history is a nightmare
... and loving it!!!!

A little sad this is the last one of these, but they went out on a high note. Like all the rest it's funny, charming, and actually pretty creepy when it wants to be, and it's cool to have seen in relative real time them figuring out more tricks/ways to take advantage of the medium. I find this whole series really endearing beyond all that because it just seems like a really good example of how if you feel like it, you can make a game. Just go right on ahead and make one! Who's gonna tell you no!!
Also I don't wanna spoil anything, but Virtua Fighter is mentioned in this one, and I've spent most of the past week playing VF non-stop, so it feels like it was made just for me. Which is quite nice!

A kind of halfway point between Karate Champ and fighting games as we know them today. The animations are really cool and it's pretty satisfying to scissor kick someone in the face and make a big smacky sound. Some of the features here are quite impressive for a game from the time - the training mode that beefs up your fighter, for instance. It's pretty simplistic, you do a little minigame and number goes up, but the basic gameplay there is stuff that the UFC games were still using 20 years later! Crazy. Things like being able to customise your moveset and record replays also weren't something I expected going in.

I'll tell you what I did expect going in, though. I expected Eric Roberts. This game is called Best of the Best and yet Eric Roberts nor Phillip Rhee are anywhere to be found. You don't even get Chris Penn! This is shameful. And I'll tell you something else, the full-page ad in the 1994 issue of Superman I was reading that made me play this had a big "TO BE OR NOT TO BE..." plastered over it, and that to me is either supposed to evoke the chorus of the movie's theme song, in which case where is Eric Roberts, or they're just throwing in allusions to completely unrelated kickboxing movie To Be the Best, in which case come on. Nobody could mix those up. Neat game but I take major umbrage at this marketing!