're doing other things. This is really a good idea, because the only thing that takes away from your Life Bar is a hit. Another feature in the game is the "Insult". By executing an Insult, you drain some of your opponent's Inner Strength - thus reducing his/her ability to do Special Moves! Of course, the Insult is a Special Move, and also reduces your own I.S.
What about control? Eternal Champions will use a 3-button controller, a 6- button controller, or the Sega Activator - an octagonal floor device that allows a person to use their arms and legs to control the character instead of their thumbs. Which is best? The 6-button controller is probably the way to go. It is a major improvement over the 3-button where you have to press Start to toggle the ABC buttons from kicks to punches. I haven't tried the Activator myself, but I am told it is fun to try, but doesn't give you as "tight" or quick a control as a hand controller does. Your mileage may vary.
As far as game play goes, Eternal Champions is tight. You jump and leap by pressing Up alone or with Left or Right. When you stop, so does the character - no slippery control except when intentional. All hits are seen and heard, and sprite contact points are also tight. You can slide in underneath your opponent, and the hit will register right where it should - toe to foot.
What does Eternal Champions look and sound like? The graphics are very sharp and clear - and the characters are huge (over half the screen height). Each character has his/her own background that is fully animated, and provides "Overkills" that are unique (more on this in a moment). The background also has its own music, which in my opinion is one of the faults of the game (I write music so I'm probably more critical than most, but I haven't been overly impressed with it. It occasionally manages to generate the correct mood though). However, the sound effects are very good, and there's a lot of them. The linkage between the effects and animation is also very tight.
What is an Overkill? When you win a match in a certain way, the background itself takes over and "kills" the loser. These are really cool, and are fun because they are hard to activate.
Well, have I sold you yet? I think this is a great fighting game, but it does have flaws. The biggest? The computer cheats. Remember we talked about the Inner Strength meter which controls your Special Moves? When playing the computer, it will use all of its Inner Strength, yet keep on doing those Special Moves. Ooops. Only the programmers can answer to this one, but I suspect the "fighting logic" got the best of them. When you finally get your skills up and are able to make it to the Eternal Champion, he cheats like nothing you've ever seen before. The first "incarnation" of the EC is especially bad about this, but there are ways to compensate - basically by learning what precipitates it, and preventing him from doing it!
This game is huge - evident from all the things you can do. Even so, I can't help but wish for more. In the story line, if you defeat the Eternal Champion, you are restored to life at the time of your demise. I think it would've been totally cool if after you beat the Champion, you got to go back and take out the bad guys who caused your original death! (Mix a little "street fighting" in with the match fights). But then, you could give me just about anything, and I'd still find some things to wish for!
This review is Copyright (C) 1993 by Dave Woodall for Game Bytes Magazine. All rights reserved.