Out of all of the old-school fighting games that I have played from the early 90’s, the original World Heroes was definitely the one that tried to be just like Street Fighter II the most, while failing to reach the same quality as that game. Sure, it wasn’t terrible by any means, but aside from the cast of characters being based on real world figures, nothing about the game came off as too original or exciting, the game was way too easy, especially with added abilities like being able to double jump, and it had no real ground to stand on to even compare to the big boys at the time, not even with other SNK fighters like Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting to an extent. However, since this is an SNK fighting franchise we are talking about here, it was going to get at least one sequel, or else SNK would probably have a big ol’ hissy fit over it. And so, just one year later, we would get World Heroes 2.
Not gonna lie, I was actually kinda looking forward to playing this one. I didn’t necessarily expect it to be a masterpiece, cause I knew what it was following up, but since I was able to blaze through the original game so quickly, I figured this one would be a breeze, and I could get it over and done with. However, I then quickly learned that that wouldn’t be the case, and I also ended up learning that, when compared to the original game, this game was an improvement overall. I wouldn’t say it is that great, but it is still a good enough fighting game, one that SNK nuts would probably have a fun time with, and others could probably just shrug off without getting too angry at it.
The story is literally a “here we go again” plot, as Dr. Brown, the one who caused the first game to happen, hopes to once again prove who the strongest fighter in history is, but of course, bad shit happens again, making this feel like one of the laziest plots to a sequel from around this time, aside from, y’know, some obvious other choices. The graphics look about the same as the last game, with them not looking bad, but at the same time, it looks like every other fucking SNK fighting game of that time, the music was ok, with me not being able to recall a single track from the entire game, but at least I don’t recall hating any of it, the control is about the same as the original game, so nothing to comment on there, and the gameplay is very similar to that of the original game, but there is a little more content in there to spice things up.
The game is a typical SNK fighter, where you take control of either one of all the returning fighters from the previous game, or one of the six new fighters introduced in this game, travel across the world to fight at various different locations, with there being quite a bit of interesting choices this time around, fight your opponent in the traditional 2D style, throwing out plenty of punches, kicks, throws and combos to gradually deplete your enemies HP, win two out of three matches against your opponents, and take on a bonus game every once and a while for additional points. It gives you pretty much everything you are expecting in terms of an early 90s fighting game, but there are some changes here that do make the game better.
In terms of actual new content, along with the regular matches of the game that you can get in, there is now also an option to go to a Death Match, which pretty much works exactly like the regular fights, except you are now in an arena filled with hazards and traps, the way you lose works more like wrestling rather than regular fighting, and whether you win or lose depends on you either not getting up in time, or who’s health is over the arrow that is on the health bar. This isn’t my preferred way of playing a fighting game, especially one like this, but I am glad that the option is there, just in case you wanna spice things up with your matches. Aside from that though, not much else about the game is changed aside from the new characters and the difficulty. There are 14 total characters to play as in this game, which is pretty high for a fighter in 1993, and there are some new unique faces to make the cast all stand out, like with Mudman and Johnny Maximum. The gameplay does feel a little less cheap and exploity, the endings that all the fighters get range from being standard to being funny, and this time around, the game is harder to get through. Not as hard as other SNK fighters, but hard enough to where I had plenty of trouble against the final boss, Dio. No, not that Dio.
That is all pretty cool, but at the end of the day, it still doesn’t feel as fun or captivating as plenty of other fighters from around this time. It is still mostly exactly what you would expect from a typical SNK fighter, and it still wears it’s inspiration too closely to its chest, which does bring it down quite a bit. There isn’t really much else that I can say about the game, because it just does feel that bland and basic, which is a step up from the original to be sure, but that does make it less noteworthy as a result. I guess I could also say that there are mistranslations scattered throughout, but guess what? It’s an SNK game. They all have mistranslations up the wazoo! It is to be expected at this point.
Overall, despite having plenty of new additions that do make this an improvement over the original, I can’t really say that World Heroes 2 is anything more then just simply being “good enough”. It is one of the most typical SNK fighters that I have played so far, which is saying something, considering that I have gone through quite a lot of them at this point. I would recommend it for those who were fans of the original game, as well as those who love SNK fighting games in general, but for everyone else, there are plenty of other, better old school fighters that you could try out instead. And before we end off this review, here is a fun fact for ya: one of the fighters that was originally gonna be added into this game was gonna be the emperor Vlad Dracula. That in itself isn’t too interesting, but now imagine if the game had Dracula, the vampire, as one of the playable characters. That would give this game an instant 4-star rating based on that alone.
Game #451
Not gonna lie, I was actually kinda looking forward to playing this one. I didn’t necessarily expect it to be a masterpiece, cause I knew what it was following up, but since I was able to blaze through the original game so quickly, I figured this one would be a breeze, and I could get it over and done with. However, I then quickly learned that that wouldn’t be the case, and I also ended up learning that, when compared to the original game, this game was an improvement overall. I wouldn’t say it is that great, but it is still a good enough fighting game, one that SNK nuts would probably have a fun time with, and others could probably just shrug off without getting too angry at it.
The story is literally a “here we go again” plot, as Dr. Brown, the one who caused the first game to happen, hopes to once again prove who the strongest fighter in history is, but of course, bad shit happens again, making this feel like one of the laziest plots to a sequel from around this time, aside from, y’know, some obvious other choices. The graphics look about the same as the last game, with them not looking bad, but at the same time, it looks like every other fucking SNK fighting game of that time, the music was ok, with me not being able to recall a single track from the entire game, but at least I don’t recall hating any of it, the control is about the same as the original game, so nothing to comment on there, and the gameplay is very similar to that of the original game, but there is a little more content in there to spice things up.
The game is a typical SNK fighter, where you take control of either one of all the returning fighters from the previous game, or one of the six new fighters introduced in this game, travel across the world to fight at various different locations, with there being quite a bit of interesting choices this time around, fight your opponent in the traditional 2D style, throwing out plenty of punches, kicks, throws and combos to gradually deplete your enemies HP, win two out of three matches against your opponents, and take on a bonus game every once and a while for additional points. It gives you pretty much everything you are expecting in terms of an early 90s fighting game, but there are some changes here that do make the game better.
In terms of actual new content, along with the regular matches of the game that you can get in, there is now also an option to go to a Death Match, which pretty much works exactly like the regular fights, except you are now in an arena filled with hazards and traps, the way you lose works more like wrestling rather than regular fighting, and whether you win or lose depends on you either not getting up in time, or who’s health is over the arrow that is on the health bar. This isn’t my preferred way of playing a fighting game, especially one like this, but I am glad that the option is there, just in case you wanna spice things up with your matches. Aside from that though, not much else about the game is changed aside from the new characters and the difficulty. There are 14 total characters to play as in this game, which is pretty high for a fighter in 1993, and there are some new unique faces to make the cast all stand out, like with Mudman and Johnny Maximum. The gameplay does feel a little less cheap and exploity, the endings that all the fighters get range from being standard to being funny, and this time around, the game is harder to get through. Not as hard as other SNK fighters, but hard enough to where I had plenty of trouble against the final boss, Dio. No, not that Dio.
That is all pretty cool, but at the end of the day, it still doesn’t feel as fun or captivating as plenty of other fighters from around this time. It is still mostly exactly what you would expect from a typical SNK fighter, and it still wears it’s inspiration too closely to its chest, which does bring it down quite a bit. There isn’t really much else that I can say about the game, because it just does feel that bland and basic, which is a step up from the original to be sure, but that does make it less noteworthy as a result. I guess I could also say that there are mistranslations scattered throughout, but guess what? It’s an SNK game. They all have mistranslations up the wazoo! It is to be expected at this point.
Overall, despite having plenty of new additions that do make this an improvement over the original, I can’t really say that World Heroes 2 is anything more then just simply being “good enough”. It is one of the most typical SNK fighters that I have played so far, which is saying something, considering that I have gone through quite a lot of them at this point. I would recommend it for those who were fans of the original game, as well as those who love SNK fighting games in general, but for everyone else, there are plenty of other, better old school fighters that you could try out instead. And before we end off this review, here is a fun fact for ya: one of the fighters that was originally gonna be added into this game was gonna be the emperor Vlad Dracula. That in itself isn’t too interesting, but now imagine if the game had Dracula, the vampire, as one of the playable characters. That would give this game an instant 4-star rating based on that alone.
Game #451