My childhood neighbor was a PC kid and I had such good memories playing this game with him - I remember my 10 year old self almost crying when he eventually deleted it to make space for new games! I'd been putting off playing this game for awhile, partly because of technical difficulties of getting this to work on DOSBox, but also because I think I was subconsciously afraid that my childhood memories were embellished. I would have loved any game featuring giant robots back then, and I really didn't want to come back to this game and realize it wasn't that good.
Well, if the star rating above didn't give it away, it was that good. It is that good. In fact, coming back to it as a more experienced player and not just a button masher made me appreciate it more, and I just feel like gushing over certain aspects of it that we take for granted now but make it more than a match for even the best fighting games of its time.
- The robots. The designers really let their imagination run wild here. There's the vanilla Jaguar which is the "Ryu" analogue, but you also get the Pyros robot which has no legs and uses its thrusters both to maneuver and attack, and the Flail which is little more than just a set of spiked blades on wheels. The fact that the robots don't have to all be humanoid allows for a much greater distinction between the movesets and playstyles of every robot. Having the basic attacks of each character not only look but feel different was something most mainstream games struggled to implement in a balanced way well into the 2000s!
- The characters. Besides the robots you also get to choose which character you want to pilot them. They have different stats and different backstories, but what really shines here is the fact that they all have noticeably distinct AI routines! This lent a surprising amount of depth to the game especially in the tournament mode where you go up against up to 40 different AI pilots.
- The controls. They seem rather barebones, with only one punch and one kick button, but it actually follows the weak-medium-strong scheme codified by Street Fighter and its contemporaries - you simply have to use direction buttons with the attack button in order to determine the strength of the attack you use. I have to admit that this felt clunky to me at first, but I realized that with many other games of the era I would habitually hold backwards on the D-pad while attacking as an 'insurance policy'. On the other hand, tying the type of attack used to the direction I was holding when I pressed the button made me far more deliberate about my use of the directional buttons and about what kind of attacks I wanted to use in what situation.
- The dizzy meter. Another great addition I don't remember from any other games from that era, the dizzy meter goes down when you take damage and recovers with time, which is par for the course. But the fact that it doesn't replenish when you're attacking, and the fact that it's visible to both players, adds another layer of strategy to the fighting.
- Stage hazards. Interacting with stages wasn't anything new, but I can't think of an early-90s game with hazards this dynamic! Rather than interacting with the stage once the match was over (stage fatalities) or cosmetic changes (I uppercut you through the ceiling), the stage hazards required you to adapt to them in the midst of a pitched battle. There are arenas with electrified walls, arenas with spikes slowly emerging from the walls... and then there's the fire-pit. Every so often, an orb spawns in the room and starts to float around, and if you hit the orb with an attack it shoots a fireball at your opponent. I felt these added a nice additional layer to the fights without feeling like a cheap gimmick.
- Tournament mode. I feel like this is the meat and potatoes of the game. You play a custom pilot and slowly work your way up the world rankings, earning money and upgrading your mech as you go. On top of being a dopamine machine, it also makes Destruction moves (fatalities) significant beyond just bragging rights: destroying other robots in this modes sometimes yields secret opponents and secret upgrades which can't be bought with money.
- Customizability. Beyond just the standard difficulty levels, there's a heck of a lot that can be changed to customize your experience. Some are purely cosmetic, like how much scrap metal flies out of robots when you hit them. But some have far-reaching effects of gameplay, like the addition of hyper mode, which opens up additional abilities for each robot (some of which are hilariously broken), or rehit mode, which enables juggle combos. This means that the gameplay can either resemble vanilla Street Fighter 2, or something significantly more complex, or somewhere in between.
None of the above points would matter if the game didn't feel good, but it does. Controls are responsive, hits are weighty, the clangs when you connect are viscerally satisfying, and the game is made with obvious heart and care.
Perhaps its exclusivity was its downfall; all the kids who liked fighting games were playing them in arcades and on consoles so this didn't reach as wide an audience as it could have. I would heartily recommend this to any fan of classic fighting games; it's not just an interesting history lesson following the evolutionary dead-end of DOS-exclusive fighters, it's a damned good game too.
Well, if the star rating above didn't give it away, it was that good. It is that good. In fact, coming back to it as a more experienced player and not just a button masher made me appreciate it more, and I just feel like gushing over certain aspects of it that we take for granted now but make it more than a match for even the best fighting games of its time.
- The robots. The designers really let their imagination run wild here. There's the vanilla Jaguar which is the "Ryu" analogue, but you also get the Pyros robot which has no legs and uses its thrusters both to maneuver and attack, and the Flail which is little more than just a set of spiked blades on wheels. The fact that the robots don't have to all be humanoid allows for a much greater distinction between the movesets and playstyles of every robot. Having the basic attacks of each character not only look but feel different was something most mainstream games struggled to implement in a balanced way well into the 2000s!
- The characters. Besides the robots you also get to choose which character you want to pilot them. They have different stats and different backstories, but what really shines here is the fact that they all have noticeably distinct AI routines! This lent a surprising amount of depth to the game especially in the tournament mode where you go up against up to 40 different AI pilots.
- The controls. They seem rather barebones, with only one punch and one kick button, but it actually follows the weak-medium-strong scheme codified by Street Fighter and its contemporaries - you simply have to use direction buttons with the attack button in order to determine the strength of the attack you use. I have to admit that this felt clunky to me at first, but I realized that with many other games of the era I would habitually hold backwards on the D-pad while attacking as an 'insurance policy'. On the other hand, tying the type of attack used to the direction I was holding when I pressed the button made me far more deliberate about my use of the directional buttons and about what kind of attacks I wanted to use in what situation.
- The dizzy meter. Another great addition I don't remember from any other games from that era, the dizzy meter goes down when you take damage and recovers with time, which is par for the course. But the fact that it doesn't replenish when you're attacking, and the fact that it's visible to both players, adds another layer of strategy to the fighting.
- Stage hazards. Interacting with stages wasn't anything new, but I can't think of an early-90s game with hazards this dynamic! Rather than interacting with the stage once the match was over (stage fatalities) or cosmetic changes (I uppercut you through the ceiling), the stage hazards required you to adapt to them in the midst of a pitched battle. There are arenas with electrified walls, arenas with spikes slowly emerging from the walls... and then there's the fire-pit. Every so often, an orb spawns in the room and starts to float around, and if you hit the orb with an attack it shoots a fireball at your opponent. I felt these added a nice additional layer to the fights without feeling like a cheap gimmick.
- Tournament mode. I feel like this is the meat and potatoes of the game. You play a custom pilot and slowly work your way up the world rankings, earning money and upgrading your mech as you go. On top of being a dopamine machine, it also makes Destruction moves (fatalities) significant beyond just bragging rights: destroying other robots in this modes sometimes yields secret opponents and secret upgrades which can't be bought with money.
- Customizability. Beyond just the standard difficulty levels, there's a heck of a lot that can be changed to customize your experience. Some are purely cosmetic, like how much scrap metal flies out of robots when you hit them. But some have far-reaching effects of gameplay, like the addition of hyper mode, which opens up additional abilities for each robot (some of which are hilariously broken), or rehit mode, which enables juggle combos. This means that the gameplay can either resemble vanilla Street Fighter 2, or something significantly more complex, or somewhere in between.
None of the above points would matter if the game didn't feel good, but it does. Controls are responsive, hits are weighty, the clangs when you connect are viscerally satisfying, and the game is made with obvious heart and care.
Perhaps its exclusivity was its downfall; all the kids who liked fighting games were playing them in arcades and on consoles so this didn't reach as wide an audience as it could have. I would heartily recommend this to any fan of classic fighting games; it's not just an interesting history lesson following the evolutionary dead-end of DOS-exclusive fighters, it's a damned good game too.
3 Comments
I haven't been able to stop humming that for the last 2 weeks!
Dude, what is with this game's soundtrack? I'm literally bopping my head at it, it's catchy as hell.
Never even heard of this game before.
Never even heard of this game before.
zn0
2 years ago