90's fighting games top 5- Number 2- Nintendo steps up to the big boy plate

Dispite all of the SNES limitations, this game still rocked.

Could she stick those things up any higher?
Nothing quirky to say here. Just look.

Killer Instinct

1994 (95 for the Snes release)

Rare, Nintendo and Midway (arcade distributor)

Ever see a line at an arcade machine? Then you most likely didn't go to arcades in 1994 or your only 10 years old right now. The arcade is dead and gone but Nintendo along with Midway was a brutal force during its golden age. Now you walk into an arcade just to see 5 displays of Dance-Dance-what-the-fuck-EVER!

In 1994, Mortal Kombat was two-year-old news, MKII was turning into the same after some months and Street Fighter's inability to make a sequel and not just another damn remake kept plenty fighting game fans bored silly. MK3 was on the horizon and gamers needed something to hold them over, ANYTHING. Nintendo was listening and grouped up with MK distributor Midway and released a fast, furious, and arcade-friendly opus that speed hungry adrenaline junkies could not get from MK and Street Fighter 2.

Nintendo had -and still has- a knack for kiddy games (but still damn good games). Previously Nintendo had made Donkey Kong Country with Rare and with the help of well animated action and well polished graphics they produced a fun (but also overrated) side-scrolling platformer. DKC was fun but it was really for the little guys around the 10-13 age bracket. Nintendo's next game would aim for a more grown-up crowd, and why not? Nintendo was in its prime and was at the time working on a new game system that would need one HELL of a launch title.

KI was a total surprise; a fighting game with pre-rendered sprites and some beautiful 3d backgrounds that all screamed high art. The game looked as if it was all done in real time 3d graphics but that was merely an illusion of the Rare software genius within. This game also had sound and music that pounded on your ears as you played. The fighting style of KI was the best blend of MK's hard hitting brutality with SF2 combo driven skill. The characters looked either cool or in one case... damn sexy, each fighter having a uniqueness that set the group apart from SF2 and MK (with the exception of one ) The announcer's voice sounded like Darth Vader filled with steroids and the piece of spice made this game feel so... alive (for lack of a better word).

To fight and win in KI you needed fast hands and fingers. This game is very combo-based and relies on your ability to chain attacks together, so no more jumping around and kicking unless you plan to follow it with some specials and other hits. Doing this will set off chain reactions that will cause multiple knocks to your opponent. What made it fun was that your opponent- CPU AI or player 2- could do just the same and release a humiliating barrage on you. Not all hope is lost, you could perform a 'combo breaker' and escape with less damage and give your middle finger to what could have been a hollow defeat. At the final moment of a match the dead player would sway in pain and in MK tradition you could vanquish them with a 'Danger move' which was a KI fatality. Another good way to victory was dwindling the last sliver of the opponent's health with a 24 hit "Ultra Combo!" (hearing the announcer yell that out always gave me a chubby).

This all happens so quickly and its handled so well-no round 1 or 2-no stopping. If someones life bar is drained for the first time, they hit the ground and wake back up with a second and final red life bar, and the other player doesn't start from full. This gave the game its intensity that MK 1 and SF didn't have. What kind of fight STOPS when the player keels over for the first time? That's stupid, just get up and dust yourself off and kick his or her ass. This was a fighting game without the 'referee'.

The character line-up was a diverse and well designed lot. Each of them having their own background and story:

B. Orchid: (my personal fave) The bad-ass babe of the game, armed with 2 clubs that looked like mini Star Wars lightsabers. Also armed with a great rack and a killer ass. I have no shame and I'm a chronic pervert, oh well.

Spinal: A skeleton with a shield, sword, and an annoying laugh.

Fulgore: A robot built for hand to hand combat. Has wolverine-like wrist claws.

TJ Combo: The total rip off character of this game, and total racial stereotype of a Mike Tyson-esqe boxer. This guy manages to rip off SF2's Balrog and Mike all in one fell swoop.

Cinder: A man on fire, like the Human Torch from Fantastic 4. Cool idea, really.

Glacius: The yin to Cinder's yag. An alien/man made of ice and liquid. Not a pallete swap, however.

Chief Thunder: Native American armed with 2 tomahawks. Cool character beside being another damn stereotype. Hmm Maybe game makers in those days didn't know that Blacks and Indians aren't all boxers and rain dancers.

Jago: Ken and Ryu-esque karate man. Not much else to say.

Saberwolf: Werewolf that fights. Not done before so I'll give it a thumbs up.

Riptor: Human-dinosaur hybrid that fights. This was 1994 and the movie Jurassic Park helped us believe in using DNA to fuck with mother nature, so why not put dinosaur and human semen in a blender and see what pops up.

Eyedol (the boss): A two headed cyclops. One eye on each head. So he still has 2 eyes... but 2 heads with only one eye on each (am I clear?). He fights with a large club that looks like an antique lamp and has these odd looking goat legs (I guess you can't always have cool characters 'across the board').

The backgrounds each reflected the characters personality and tell us that these events take place in a dark and futuristic world. Orchid fights on top of a skyscraper and Cinder fights on top of a tower in the desert. Some levels presented us with 'pit' like finishes which enabled you to knock each other off of the tower at the end of a match, giving you a cool look at the soon to be dead fighter falling and hitting the pavement below. Riptor fights in a room littered with spikes and blood spilled all over, Glacius's world looks like Antarctica with an 'Asian temple' look. All in all, very imaginative.

The other plus brings us back to sound. Each level had a soundtrack of really good metal, techno, and hip hop music. The music and sound to KI was SO good that when it was released on the SNES the game came with a music CD in the box of all the songs. This game WON and conquered in the sound, graphics department.



But it wasn't all wine and roses.

KI's story was sooooooo... written after the game was complete.The plot to this game revolved around an evil company called 'Ultratech' that every year, holds a tournament to test out its products and even kill of few of its critics and traitors while at it. Riptor is a product of Ultratech as well as Fulgore. Orchid is a spy looking to dismatle the company by pretending she is a Secretary that just HAPPENS to carry two lightsticks that kill. Saberwolf is really just a man in a wolfs body looking to get a cure for his affliction of werewolf-ism. Eyedol is... fuck I guess something that Ultratech did for shits and giggles. The point, is the story wasn't the point.

Action was the point and it was there. This game took arcades hostage and created the aforementioned 'lines'. I played this game at arcades and eventually on its SNES release. I remember being beyond excited to get this game, and Nintendo broke a rule by putting the game into a black cartridge shell, so that made us ALL believe that KI was a hit not even Mortal Kombat got this much great marketing. In the pile of grey shells of games like Street Fighter 2 and MK 1 and 2, that black KI cart catches the eye.



However, this was also the game that showed the Super Nintendo it's age. The SNES version was still good, but it was SEVERELY cut back from its arcade counterpart. No full motion videos, tacked on endings, fewer frames of animation, and dumbed down sound. I expected all this and even at the age of 13 I was grateful that Nintendo TRIED to deliver a great translation. Even the Game Boy had a KI release, and boy did it suck, theres no need to cram 10 pounds of awesome in a 1 pound bag. At this point we now started to see what our precious Super Nintendo WASN'T capable of, and it was a revelation to Nintendo and the world that a new system needed to be made. The even bigger disappointment was that the N64 didn't have a KI release until later in that consoles life and was still lacking what the arcade had; No videos, weak sounds all because of the N64's cart media. We just couldn't win.

KI had a sequel and it came and went shortly after the success of the first game. It was nothing special. New characters that no one remembers and cool characters from the first game taken out for no reason. As of writing this article I read in my research that a third KI was in the works for the Xbox 360 but Rare has since cancelled it. That REALLY blows, a gaming system like the Xbox 360 could literally reinvent the KI series, full 3d real time graphics, surround sound in 5.1. I guess it just comes down to the fact that sometimes its best to leave well enough alone, or in this case just let it die. Wow... A great game started with a bang ends with a whimper. KI 2 was even beaten by the weak ass MK3 in terms of popularity. That makes this loss even more pathetic.

Killer Instinct was awesome and almost made it to #1 on this list. If this game wasn't so 'flash in the pan' it might have been higher. The industry can learn from this, if you make a sequel, you have to top yourself, not repeat. The success of KI was enough to get Nintendo to the front and really push the N64 system, but the surprise to me the writer is that this series never really blossmed to "Franchise" levels. No major merchandising, no cartoon on Saturday morning and no big budget movie (thank God Nintendo learned their lesson from the Mario Bros movie) .

Go to almost ANY emulator site and you'll find out that the arcade MAME version of KI is not so easy to find and even harder to put together and program, . I guess this was done on purpose , but it still sucks. I guess I need to win the lottery and buy the cabinet. For now I'll treasure the memory of how Orchid could kill off her enemy by opening her shirt and flashing her fun-bags at him.

Diamonds and Dogshit Report- Dogshit- Nintendo starts seeing red

I am currently writing an article about Sega and its rise and fall. Ultimately that piece of writing will be a truthful and brutally honest commentary on HOW that company blew it and now no longer makes consoles. But in the process of writing that, I thought: Nintendo has had some stinkers too. The Power Glove was Nintendo's worst peripheral back in the 80's, so bad that even its 90 minute movie/commercial starring Fred Savage (The Wizard) couldn't save it. That however was the 80's and I hadn't gotten into gaming then. Nintendo enjoyed a prosperous and well deserved place at the top back in the 1990's with the SNES and its Gameboy systems, which gives good reason that they would take some risks, try to cash in on a trend, and then lose.

Nintendo loves to try something new weather its needed or not. Lately they've released the Nintendo DS, a portable with 2 screens, one of them being a touch screen, not to mention N64 graphic and sound capabilities. So far that has been a success, even as currently the Game Cube is eating the dust of the original Xbox and PS2, Nintendo manages to keep afloat with its portable market. But Nintendo can't afford to fuck things up now, drastic moves in the wrong direction will send them into bankruptcy and force them to join the ranks with Atari and Sega as 'failed console companies'. As far as consoles Nintendo only has 1 failure: The Virtual Boy.

In the 1990's Virtual Reality was this buzzword that hit the gaming world by storm and it seemed to have one common element that would make an ordinary game seem like a virtual game: a screen inside a pair of large goggles. If the screen was 2 inches away from your face than you suddenly were IN the game. Games like Doom and Hexen gave us a new genre called the 'first person shooter'. This was a time when people didn't want to just SEE Mario beat king Kuppa they wanted to BE Mario and beat king Kuppa. Trouble is, console makers really didn't know what to do with VR. Sega had a cool VR system in the works but it never made it past the prototype phase. Even the Atari Jaguar had a VR system planned as a cool peripheral. Nintendo ran with this concept and the inventor of the Gameboy, Gunpei Yokoi dreamed up a product.

The VB came out in 1995 and on the outside this thing looked pretty,... interesting. VB looked like a pair of huge googles mounted on the tripod. This device has some interesting hardware inside, such as a 32 bit processor. Another thing that made this thing unique was its ability to play a different set of graphics in each eye creating an illusion of 3d, similar to the effects used to make 3d glasses. The controller was pretty innovative being that it was made to be switchable between left and right handed. Not a horrible idea in all, but it came with one HUGE flaw. Red graphics!

This thing only had 2 colors in its display, red and black. Games like Mario Tennis on this machine gave the impression that our favorite Italian plumber was playing tennis in Hell. Red Mario hitting the red ball to Red Yoshi, under a black sky. That is tennis in Hell, not the usual bright happy place Mario dwells and roams. I could mention other games but honestly this was all I had played. I remember displays of this thing set up at Blockbusters. I was so young at the time and even then I was soooo not impressed. I played about 2 minutes of Mario Tennis before my eyes began to hurt a little. This machine had a manual that was loaded with warnings telling kids to not play this thing for more that an hour and take breaks to rest your eyes. Hmm I wonder just HOW they found out that this thing was dangerous to eyes?

Maybe it was timing, maybe it was lack of software, maybe it was the red screen, or fuck perhaps the fact that after an hour your got a headache while using this thing, truthfully this thing has all this to blame for its failure. The price didn't help either: $169.00. A Game Boy with its green and white screen didn't cost more that $40 at this point in time, and at least that thing didn't cause eye damage unless you played the fucking thing in the dark. Few games were made for this machine. None of them really took advantage of the 'virtual' concept of putting you IN the game, most of the games just showed you a Viewmaster effect, but in motion. In less than a year Nintendo stopped pushing this device and began focusing a little more on the N64. Smart move.

Gunpei was fired after this, which is really a sad loss. The Game Boy he invented was THE system that made the industry rethink of the handheld market as something to take seriously. In 1997 he was killed in a car accident after losing his job at Nintendo.

Was it fate? If it is then that makes the Virtual Boy responsible for murder. The Jaguar sucked, but the worst of that fallout was that a few designers and programmers might have had to go look for another job. Nintendo now has hand helds that rock and all of them are made to the standard that Gunpei had always wanted, for example he had origionally said 'no' to a color version of the Game Boy until technology was made to make the battery life longer. This is one the reasons color game units like the Sega Game Gear didn't hold a great fight against the 'green giant' Game Boy. Gunpei is rumored to have said that the VB wasn't to his liking when it was released and was rushed out too early, and he was absolutely right. A year after his death the Game Boy color came out and the rest is history.

I make trips to antique shops and Goodwills alot. I'm looking for things like this. I don't know why but I love a loser. I can't really explain it. Oh well.

Diamons and Dogshit Report 2 - A Diamond- Earthworm Jim

No cows were actaully hurt while making Earthworm Jim

For God's sake keep Pete safe! (Pete is that purple dog)
1994's Extreme Sports Event: Jim versus Major Mucus
Art that is silly and at the same time, serious.

No super-space-cyber-suit would be complete without undies!

Earthworm Jim

Shiny/Playmates/Virgin

1994

Somewhere between madness and genius there is a thing called 'brilliance'.

Earthworm Jim was madness, brilliance, genius and art all thrown into one package, and it came in the form of a run-and-shoot platformer in 1994. EJ was a grossly funny cartoon brought to life in a video game and its purpose was to take all the things that made up video gaming culture and subvert them as part of a parody. Along with its unique acerbic attitude toward games in those days, it also put a new character in the rankings of gaming, right next to Mario and Sonic. This game made you laugh and challenged you at the same time (lets put a strong emphasis on the word 'challenge').

The story to EJ was as odd as it was ludicrous, and that might have been done on purpose. The main character that you play as is the result of an accident, according to the games story. The games story (in short) tells us that a 'Ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-space-cyber-suit' falls from space onto earth, and landed onto an earthworm. This earthworm ends up crawling inside of the suit and mutating from an ordinary crow-fearing, dirt-eating worm into a super intelligent heroic super earthworm named Jim. Now this story wouldn't be complete without a villain and it has one named Psy-crow, who is a funky looking (duh) crow that wears a suit similar to Jim's and he wants Jim's suit instead (I guess Jim's suit really rocks). What Psy-Crow also wants is to kidnap Princess Whats-her-name (that's the characters name, I'm not making that shit up). But Whatever, few of us actually cared about the story, we cared about the game.

What made the game so fun was the 'look'. The world in EJ was weird and cartoon-inspired from top to bottom, in fact that's what I digged about this game the most. I was and I am still an art nut and EJ always impresses me. The game was designed by a cartoon vet Doug TenNapel. The art and design of EJ looks like it takes creative points from Ren and Stimpy and the muscled character designs of Simon Bisley. Jim has his earthworm body sticking out of the collar hole of the muscular upper torso'ed yet skinny legged suit, It looks absolutely ridiculous, but its supposed to look silly, its a cartoon. Jim has the ability to pull out his head and 'whip' at things like enemies and hooks conveniently placed in level for which Jim could use to swing himself around. This game of course isn't complete without Jim being armed with a gun. His gun shoots what looks and sounds like regular bullets but it looks like a 50's inspired ray gun with an antenna tip, but as odd as it looks, its a lot better than Jim using his head as a whip. Princess-whats-her-name has a Betty Boop in a full-bodied 'bubble bee suit' look. Its very hard to describe and honestly I feel stupid even trying to right now, because if you are reading this right now there's a good chance you played this game and you remember all this, but its always fun to look back (that is the point of this blog).

These characters animated better than anything else in those days thanks to EJ being published and made on a very beefy 24 meg cart which was rarely heard of in platformers or any game for that matter. The gaming world called this motion technology 'Animotion' but I'm sure that was just fancy talk for 'We worked on this game harder than any other have before us'. The work showed and after awhile during playing, you just forgot it was a game and began to control a VERY fun cartoon. More impressive was also what was going on BEHIND and AROUND Jim.

The world of Earthworm Jim was a diverse place, each level looking and playing different and unique from the other. The first level called 'New Junk City' takes place in a cartoon version of a junk yard, with crows flying around and pecking at you and guard dogs nipping at your heels. Another level called 'Down The Tubes' takes place underwater inside tubing that looks like a hamster tube maze and get this; you also get to ride a hamster at one point! No two levels look the same at all and that was a surprise back in those days, usually we'd see the same brick walls and the same trees over and over (*cough* Mario! *cough*) but not here. Another plus was that you were never moving JUST left to right, EJ had you moving zig-zag style from one area to another, up, down, all around and even forward away from the screen into space like on the 'Andy Asteroids' levels.

This was also part of the challenge, no longer could you just run and jump. You had to think, be creative and figure out things. This was more of a challenge for players because NOW they had to really look at the levels and see for themselves just WHY we couldn't get that green diamond in 'What The Heck' to levitate Jim from point A to point B. Gaming magazines must have been in good business in 1994 because plenty of us were thumbing through EGM's and Gamepro's trying to get tips on how to help Jim save the universe. Strategy guides could never help us perfectly time and help us swing Jim around from hook to hook on certain levels and gamers had to find a pattern to go by and never, ever stay from it. It was a challenge but never so frustrating that we had to fling our controllers into a wall because we died 100 times a level.

A game that is designed by a cartoonist deserves and requires cartoon-ish sound. If you thought Hanna Barbara had some sound effects that were unique then your still right, cause EJ had a sound effects cache that was familiar and nostalgic, even in those days. Jim's voice samples (done by creator TenNapel) sounded like he had a funny southern twang, but was a hillbilly that was trying too hard to be cool. Whenever Jim said "Groovy" I giggled, it was funny. Hit a speed orb in Andy Astroids and you'll hear Jim scream "Whoa NELLY!",- goofy as Hell. The music ranged from serious rock sounds, to backwood-sy banjo shit and the 'What The Heck' level had elevator music that was interrupted by rampant screams of unseen victims being held prisoner in the land of 'Heck',- totally goofy. The sounds of EJ was a layer of video gaming art that before then was sometimes overlooked or just took a back seat to the games visuals. This was 94' so we'd better hear something better than 'Doinks' and 'Pings' like in Mario.

The result was good. The game was fun and great sales of the title followed. A lot less was sacred in a game now. You could now use a video game as a good medium for comedy. This was really the first successful 'comedy game' and this game had a blast making fun of other games that were in the same vein. It was a gross out game as well, seeing that one of the enemies of EJ was a anthropomorphic ball of snot named Major Mucus, but it was all in good fun,... what kid doesn't pick his nose?

Was anything wrong with EJ? Yes, it got famous. Jim spawned merchandising that was ranked next to Mortal Kombat and Mario. Everything from action figures to a Saturday morning cartoon came out from the success of Earthworm Jim. The inevitable yet predictable sequel was good, but lighting didn't strike twice and honestly I didn't like it as much. Other games have been made but the fact that I can't remember any of them is a bad sign (I even know all the names of the Full House line-up). The only cool EJ plug I liked was his cameo appearance in Clayfighter 63 and a 3/4 (to bad that game sucked). But the original EJ was a gem and it came at a time when most of us thought that platformers were on the way out. Earthworm Jim revived a genre that was getting its ass kicked by the 'Fighting games' that ruled in the 90's and showed that an old dog like the 'platformer' could be taught new tricks.

Years later, TenNapel moved on after EJ to do the game 'The Neverhood' that had a sequel to it called 'Skullmonkeys'. Skullmonkeys was a stop-motion, clay-mated platformer on the PS1 that really felt like Earthworm Jim, even though it looked NOTHING like it. I was so sure that it was made by the same creator even at that time, so its good to know that I was right about that when I did my research JUST before writing this article. I also think I should add that because of that revelation I now see that art is easy to find and easy to recognize. Video games really don't get a lot of credit for artistic achievement even today and its not fair.

But that's a different subject for a different time.

90's Fighting Games Top 5 - Number 3 -SNK's most expensive experience

A samurai fears nothing, not even lamps and trees!

Trash talk BEFORE it was ok to swear in video games,... and now you know why they allow it these days.
The Snes version's 'zoomed out' look. Im afraid to make a Genesis screen shot. The fight nust be VERY intense just look at that excited (and symetrical) 'band' behind them.



Samurai Showdown

SNK 1993

Takara 1994 (for console releases)

Everyone seems to be fascinated with Japan. Not so much the technological metropolis that we all see today but the 18th century era that is lovingly translated and romanticized in films and books. The film 'The Seven Samurai" is a classic film and has made people believe that Japanese samurai culture is dangerous, attractive and yet still noble. Its the perfect background and concept for video games.

Samurai Showdown succeeded while other samurai games fell because Showdown simplified everything that we loved about Samurai's:

Their showdowns!

Now before I make things sound stupider let me explain. Ever see a kick ass samurai film? like say, Seven Samurai, or Duel to the Death? Name ANY Martial arts film and the most memorable thing is the fight scenes. When the gloves are off and the swords are unsheathed you forget things like the 'story'. SNK gave the action junkies what they had wanted, and threw everything else overboard. This game could have been a platformer 'beat em up' where you had to walk around and battle the SAME fucking guy OVER and OVER again and meet a cool unique boss at the end, but the most expensive game system maker in the world wasn't going to bore the masses.

The game still had a story and a decent one at that. I really thought that the story involved 1 man named Haohmaru on a quest to test his skills and see how mighty of a samurai he really is, but in fact SNK had written a story for this game and it involves the said samurai as well as a slew of other warriors around the world on a quest to stop the malice and plagues of an evil warlock named Shiro Tokisada Amakusa. OK whatever, it didn't say ANYTHING like that when I turned the game on and the main point of the game was the showdown. This game seemed to present itself with a main character that had a personal test to give himself by beating the asses of every big showoff in the world, not saving the world from some kind of danger. The thing that gave the world of SS its beef was the setting; 18Th century. The days before we would see fighting games with hovercrafts and robots in the background.

SNK loaded this game with great looks. Every character looks bad ass and animates as smooth as silk (at least on the arcade and NEO GEO systems), this game follows a lot of the hand drawn Street Fighter 2 styles but doesn't blatantly rip that style off. Each character looks unique. Every fighter has a weapon that reflects their personalities; swords of all kinds, blades, broadswords, samurai swords, giant hooks, gloves with blades on them, you name it. Each fighter had their own background that reflected their persona, like the character Earthquake who lived in a prospecting area of 18th century Texas, or Galford. a Frenchman that lives a life of luxury which means he has to fight in a castle. We see plenty of Asia; most especially, feudal Japan, which always is romantically charged and beautiful to see in games.

The style of fighting in SS is very fast paced, kinda like what Street Fighter 2 games tried so hard to do but with little success. The actual fighting consists of you trying to unleash ultra-hard special attacks that maim your opponent, which was satisfying when finally pulled off. Sometimes you could link some moves together and form combos but there was no credit for that. The motive in SS is to kill and if you had to roll the d-pad or -joystick up your ass to do it, then do it, because seeing that power move executed and your opponent taken down because of it is just too damn sweet. These powerful attacks were not like ordinary special moves they were 'fatality'-styled, they were used after a long battle ensued and your character or the other finally got too pissed off to take any more crap. This is the reason some people call these 'desperation attacks'.

Samurai Showdown was fun. Arcades had a good run with this game and if any arcades still exist there is a SS game still there from when they got that cabinet in '93. SNK's Neo Geo released this gaming experience home on a 118 meg monster sized cart and later other ports were released. The SNES had a decent version, and Sega had... an adequate version. This game also helped the 3do stand a little longer when SS was made for it, but even a 32 bitter like the 3do couldn't hold much of a fight to the arcade version. SNK makes BIG games even if the game itself is small and short, because of the details and action that SNK bleeds over into making a game. This attitude gave SNK the drive it needed to make the NEO GEO but that console would cost gamers $699. But hope was in the air for Genesis and SNES owners, but it was a hollow hope.

On a NEO GEO, a system with top-of-the-line arcade guts inside it, SS played with great quality and 60 frames per second of action, with no hitches. SNK's system was a powerhouse for its day (even today too), and all those bells and whistles came with a huge price tag. So when normal people on a budget want a big shot game then companies work to try and put hundreds of megs from Neo Geo cart games into a small SNES or Genesis cart that might only be able to handle 24 megs at the most. The result in regards to SS was not as good as people wanted. The great 16 bit giants had very 'chopped down' versions of the Showdown that really weren't up to the standard that people saw in arcades. SNES didn't have that cool 'camera zoom' effect so the characters were small, had fewer frames of animation and the games sound was... sub-par, The Sega Genesis version had the Earthquake fighter missing and horrid sound and graphics. Another big gripe was due to Mortal Kombat making bloody waves of controversy, Samurai Showdown had none of the blood that was in the arcade versions which is ridiculous because SS kept the blood amounts low, you very rarely saw it! One of the tamer fighting games out had gotten censored all because of 1 game that went too far. The 16 bit home releases of this game were good tries anyway, I guess you can't have it all.

But this embarrassment keeps this series down and also puts Samurai Showdown in the middle of the list and not any higher like it should have been.

Showdown wasn't a phenomena, though MANY sequels exist that blow this game away. This game was HUGE in Japan and was a great SF and MK alternative for people in the US. There wasn't a big movie, and not much merchandising behind the series (none that I've seen, anyway). Maybe you can find a t-shirt here and there, but that might also be just unofficial crap that SNK would sue over if given a chance. It's nice to see that SNK didn't try so damn hard. If you had the money back then, you could buy a NEO GEO and enjoy the games that kept arcades in business for years. But the people at SNK were not going to shove games down your throat, because they only wanted the gamers that were truly serious about the hobby. There are probably better fighting games that SNK made back in the 90's but this was truly great and set the standard that even Capcom would have to adapt to with later fighting games, like X-men: Children of the Atom. Which is why before writing THIS review I was also considering SNK's Art of Fighting, but who really remembers that one?

90's Fighting Games Top 5- Number 4

Capcom policy in the 90's: No Sequels past #2
Better portraits of the characters

Good sex appeal (though quite cheap) Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers
Capcom

1993
Released for Snes, Arcade, Genesis and plenty other systems

Sometime the lighting strikes twice and sometimes its better than when it struck before. This game really should be called 'Street Fighter 3: The Last Time We At Capcom Do This'. I'm not at all ragging on or bringing down the first Street Fighter 2, that game really set the standard and gave us a good foundation for what a fighting game should be. The problem was that Capcom repeated themselves. This game rocked in my opinion and rarely left my Super Nintendo when I had rented it from Blockbuster, it was the best '3 Night' rental ever.

This game doesn't deviate from the style of fighting that the first game offered, there is still the 'rolling the joystick' special moves and the fluid movement remains as well. This game offers us a speed-up boost that was sorely lacking from the original SF2. This update was fun and versitale but still kinda lame in one regard: we had seen it already and all that was different was 4 new characters. The beauty part is that these characters were cool and none of the others were taken out.

With the same 6 buttons and 4 new faces there was a lot of fun to be had. The 4 new faces were:

Fei Long: A total rip-off of Bruce Lee, but still fun as hell. Bruce Lee really has been ripped off plenty of times in other fighting games (IE: Mortal Kombat).

Cammy: A blond cutie with twin braids of hair who loves to fight in a uniform that looks more like a swimsuit. This was a blantant attempt for cheap sex appeal but dammit who cares? It was fun watching her bounce around.

Dee Jay: A Jamaican kick boxer in baggy pants and a cool Bob Marley-Esq persona. At least He isn't a derivative character like Balrog (the Mike Tyson stereotype of the SF games).

T.Hawk: The native American Indian stereotype that would be repeated in plenty of more fighting games later on in the form of Mortal Kombat 3's Nightwolf, and Killer Instinct's Chief Thunder.

Cool new fighters but all in all the same action. Your still just jumping and doing as many special tricks to boost your score and also drian the other man or woman's life bar. Same bonus rounds where you attack barrels, bricks and parked cars. Same bullshit with M.Bison being the cheap douchebag that he is. A new boss and updated story would have done more to make this game a legit sequel and not just another 'update' of what was already done.

The the story of SF is about the tyrannous leader M.Bison getting the worlds attention and daring the world to take him down if they are so tough in an effort to stop him from taking over. No matter what the game though, that story never really changed. We had 4 new fighters added to the mix but with very little else like a reason that suddenly this fighting tournament has started all over again and why these 4 added challengers are so damn necessary.

Regardless, it was fast, fun and furious as we had liked. The fighting action is impressive even if it is repetitive. Matches can get very heated especially in a 2 player match between 2 experts. Combos are the added challenge, and players can easily link moves together but the beauty part is that the other can escape at the right time, thus avoiding a humiliating ass whooping. This version wasn't mind blowing my any means but it sold and was the best update of SF 2 ever.

This game wasn't Capcom's best nor is it the SF series's best, but honestly I never played the SF series after this. In my research prior to writing this, I found that Street Fighter 3 didn't come out until 1997. It wasn't until the near turn of the new millennium that Capcom got the hint that a new SF game needs new number and updating wasn't going to cut it. Yet, I also can defend Capcom's decision however to NOT title this SF 3 because its not much of a change, which is why this game doesn't make it to the top of this list. What puts this game on the list is that its best SF2 version ever made, hands down, which is why this version of this legendary fighting series is number 4 on this list.

The SF series has been called 'the other Mortal Kombat' . This could be due to all the hype of SF2 and MK being alike in so many ways. You can find Action Figures, Shirts, and even the second worst movie based on a video game, Street Fighter: the movie (man it sucked, made Mario the movie look like Shawshank Redemption) and then a game based off that crappy movie (which I will review). The animated SF movies rocked, and is one of the few animes that don't make my eyes roll. Capcom profited from this series and it sold well enough no matter HOW many versions of each game it made.

Well maybe... at least not for long. Street Fighter began dying when the millennium changed and now its all but over for the franchise. There is a loyal fan base that is begging for a revival of the series but those cries are falling on Capcom busy ears.

'Busy doing what', you might ask? Hey, Resident Evil 7: Terror in Antarctica might be a better project for 'Cap. (sarcasm)

What of our favorite characters? Where are they now since they're fighting days are behind them? Is E.Honda SELLING Hondas? Does Daulsim work tech support for a cable company? Are Ken and Ryu finally 'domestic partners'? Has Chun Li found a career as a porn star? Is Cammy coke-whoring out Paris Hilton? What about Guile, I've heard something about his court martial and the Abu Girab incident. Shit, I don't care.

I just wanna know one thing: what the fuck does 'HADUOKEN!!' mean?

The Death of a Once Great Console Developer

Between each entry of this top 5 list, I will be taking a moment to write, criticize, rant, praise or maybe even cry about something from the lovely 90's era of gaming. There is really not much logic to this, living in the past is bad for us, so they say, but these are undoubtedly the very things that made gaming what it is now.

These little reports will be classified and filed in two forms, weather this innovation or game is a diamond that made gaming rock, or dogshit that failed. This is the Diamonds and Dogshit report. I'll start with dogshit, its more fun to write about a failure rather than remembering and groveling at the feet of something that everyone loves. Failures are also way more important because the rest of the world can learn from it.

Entry 1

Atari's last stand.

I am too young to remember the Atari 2600 when it was in its prime, but I have messed around with one. When I was little, and long before my parents finally broke down and bought me a Gameboy, I got to play an Atari system at a mom's friends house. The NES was already in full swing and was blowing people away all over the world, but my mom's friend wasn't that far ahead. This friend was a black woman with a family that lived out in the 'hood (no this is not a bad joke I’m writing). Whenever I came over to their home I immediately ran into their sons room and fired up his Atari 2600 and played games like... damn I can't remember, but in all seriousness few people do. With all due respect to the first big video gaming system, most of the Atari 2600 games look the same. That is how I remembered the Atari company name years later when I was a SNES fan, and Atari released a system that was supposed to outperform and REPLACE my beloved SNES system.

I was an avid reader of EGM in those days and at that time the magazine was about 30% content, articles and reviews and 70% ads. Those ads featured some promising products, some obscure some major, and most not worth your money. In the pages of game and peripheral ads, a new system was emerging on the horizon called the Atari Jaguar, a 64 bit system with a familiar name behind it. I was impressed by some of the screenshots that I saw from some of its games like Alien vs Predator (plus the idea of playing a game based on Aliens, marines and Predators fighting was bad ass to me).

The console itself looked cool. Black and sleek like the Genesis, but compact. It was a cartridge system and from the pics I’ve seen it only has one button on the console to turn it on, no reset button or eject lever. The controller looked a little odd. It was huge and had a numerical keypad on it, but what made it a controller for games was that it also had three action buttons and a directional pad also just like a Genesis model 1 but with 13 extra buttons. How this thing was going to be used to play a 6 button fighting game I had no idea but the whole thing sparked curiosity to my 13 year old mind.

I didn't really realize in those days that Atari had a bad reputation. I never even knew about the horrors of its Pac-man translation and the failure of the ET game on the 2600 system. I had no knowledge of the gaming crash of 83-84, and how should I know these things? After all I was 13 years old and eager to find something that could replace my SNES and the only other new system on the market at that time was the 3do, a system to complicated for me to really follow not to mention cost about $700 (whoa). There was also the Sega CD attachment but at that time I wasn't interested in Night Trap (who the hell was?) I guess back then I was afraid of CD's. It was truly a big decade for gaming and every company including Phillips were making video gaming machines that we all know now really sucked.

I gawked at the cool screen shots of the 'Jag' in action. AvP looked like and awesome riot of a game, shooting aliens and even playing as one, what wasn't there to like? I was a Doom fan in those days and was dying to play it on a system and was in awe of seeing that it was a Jaguar title. Another great shooter was Wolfenstien 3d and that made it to the system. It seemed like all the great first generation FPS's were being made for Atari's new 64 bitter.

I won't lie I wanted one of these things. I believed that Atari's new system was 64 bits. I was young and stupid and as it turns out... that was the kind of consumer Atari wanted. I, however was also a poor consumer unwilling to shell out $300 dollars for a system when I already owned an SNES and a Genesis (both bought from pawn shops). As time went on I heard less and less about this machine and I never really knew why until now.

I've done my homework on this system recently, I don't know why but I was curious after all these years as to know just WHY this thing didn't move. The most well known and talked about reason is that this gaming system might NOT have been truly 64 bits and the worst part is that its debatable even all these years later. In the 90's of gaming people cared about BITS. Bit were like inches on the dick of your gaming system, the more the better. Atari's 64 bit system had 2 32bit processors inside it that worked together, but according to many of the Jag's critics that doesn't cut it as being truly 64 bits. The system really performed at a level of a 'cart based' 32 bitter. As a result, Atari had an ad campaign called "Do the math" and the company worked with that slogan thinking that companies like Sega, Sony and Nintendo would never strike back. Boy did Atari screw up.

Games continued to come out for this system and they got reviews that would make Simon Cowell cringe. Look at a 'worst games ever' list and expect a few or more Jag titles to show. Many of the games suffered from poor graphics that didn't look all that better than what an SNES could do. To make matters worse for Atari and its feline system, Sony was getting ready to unveil a finished product that was on their drawing board since 1986, The Playstation and Sega was already making some waves with their Saturn System.

Sam Tramiel, Atari's president and CEO in those days must have been getting desperate and he should have been. Their Jag wasn't doing well and just because you have a few good shooters doesn't mean you have success. The system was currently on life support in terms of sales, and it games were not the prescription to help heal it. They hadn't sold as many units as they had wanted, even when the price was dropped to $149. Sam decided to put his foot down... too bad it was onto a nail.

He was interviewed shortly before the release of the Sony Playstation. Maybe it was the desperation, maybe it was the lack of sales but he had to say something to appease the industry into thinking he was going to win come hell or high fuckin water. The interview is available (go ahead and google it) but in short, its all overly optimistic crazy talk. it’s a funny little thing to read, something that gaming geeks can chuckle over.

Here is a little gem quote from it, straight from Sam's mouth:

"The PlayStation, I must say, is a little, little bit more powerful in certain areas -- but not in others -- it's a little bit more stronger machine than Jaguar. A little, little bit."

A video of this interview would be something to see. I wonder if this man's nose grew. Anyways, he even gave Atari's potential future customers something to look foward to, the Jaguar 2 system that was in the works at the time of that interview. The rest of it is fancy talk and touting about how the future looked for the Jag. One thing was certain and was going to happen regardless of what mr.Tramiel said: The Playstation was ready to stomp a mud hole into the Jaguar's ass.

Sony debuted the Playstation, Sega released its Saturn and Nintendo came out with a 64 bit system that was believably and undisputedly 64 bits. Atari's fate was sealed. It didn't matter WHAT game it made, it made no difference, they were competing with the big boys. Atari came out with a CD drive that attached to the Jag, but it was like trying to revive a skeleton. 13 Jaguar CD games exist, I haven't played or even really seen them but I’m sure they suck.
Atari closed shop and ditched the Jaguar 2 project, rumor has it there are probably prototypes of that 'Jaguar Duo' floating about but screw that noise, its just a damn rumor about a shitty system. Atari has left the console market, and I must say its kinda sad. Atari's console days had a traveled a long road only to swerve off of it and hit a tree due to it being drunk on 'bad marketing' rum or 'bad idea' gin. Atari’s 7800 got outdone by Nintendo when the NES came out. Atari would have been the distributor of that now classic and famous NES but when a CEO working for Atari back in the early 80's blew his stack in rage at Nintendo's suits during an electronics convention and accused Nintendo of double dealing when he saw that another company called Celeco got the rights to Donkey Kong, Nintendo cancelled the deal and went into the US market without Atari's help and became the new kings in home video gaming. Atari may have missed out on billions (billions with a ‘B’ ). The Atari Lynx- a handheld with a full color screen- got creamed by the less powerful green-and-white-screened Nintendo Gameboy, and it could be blamed due to the Gameboy being cheaper at the time to appeal to a parent when shopping for their kids' holiday gift. It might have been easier for Atari in the 1970's when your competing against PONG machines but innovation- the father of invention- must step in eventually and another great electronics company will try to strike you out.

There is no chance that Atari will go back to consoles but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the greats that they once made. Go to a wal-mart and you'll find plug and play devices that allow you to relive the classics like Pitfall or Space Invaders and more for around 20 bucks. You can also find roms now on various online emulation websites for free. There is even Jaguar emulators that play the Jag games (if you simply just can't let go). Atari made games for everyone, and there is still even a homebrew scene of people that make games. Atari isn't dead to the world yet, and to this writer, I am glad.

Atari is now a publisher, making games for the companies that handed their ass to them. Atari's mark is on games like the 90's dino-fighting hit Primal Rage and the over-hyped Enter the Matrix, and the multiplayer FPS Unreal Tournament series. There is even a band called 'The Atari's'.

So maybe the industry is wrong, maybe there is a chance for Atari to make a comeback. No one would see that shit coming, an Atari system competing against Microsoft! No doubt it will be named after an animal. The Atari Marmoset?

Don't hold your breath.

I still want a Jag. I've got a Jaguar emulator on my computer and I’ve played AvP and to be honest im not impressed, nor would I be at the age of 13 or even 6. I'll have more on that game later but at least I got to experience the best the Jag could offer and I now know why it flopped. Perhaps I’m just a man looking to collect something that I grew up hearing about, and maybe in about 40 years from now- I can be on Antiques Roadshow and have an appraiser of electronics tell me that my 1990’s relic ain’t worth squat. There is a chance for some gaming systems to be worth money, like the Commodore 64, and the Neo Geo (granted the Neo Geo still rocks after all these years) they’re people out there that would sell their car for a Neo Geo. Someday when I’m at a Goodwill I'll find a Jaguar in a stack of 8 track players I’m still gonna buy it, after all its Goodwill and its for a good cause.

90's Fighting Games Top 5 List- Number 5

Mortal Kombat (1992 Midway)

Why is this game at the bottom of the list instead of like, 3 or 2? Because without its additions of controversial blood and gore, this game would have surely died. This isn't saying that the original MK sucks, its... OK, but play it now if you still have your copy and tell me if it still is as fun or legendary as you remember. The first Mortal Kombat might be the most overrated game ever made, and when compared to its later sequels you'll find that the first game has some flaws, but before I cluck on about that lets look at why it rocked the gaming world.

Digitized Graphics- This wasn't the first fighting game to use digitized footage or actors in order to create its sprites. Pitfighter, one of Atari's many failures, was the first fighting game to do this. But rather than give us muddy movement and choppy animation like Pitfighter, Mortal Kombat gave us characters with some great personalities. Each character was believable and cool for the most part. MK even gave us a stop motion animated four armed monster to fight against: Goro. For the first time in gaming history we really began to feel and believe that REAL people were beating each other into a paste on screen.

Blood- The sight of bodily fluids when I first played MK was enough to scar my mind. This was 92, a time before it became the norm to have blood in a game.It was enough to also spark congressional hearings and even made it a game believed to be responsible for the rating system that now graces the cover of every game that gets released. The gore of MK is now so tame to today's standards that you almost can't believe that it caused such a problem. The added fun was being able to maim your opponents or be maimed by executing 'Fatalities' in order to finish someone off. These moves included:

Punching off someones head

Pulling off someones head

Burning your opponent into a crisp

Ripping out someones heart

Blowing up someones head

or doing whatever satisfies the Ed Gein in you.

This was another reason for controversy. It wasn't enough that your characters bled (too much sometimes) they also could murder each other. Street Fighter 2 didn't really involve KILLING anyone, which is why that game never got the attention and censorship that MK eventually received. The oppression of censorship wasn't fully realized to me until its console release.

MK on the SNES was released and was widely disappointing to many. WHY? Because the SNES might have had a near perfect arcade translation but they made a bad move, they cut out all the blood and modified some of the Fatalities to make the game more vanilla. The Genesis version gave us all the blood and was accessable via the famous 'Blood Code'. The assholes of Nintendo's marketing department may have made the biggest mistake in allowing this, and it may have been done because of the demographic of younger kids owning and SNES system and older kids owning a Genesis. The drawbacks may also have come from the 'Lets test the market' strategy of what will win: Better graphics or better action? Whatever these bozos did to ruin MK for Nintendo owners, it was short lived, because Sega and its shittier Genesis version of MK blew away Super Nintendo version in terms of sales. This move caused Nintendo to rethink things and when Mortal Kombat II arrived it pulled out all the stops and gave us all what we wanted: Blood and gore.

OOOOK... there you have it. The secret to success. Digitized graphics and Blood. This game also had other things that made it great, like its story. The games plot seemed to be a mix of Enter the Dragon with a slight fantasy film (name whatever one comes to mind) angle to it. 7 people have entered a tournament to take down the 2 corrupted leaders of that tournament: Shang Tsung, a shapeshifting sorcerror, and Goro, a 10 foot cheap sonofabitch with four arms. Whatever, did anyone really pay attention to that or were we all just too busy learning how to pull off Rayden's fatality?

These 7 fighters were a colorful lot of criminals (Kano), agents (Sonya), ninjas (Sub Zero and Scorpion) , noble warriors (Liu Kang), an egotistical actor (Johnny Cage) and even the God of thunder (Rayden). All of these fighters worked and looked great in full realistic glory (for its time), each of them with their own story and persona that made them into icons of many fighting games after. Sub-zero and Scorpion were both palette color swaps of the same ninja (along with the secret and unplayable character Reptile), this following the Ken and Ryu of SF2 idea of getting the most out of 1 design, I'm surprised they don't do something similar to that or, at least more often, in Hollywood movies. Sonya was kind of the 'token woman' that you see in a lot of fighting games, even being able to shoot pink girly rings off of her wrist, to this day I always wished they would have tried harder in developing her, it feels like they didn't try. Johnny Cage pissed me off to no end. He fought with his shirt off in a pair of spandex shorts, and he's a candy assed, Hollywood actor that loves to gloat at the end of a match by putting on his sunglasses and stare at you with a crooked smile, he just BEGS to be 'Finished' at the end of a match. As annoying as Cage was, he was so fun to hate. Sub Zero is a ninja with the ability to freeze, and Scorpion is a ninja from hell that can breathe fire in order to kill you off. Kano is a thug criminal that throws knives and rips off Blanka's Barrel roll from SF 2. He's the token badass of this game and I loved his Fatality of ripping out someones heart, too sweeeet. Liu Kang is a kind of bland kung foo master inspired by Bruce Lee, not much else to note other than the games epilogue thats explained later in MK2 suggest that he won the tournament. Then you have the God of thunder Rayden who can fly at you, pasting you to a wall while screaming something in a lauguage that I'm not even sure exists, damn that was a fun move!

But it wasn't all so sweet. The SNES version proved that this game was quite bland without all the carnage. The controls were my big gripe. I was used to holding the joystick away from my opponent in order to block attacks, but here they added a button for it. I never used it much unless I was blocking an incoming projectile. There was 4 other buttons for high-low punches and high-low kicks, but there was really no difference between a high or low attack.

The action was slow moving and felt very stiff, like the characters and their controls were 'stuck'. The fighting method of winning this game was dependant on using 'juggle' combos that consisted of hitting your opponent into the air and using whatever hits you could dish out to keep them from hitting the ground. Some arcade junkies made a lot of enemies by memorizing tricks and combos that literally gave them a 24 hit hollow victory. This is a style of fighting in a game I've never preferred because it offers you no opportunity to counter attack, you just have to sit there and wait till your plastered to the floor. Thankfully this was only something that experts you played against could do, if you played against the computer you fought someone that was either too easy or too cheap.

MK 'you vs the computer' tip: Stay away from the corner, you'll get a barrage of punches or other hits you'll NEVER escape from.

It just goes to show you, looks aren't everything. MK had flaws but the beauty part is that Midway listened to the cries and bitching of its players and delivered a sequel that gave us all that was missing from the original. This is the difference between Midway and other companies that made fighting games (like Strata), while their first show was a success, they didn't get lost in it when it came down to repeating it. In fact, MK 2 wasn't even close to a repeat of the original, it was a totally different game (more on that as this list progresses).

Regardless of slow fighting, funky controls and cheap or unimaginative AI, MK is now a classic. Right up there with Pac-man and Galaga. This game might have made MILLIONS of dollars on its arcade release alone. Rarely does a video game inspire such widespread controversy and at the same time, get so much merchandising behind it. I can remember MK action figures, trading cards, T shirts, books, a cool movie (and a shitty sequel to that movie), and apparently even a live martial arts stage show (this game even had an off Broadway spin off, amazing). Mk also has laid foundation for many fighting games after in that it told developers to not be afraid of anything. Without MK giving the mainstream the violence that sells, then even games like Grand Theft Auto (not even a fighting game) would ever be made.

All this hype over red sprites of blood that didn't even look very real in retrospect. I'm sure Midway secretly thanks the US congress for making a big deal of MK's violence, after all that was and still is the best free advertising any medium can get.