Tenchi o Kurau 2: Sekiheki no Tatakai (Sega Saturn)

Tenchi o Karau 2: Sekiheki no Tatakai

(Warriors of Fate II)

Capcom

Capcom, 1996

I enjoy a good beat 'em up (or hack 'n slash) as much as the next guy. There isn't a shortage of these types of games, but finding the truly good ones can take some work. In some cases, some of the better games of these sub-genres didn't even make out of Japan. Tenchi o Kurau 2, better known outside of Japan as Warriors of Fate II is one of those games.

Prior to Capcom releasing this game on home consoles (Playstation & Saturn in 1996), the game began it's life in the arcades circa 1992. I hand very fond memories of playing this game in the arcade the summer before my senior year in high school. I was working at a theme park, Paramount's Carowinds and situated right across from the burger stand I was stationed at was the park's largest arcade. On my breaks or after my shift was over, I would head on over to the arcade and drop a few dollars into various games. Warriors of Fate II was one of my favorites hands down.

So what made this game so much fun? Well for starters the arcade version was 3 player co-op (the home ports were just 2 player co-op) and there were 5 characters to choose from. While most of them play somewhat the same, each character does have their own differences in combat. For my most recent play through, I chose Chou-Un. He's the guy in the middle with the blue armor. Each character as a Street Fighter type move that you can pull off. Chou-Un will slash forward, ending in a upper cut using his sword. Reminds me of one of Ken's moves from Street Fighter.

The game isn't your standard fare beat 'em up however. Some of the characters you can select are unarmed and play more like Hagger from Final Fight, while others have a slightly more ranged attack thanks to their weapon. Like most games of this type, there are other weapons that you can pick up from fallen enemies or from breakable containters. 

Unlike other games (outside of Knights of the Round, another great Capcom beat 'em up) you can ride on the back of a horse. When mounted, you have a longer range weapon to attack with. Pressing back then forward will make your horse rear back and then you lunge forward with a more powerful attack. Pressing the jump button will let you change directions of the horse. You can also attack from behind you with a backhanded attack, but it's a much slower attack.

The enemies you fight are pretty standard fare at the beginning of the game. You have grunts, soldiers and bowmen. However as you advance through the 9 levels of the game you are introduced to more formidable enemies. These Chun-Li looking girls are little quicker than most of the male characters and if you aren't careful, they'll unleash a flurry of knives at you. You never encounter one of these females alone either, they are always paired in threes it seems.

That's the other thing that makes this game stand out to me. The number of enemies on the screen at the same time. I swear there were times were I'd count 10 or more enemies all on the screen at the same time. Thankfully the Saturn hardware is more than capable of keeping the game running with zero slowdown. Perhaps for this reason alone Capcom never tried to port this game to the Super Famicom or Super Nintendo?

The boss battles weren't anything special, but they were always fun. Most of the time the bosses you'd fight would have a good bit of health, as you can see in the above image. Kyo-Cho had two and 1/2 bars of health...not to mention a fairly large mallet he attacks with.

The level design and backgrounds are pretty impressive. Being that the game takes place in China the scenery from level to level doesn't change that much, but Capcom did a good job overall. From the forest at the beginning, to fighting in rivers, barren battle grounds to storming the enemies stronghold. The area in which you fight Kyo-Cho, there is a torch in the background that the game prompts you to pick up. Once you've picked up the torch, the entire area is engulfed in flames. Very nice touch Capcom. 

Did you notice the enemy (from the above flame screenshot) lying on the ground in half? There are several times in the game where you can cut an enemy in half, decaptitate them or just cause them to explode from a blunt hit! Each attack does cause a bit a red blood to spirt from the enemy as well. 90's gaming was oh so good when you didn't have to worry about game ratings, helicopter parents and such.

As with games like Final Fight, inbetween select levels you would be treated with a mini game of sorts. The first game put you against another playable character (I think) in who can clean off their plate the fastest. It's a button mashing fury in order to make your character gnaw away at the meet and meat buns on the plate. I can never win at these type of events unless I'm mashing away on an actual arcade cabinet.

Warriors of Fate II is an awesome beat 'em up game. It has that Capcom feel, very polished and very much fun. With the 5 different characters to chose from and 9 pretty long levels, the game offers a good bit of replayability.

The Saturn version of the game seems to go for around $65-$85 on the secondary market, depending on how complete the game is. The Playstation version can be had for just over $50 complete in most cases. I don't know if it's as arcade perfect as the Saturn version is, but I'd love to know.

If you're a fan of 90's arcade style Capcom games, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of this game. I really don't think you'll regret it at all.

2,932,259, not a bad highscore after completing the game

Crest of Wolf (PC Engine)

Crest of Wolf

Westone / Hudson Soft

Super CD- ROM, 1993

Crest of Wolf, also known as Riot Zone on the TurboGrafx CD is your standard fare beat 'em game. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but there are a lot of similarities with Capcom's Final Fight. Being that I'm playing the Japanese version, I wasn't able to follow the dialogue in the animated scenes that set the story. I don't need to read though to find out its your basic rescue your kidnapped girlfriend, beating up thugs along the way.

You can take control of either Hawk or Tony. Hawk is the blonde wearing a white t-shirt w/ blue jeans...he's basically this game's version of Cody from Final Fight. Tony is the big dude with the mohawk...this game's Haggar. Both players do play a little different and feature different animations in their attack, but like most beat 'em ups does it really matter who you choose?

Upon firing up the game I noticed that the game looks and feels as if its almost unfinished. The graphics are kind of ugly in places and the character designs leave a lot to be desired. At least the enemies are varied, but there are a LOT of color pallet swaps to make the additional characters. The animation for your character, as well as the enemies seems stiff. Hit detection is decent, however many of the enemies would land a chain of attacks on you that I just could seem to block or get away from. Thankfully the game didn't have any slow down of flickering that I noticed when there were multiple enemies on the screen.

Going back to the characters, do these enemies remind you of a particular ninja that garnered fame on various Sega platforms?! I fought a couple of shirtless fat guys that seemed to resemble Karnov as well. The big guys in the game run around like the big, fat bald guys in Final Fight. There are guys that slide kick across the floor just like the guys w/ knives in the previous mentioned game. At least there was some originality in the level design after the first level or so.

The one positive thing I have to say about this game is that the soundtrack is pretty great. There are a few tunes that I didn't care for, but overall I really enjoyed the guitar heavy metal. I felt it fit the game really well and I wish there was a sound test. At least you can listen to the game's entire soundtrack in the YouTube video above.

After you beat the boss of each level, you'll see your character walking down the street and up to a poster with an image of the boss and a reward listed below. You'll thing plunge a knife into the poster before the screen fades and loads the next level.

The boss battles throughout the game I found to be fairly easy, however the boss(es) of the first stage proved to be tougher than most. You fight an Asian martial artists by the name of Mr. Lee. Once you get his health to about half way, a female armed with Wolverine type claws joins the battle. Not overly difficult, but the lady did get some cheap hits in on me as she jumped around the screen.

Stage two's boss, Shauna, appears to be some type of dominatrix. When you first approach her, she is laying down on a board stacked upon cinder blocks. She has a sexual look to her, even though her character model really doesn't show that much skin. I can see this character being heavily altered/censored if this game ever appeared on the Super Nintendo. Despite her wielding a whip, she was a real push over.

Stage three's boss took place in what appeared to be a doctor's office? You see this guy sitting on a desk who jumps down, then all these spikes protrude from his body. He looks way more menacing than he actually was. Next.

Remember when you jumped into the wrestling ring in Final Fight to fight the boss, Sodom? Stage four's boss isn't some Japanese shogun warrior, but a big sumo wrestler named Fuji. I don't know if it was his larger size that made it easy to land hits on, but I was able to take him out fairly quickly.

Stage 5 has you eventually invade the enemies base, a penthouse at the top of a skyscraper. Why does that seem so familiar? I can't remember the name of the boss, but he has that pretty boy look. Kind of reminds me of one of the guys from the first Die Hard movie, only this guy knows martial arts. I didn't find him too terribly difficult to beat, in fact I thought I had beat the game. Did you notice those statues in the background? Well one of them there is more than meets the eye.

The final boss of the game is Toro, a statue that comes to life after you beat the pretty blonde guy. He attacks with a sword and if he gets any distance on you he'll fire a slow moving fireball your way. For the final boss he was way to easy to beat. Like with most characters and bosses, you could pin them in the corner and lay down on your attack button...or just use the handy built in turbo switches to really take it to them.

Once he falls, you walk into the next game and the love of your life runs into you arms. There are more animated scenes that help wrap up the story I presume. After that you are greeted by a screen with "Congratulations" spelled out in large characters. Roll credits and put a fork in this one because you are done.

Without changing any of the default game play settings, you get five lives. I was able to make it to the 5th and final level before I had to continue as I had earned a few lives based on my score. The levels are a tad long and the overall difficulty did seem to ramp up a little on the final level. I believe I had to continue twice in my play through. I don't know if the continues are unlimited or not, but when you do have to continue you get to pick up right where you left off. No going back to the beginning of the stage here.

Overall the game is OK. Games like Final Fight or Streets of Rage are far superior, but I still enjoyed it thanks in part to the soundtrack. The game isn't overly expensive and unless you really want to know the story behind the game, there isn't any reason to pay more for the US version. Plus the PC Engine version has the far superior cover art. If you are fan of beat 'em ups you at least owe it to yourself to try this game.

Nekketsu Oyako (Sony Playstation)

Nekketsi Oyako

Technosoft (1995)

The beat 'em up genre has always been a favorite of mine, but it seems after the 16-bit generation there just weren't as many games to choose from. While researching this genre for new games I ran across Nekketsu Oyako and was instantly interested. The game was never released in the US, but it was released for both the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation. Already having an import friendly Saturn I sought out the game, but was turned off by it's high price tag.

  

Enter the Playstation version. Last year I grabbed a NTSC-JP Playstation for cheap and started to look to build my import PSX library. I ran across this game again and was glad to see it's price was about half of what it still goes for on the Saturn. I've actually noticed several games that were released on both platforms always seem to be cheaper on the Sony side.

Nekketsu Oyako comes packaged in the thicker Playstation cases. It seems this was a common move for many of the PS1 games released outside of the US. Some of the Japanese games have the game title in English on the opposite spine, but this is not one of those. My copy of the game didn't come with the spine card either.

Released in 1994 by Technosoft (of Thunder Force fame), this beat 'em up plays and feels a lot like Capcom's Final Fight or Sega's Streets of Rage. At the start of the game you have animated scenes setting up the story, followed by a player select screen. Each character has their own move set along with rankings for Power, Speed and Skill. 

You've got your typical big muscle guy, strong, but slow. You have your female character that is quick on her feet, but not as powerful and then you have your average Joe type character. I chose to go through my first play through with him.

The game has 5 levels total and while you may think that isn't many levels to traverse through, they are of a good variety and of a decent length. Like many games in the genre, there are items that you can break to reveal items that increase your score, replenish your health or weapons to help you take out the enemies. Right off the bat I found my first weapon, a rifle! I was expecting a bat, or chains or something you usually see. This weapon was brought onto the screen from one of the henchmen in the game and was dropped upon being hit. There aren't many shots in the gun and it didn't seem to do as much damage as I thought it would, but it's a refreshing change of pace from the normal weapons found in a beat 'em up.

The first level has you fighting in a park while the second level has you fighting downtown in some city. At the end of each level you fight a boss. None of them really wowed me, but they did whip my butt! This steroid laced woman approaches you on a bridge at the end of the second level, accompanied by a helicopter. If fighting her wasn't enough you also have to contend with the helicopter hovering in the background laying down cover fire.

The third level is where some of the level design charm really comes into play. After you defeat the boss at the end of the second level, you fall to the sea underneath the bridge and are swallowed by a whale, Jonah style! The first part of the third level takes place in the belly of the whale. I had a picture taken, but I didn't realize it turned out crappy so I had to nix it. Inside the belly of the whale you are introduced to our first new enemy, boxing glove wearing bi-pedal octopus. I'm beginning to see why this game never made it outside of Japan!

Once you fight your way through the belly, the whale swallows some water and you are rushed off the screen only to be blown out the blow hole on a spout of water. You land on back end of the whale and are forced to fight on top of the whale now. As I was making my way across the back of the barnacle laced whale, I found a beverage that would replace my health! However when I pushed the attack button to pick it up, I was treated with this 'Adult Only!' prompt. Upon closer inspection that beverage was actually a can of beer! I guess only the big guy character is able to drink beer.

Once you fight this karate looking boss a top the whale, you end up back on land and at a amusement park for the fourth level. About half way through the level you end up jumping onto a roller coaster and are attacked by a lot of the common boxer grunts. With the roller coaster car is going up and down on the tracks and the number of enemies on the screen, this is the first time I experienced some slow down to the game. It wasn't too bad, but having to fight so many guys in such a small space while it was going up and down and all around, it was a little hard to find my character in all of the chaos. 

The roller coaster ends up going off rail and crashing into a mountain. You end up fighting the last part of the fourth level inside what appears to be a volcano and at the end you face the boss, Hammer. He was the most menacing looking boss yet, but was actually a push over.

The fifth and final level starts off on the first floor of a high rise building. Without knowing this is the last level you can kind of sense you are working your way to the final boss just by the look of the building you're in. You do end up re-fighting the level bosses on each floor, but it seems as if they were much easier to take out this time around. When you finally make it to the top, you find this big bald white dude sitting in a chair watching some monitors. The look of this guy really reminded me of the Kingpen from the Marvel Daredevil comics or even a little of Big Boss from the animated/toy series, C.O.P.S.

In typical fashion, he starts off sitting there and lets others do his dirty work. He whistles in large groups of enemies to dispatch and finally after a few waves he gets up to take you on himself. He was a formidable final boss and I actually ran out of continues by this point. This is where I had to quickly change my controller to player 2 so I could continue. This explains my my character changed in the screen shots.

After you finally take him out and start to have that feeling of accomplishment, the final boss reappears dressed in a very 90's comic book type costume. How that rotund boss reappears as a muscle bound character such as this is pretty comical. This guy was tough too and I ended up continuing several times before I finally was able to widdle his health down to zero.

Apparently the building you were fighting in was on floating island in the sky and after you defeat the final boss you are treated to nice little animated scene of the building collapsing and blowing up.

I'm not sure who I rescued and how I got off a floating island and back down to the ground, but the other two characters thought I was dead by their facial expressions only to be surprised/happy to see me walking up over the horizon. The game ends with several more scenes complete with text, but since I can't read Japanese I really don't know what was going on.

In closing I enjoyed this game. The game play is a little sluggish as your character moves fairly slow. There isn't a lot of variety when it comes to your moves or enemies you fight, however I think the level design helps breath a little life into a slightly above average game. The Playstation didn't get a lot of beat 'em ups like this so for that reason alone it's worth adding to your game library. I like the variety of weapons you can pick up, from knives to guns to grenades; my favorite weapon was this bladed hoop that acted like a boomerang when thrown. As long as you weren't punching when the weapon returned, your character would catch it so you could throw it again. I was able to take out 2 bosses fairly easy with this weapon alone.

I haven't researched to see if the game looks or plays any better on the Saturn, but I do know this Playstation version was ported over to the Saturn in 1995. I also know that the PSX version usually can be had for about half of what the Saturn version sells for. Being that I'm new to the Playstation 1 import scene this was an easy selection for me and it's one that I enjoyed. I do look forward to playing through it again as the girl or seeing if my wife will play with me as it is a two player game, however I can the game will have a low replay ability. If you are fan of the beat 'em up genre I encourage you to check this out.

Final Fight CD (Sega Mega CD)

Final Fight

Capcom
Sega, 1993

The beat 'em genre has been around for a long time. For me there are two games that immediately come to my mind when I think about beat 'ems...Double Dragon and Final Fight. Just like Double Dragon and how it took time for an arcade quality home port to happen, Final Fight has had it's hardships when it comes to home console versions of the game.

The Super Nintendo version of the game was one of the first home versions I played and while it was fun, it was far from arcade perfect. One of the playable characters, Guy, was missing from the game and there were other changes made to the game. Years later I found out that the game was released for the Sega CD and was arcade perfect...or so I thought. To get a true arcade perfect port you have to look overseas to the Sega Mega CD version.

Sega's Mega CD platform is region locked so don't expect to just pop this in your U.S. Sega CD console and hope to have hours of fun. For this very reason this game wasn't added to my personal collection until about a month ago. After securing a Mega CD 2 to add to my Mega Drive console, I knew this was one of the first games I wanted to pick up.

I sat down over the weekend to enjoy the game and I just couldn't put it down. Playing solo I've still yet to beat the game. I can usually start off really well, but there are just a few bosses (Sodom, Edi E.) that hand me my butt no matter what strategy I try to use! However that didn't stop me from several play throughs and getting a decent high score of 1,271,364.

The opening scenes in the Sega CD version has the same "animated" scenes, however when Hagger is informed that they've (Mad Gear) has kidnapped his daughter, Jessica, she is shown in a red dress. 

However in the Mega CD versionx the same scene has Jessica exposed. Why I don't have a clue. When the actual game starts and you see Jessica in the hands of the Mad Gear, she is shown wearing a red dress. So that would mean that in the Japanese version of the game her dress was obviously removed, yet they fully dressed her before they moved her to another location. How nice of the gang!

The SNES version of the game completely replaced the two female characters, Poison and Roxy, with generic male figures. Nintendo was also very strict w/ their games so it doesn't surprise me that they didn't want players beating up women.

The Sega CD version included Poison and Roxy, yet their appearance was still altered. They basically are wearing a little bit more clothing. Compare the above Sega CD image with the Mega CD image below.

Their top and pants are much shorter in the Japanese version and when punched, both Poison and Roxy do show off a little cleavage. Personally I could care less, but at least in Japan Sega was able to keep it arcade perfect.

In addition to these graphical changes, the first bonus stage was unchanged in the Mega CD version. Beat up the car and score perfect and you'll see the Mad Gear guy walk out and fall to his knees crying "Oh God!", original voice and all.

If you are looking to play the best version of this game, obviously the Mega CD game is the way to go. However I understand that this version isn't the easiest to play. The Sega CD is a great port and the route most gamers will end up taking. The Xbox Live version is also a great alternative if you don't have a way to play either of the CD versions.