X-Men: Children of the Atom Review

The PC is at a loss for good fighting games - anyone interested in the genre by now owns a game console such as the Sony PlayStation, feeds quarters into arcade machines regularly, or both. Once in a while, however, a game hits the PC that disturbs the status quo and proves that the PC is indeed a viable platform for fighting games, despite popular opinion. In this particular case, that game is X-Men: Children of the Atom, an admirable and near-exact conversion of Capcom's 1995 arcade hit, which pits 10 Marvel Comics' mutant fighters against one another in a Street Fighter II-on-cappuccino-style battle to the finish. The impressively fluid animation of the arcade title is retained perfectly in the PC version, as is the audio and most of the gameplay. What's more, X-Men retails for a fraction of the cost of most PC games and will work fine on just about any modern machine.

The look of X-Men translates marvelously in the PC conversion - the vibrant color of the arcade is completely intact, as is each and every lovingly hand-drawn frame of animation. However, the game runs at an unpleasantly low resolution and the frantic speed of the arcade is somewhat lost. Each sound effect and speech sample (the X-Men's voices are done by the same folks who speak their parts in the Saturday morning cartoon) is present, while the upbeat synthesized soundtrack rings loud and clear through redbook CD audio. X-Men: Children of the Atom is an aesthetically powerful package.

Surprisingly enough, those who mastered the game's six-button mechanics at the arcade will have a pleasant time using the keyboard alone. However, X-Men cannot be played seriously except with a multibutton gamepad of some sort, through which it controls pristinely. Special moves can be unleashed with surgical precision, and above all else, the game feels just like the arcade. And yet, a terribly important facet is left unattended: the ability to string together multiple punches and kicks into massive custom chain combos is conspicuously missing. And, to add insult to injury, the computer opponent will use those chain combos on you without hesitation even though you cannot use them to retaliate. A simple patch to fix this problem would make a world of difference for arcade purists.

As is, X-Men: Children of the Atom serves up some killer one-on-one martial arts action that's more than enough to tide over those looking for a quick fix of fists and foul play. Fans of the arcade game will be disappointed by the missing chain combos, but others won't mind for even a second, as they'll be enjoying X-Men's slick visuals and cool character designs and wondering all the while as to why the PC doesn't enjoy more games of this category.

Marvel Super Heroes Review

Marvel Super Heroes is a Street Fighter Alpha-style fighting game that features characters from the classic Marvel Comics lineup. Four characters (Psylocke, Wolverine, Juggernaut, and Magneto) return from Capcom's previous comic-based fighter, X-Men: Children of the Atom. New characters include Captain America, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, and more. It was an exciting arcade game, but the Saturn version falls a little flat by comparison.

The game differs from the pack via its inclusion of gems that litter the landscape. You can pick up the gems and use them on command, resulting in brief power-ups to the character's speed, power, life, etc. Other than that, it's just basic Street Fighter action, complete with fireballs, dragon punches, and the like. The arcade version was a great game and differed enough from the Street Fighter and X-Men games to be entertaining. The Saturn version has virtually the same gameplay.

Graphically, MSH looks all right. The characters and backgrounds are large and colorful. But the game also produces an awful lot of slowdown, even when using the Saturn's RAM cart, which adds in additional frames of animation via its increased storage capacity. Yes, you read that right, the Japanese RAM cart is compatible with the US version of MSH. The slowdown is even more apparent when picking larger characters such as Juggernaut and Blackheart. The music in MSH is fairly good, but the sound is really annoying: The speech is pretty garbled and the sound effects are very metallic sounding.

MSH Saturn is tolerable, but it lost the arcade game's soul in the translation. The constant loading and slowdown don't help much, either. While I found the arcade game a blast, this version just seemed dull and boring. Whether this can be attributed to the translation itself or the fact that several, mostly better, Capcom fighters have been released in arcades since Marvel, I don't know. Rent it first and see if it's your thing.

X-Men vs. Street Fighter (Import) Review

X-Men vs. Street Fighter is yet another Capcom cookie-cutter fighting game. This time, Street Fighters team up with X-Men in a two-on-two tag-team battle of pure insanity. While the game's characters play somewhat like their previous incarnations, their special moves have been pumped way up. Ryu's fireball is now as tall as he is. The flames coming off of Ken's Dragon Punch are huge, and it goes about two screen lengths up. While this is a neat concept at first, the derivative moves and defensive gameplay really bring this one down in the end.

There is no better looking 2D fighter on any console system. Every frame of animation has been duplicated from the arcade, and the backgrounds all look very good. The characters move very well; even when standing still, they breathe and flex very realistically. From a graphical standpoint, it is absolutely arcade perfect.

The sound is also really good, unlike Capcom's previous fighter, Marvel Super Heroes. Gone are the tinny speech and sound effects from MSH. XMvSF's sound is all very crisp and clean sounding. The music is mostly remixes of existing Street Fighter tunes, which sound all right, but also stick out as yet other unoriginal facet of the game.

The gameplay is the game's main problem. Playing against the CPU is fun, albeit incredibly easy. Playing against a human opponent gets downright annoying, due to the game's many flaws that allow for far too much defense, resulting in a turtler's heaven. Once you've learned the game's basics, blocking and countering quickly become the order of the day. It's frustrating enough to make a guy start taking some of the Neo-Geo fighting games a little more seriously.

The new 4MB RAM cart is required and comes with the game. It really makes all the difference. This port is nearly perfect in every way. It is identical to the arcade version of the game and is without slowdown of any sort. Also, there is barely any loading time between fights. It's really a shame that something this cool didn't come out a year or so ago, as it could have helped save the Saturn from its spiraling demise. As it is now, it's still unknown whether or not this game (and thus, the RAM cart) will ever be released in the US, so you may just wish to skip the waiting and import the game now, especially since the RAM cart doesn't raise the price of the game.

War Gods Review

Have you ever come across a game that you really wanted to like, but for some strange reason you just couldn't? That's how I felt about War Gods. Let me put it this way: I'm a huge fan of the Mortal Kombat series, and War Gods possesses enough similarities to make it seem like an old friend at times. It also includes enough changes to give the Mortal Kombat fighting experience a "new" feel. Sounds good, right? Well...let's just say that, ultimately, the new feel I got was one of irritation and disappointment.

The story behind War Gods goes something like this: A really, really long time ago, a spaceship carrying crazy, life-giving ore crashed into the Earth, spreading small chunks of the magic rocks across the planet's surface. Throughout time, various humans have found the rocks and instantly evolved in War Gods. Now they're fighting each other to gather all the stones in the quest to become the ultimate super-warrior. Indeed. It's a dubious mission worthy of this so-so MK clone.

If you've played any of the Mortal Kombat games, adjusting to War Gods should be pretty easy, should you decide to bother. All of the basic moves, like uppercuts, sweeps, and roundhouse kicks, are exactly the same as MK. Moreover, many of the special moves are done in a very similar fashion. The only real difference War Gods can claim is its 3-D environment, which mainly allows the characters to sidestep out of the way of projectiles. War Gods also sports MK-inspired combos, the only appreciable difference being that the combos are longer here. Perfecting these ten-hit combos is just a matter of simple memorization, and they ensure that experienced players will take up to a third of their opponent's life every time they land a successful attack. The game also has fatalities, which range from completely pathetic (Anubis' sarcophagus drop) to completely insane (CY-5's UFO Abduction). These fatalities are extremely hard to do on the N64 controller, as many of them involve simultaneously hitting three buttons and other finger-twisting feats.

On the upside, War Gods' graphics are pretty good. The 3-D arena looks sharp, the characters are fairly detailed, and the backgrounds look good as well. This is probably the first N64 fighting game to hit the market that actually shows off some of the power of this system. The only graphical element that falls short is the blood, which flies out of the character's bodies in huge dollops and manages to look pretty ridiculous in the process. The sound in War Gods is some of the best to come from an N64 game. The distorted, low-quality sound that plagued Midway's Mortal Kombat Trilogy has been replaced with crisp, clean speech and sound effects.

If you're a fan of Mortal Kombat, War Gods is an interesting (albeit unrelated) footnote to the MK legacy. It's a very strange mix, which may leave some feeling unfulfilled. While it has just enough of the MK feel to give it familiarity, the differences will drive purists crazy. However, it is a solid fighter, and probably the best that the N64 has to offer in the fighting arena.

Dead or Alive (Import) Review

Dead or Alive is another one of those weird arcade fighting games that you've heard of, and maybe even seen, but never bothered to play. Tecmo's fighter, made using the same hardware that brought Virtua Fighter 2 to life, plays similarly to VF2 but uses a slightly improved fighting engine. The result is a game that plays pretty well, translates to the Saturn well, and ultimately, makes a more interesting home game than the arcade version ever hoped to be.

The fighting is a lot like the Virtua Fighter series, but there have been a few changes made. Instead of a dedicated block button, back blocks now, and the A button performs counters. The combo system is similar, but there is a larger focus on juggles. The edges of each arena are surrounded by floor jets. If your character falls on one of these panels, he shoots up into the air, allowing for some pretty insane juggle combos. Character design is pretty good, with the typical array of fighters, ninjas, and women.

The graphics are very smooth, but the most noticeable thing about the graphical design is, as strange as this may sound, the female characters' breasts. They bounce around like gelatin for no apparent reason. I mean, if you do a kick, they slightly jiggle. If you fall down, they bounce like crazy for far too long. You have to see it to believe it. It's the very definition of overkill. It's just plain wrong. You can disable the stupid bouncing action from the options menu if it really bothers you. The sound effects are decent, and the music is tolerable, but the speech is all pretty bad. It's very fuzzy and distorted.

In the end, Dead or Alive is an above-average fighting game. The graphics and sound are tolerable, and the gameplay is different enough from the VF series to keep it fresh. The PlayStation version will be released here, but it looks as if the Saturn version is going to be stuck in Japan forever, so if you're PlayStation-less, import away.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Review

Not so long ago, the thought of a nearly perfect version of Street Fighter Alpha 3 for a portable gaming system was unthinkable. We've always wanted portable fighting games, but for the most part, we've never really expected them to stack up to their full-blown counterparts. Yet the Game Boy Advance has seen the release of several surprisingly uncompromised fighting games, and the new Street Fighter Alpha 3 is probably the best of them. The third and apparently final installment in Capcom's popular fighting game series marked the return of the entire cast of the legendary Street Fighter II, and it featured a number of other new and old characters to make for a huge roster of more than 30 fighters. Numerous gameplay modes and several other twists gave Street Fighter Alpha 3 incredible longevity, and in fact, Capcom has hardly even attempted to surpass Street Fighter Alpha 3 since its release more than four years ago. Now the entire game can be held in the palm of your hand and played on the go. While Street Fighter Alpha 3 for the Game Boy Advance does cut a few corners here and there, it takes a discerning fan to notice any real difference between this version and the arcade original--and that's pretty amazing.

The GBA version of Street Fighter 3 features all the characters, moves, and strategies of the original. The graphics have been scaled down slightly, so the characters aren't quite as detailed as you might recall, but they're still as colorful as ever, and they move fluidly. Many of the game's backgrounds have been brought over intact, complete with parallax scrolling effects and lots of little details. At least one stage has a color scheme that makes it very difficult to see your yellow life meter at the top of the screen, but that's not a big deal. More importantly, the original game's relatively smooth animation is intact, and so are the flashy special effects for the various moves and finishers. This is therefore a great-looking GBA game by any standards, and it's all the more impressive if you're familiar with the original.

The audio is quite good, too. Street Fighter Alpha 3's music was never anything special, and it suffers in translation here somewhat, turning out tinny and oversynthesized like a lot of GBA soundtracks do, though it isn't bad. On the other hand, what speech there is in the game sounds excellent, so expect to hear all the game's characters utter their signature lines as clearly as ever. Some of the voice samples did get cut from this translation, particularly some of the ones used during characters' win poses. That's a bit unfortunate, but if you're hard-core enough to take notice, then you can no doubt reproduce those particular sound bytes using your imagination.

The gameplay is true to form, though it's limited by the four-button design of the Game Boy Advance. Since Street Fighter Alpha 3 technically uses a six-button control scheme, the GBA port by default handles medium punches and kicks by forcing you to press both punch buttons or both kick buttons at the same time. This works reasonably well, though you'll still wish you had six buttons to work with. Conveniently, the game provides an optional system that allows you to use simplified controller motions for executing super moves. At any rate, the directional pad still allows for precision control, and you'll either get used to the abbreviated six-button system or make do with four standard punches and kicks instead of six. Of note, the GBA port of Street Fighter Alpha 3 retains the original's three separate fighting style options, adding an extra layer of depth to what would be an impressive variety of fighters anyway.

The standard arcade mode provides a flexible challenge that should last for a good, long time as you play through as all the different fighters and attempt to unlock some of the other hidden modes and characters. A two-player versus mode is available but requires both players to have a copy of the game, while other modes such as time attack and survival can provide a nice alternative to the standard best-of-three-round match. Yet the most enjoyable alternate mode is dramatic battle, in which you're partnered up with a computer-controlled partner (or another player) and get to double-team on a series of opponents. The game doesn't miss a beat with three large, fluidly animated characters duking it out simultaneously, and this mode is quite enjoyable. There's also a practice mode that lets you come to grips with the controls and practice your moves.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 has been a very popular fighting game over the years, and with good reason. It has plenty of likable characters, good controls, and a lot of depth and variety. This new Game Boy Advance port is as faithful a rendition of the original as can reasonably be expected, so it's not just one of the better fighting games from the last five years--it's also a terrific game to have on the go.

Last Blade, The Review

Another month has passed, and another NeoGeo fighting series has made its way to SNK's portable powerhouse, the NeoGeo Pocket Color. This time around, the weapon-based fighting series The Last Blade has gotten the portable treatment, and the results are pretty favorable. The portable version of the game manages to keep the game's basic features intact, and it also adds a few new modes and unlockable features to keep the game interesting longer than your average fighting game.

The character roster is varied, with a good deal of hidden characters to unlock. As in the NeoGeo version, you can choose between speed and power variants for each character, which govern a character's supermove. There is also a parry, which lets you reflect attacks and stun your opponent for a brief second so you can strike. The parry button default is back and B, which is a little cumbersome, but you can change the parry to A+B in the options, which is significantly easier to deal with.

Aside from the standard story mode, the game also has a survival mode, a time attack, and a training mode. The survival mode, aside from challenging you to survive, has little side tasks, such as using your parry twice or executing a specific special attack. If you accept the side bet, you'll earn points by completing the task, but you'll lose points if you fail. These points, which are also earned in the game's story mode, are used in a Soul Calibur-like gallery, where you spend your points to open up tidbits of information, such as character stories and endings. Eventually you'll unlock extra modes, including an addictive little home run derby minigame that lets you really rack up points quickly.

Graphically, the game is standard fare for the NeoGeo Pocket Color. The fighters animate fairly well, and the effect during supermoves (a large portrait of your character appearing on the screen) is really nice. The music is well done, and the sound effects are as good as you'd expect from a handheld system.

The Last Blade is a good fighting game, with more options and features than you'd expect from a portable fighter, but if you're new to the system and looking for the best fighting game available, you're still better off with SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium.

Cyberbots (Import) Review

Cyberbots, a game taken off Capcom's US arcade and console release schedules after a depressing stateside test run, recently surfaced in Japan on the Saturn. Although it's not Capcom's best work, it's a near perfect translation of the Japanese arcade version, sure to satisfy die-hard genre fans.

Cyberbots occasionally feels way too much like other Capcom titles. This time, you fight as a robot instead of a human warrior, mutant, or monster. In a new twist, however, the character selection process now has two-steps - first you select a pilot, then a robot. Each pilot has his own storyline, which plays out over the course of the game. The initial twelve robots are varied, ranging from your basic mech to a many-legged crawling robot. As you might imagine, there are also a few hidden robots, including the boss bot Warlock, and Z-Gouki (a robotic version of Akuma from the Street Fighter series). In another deviation from 2-D fighting standard, Capcom has scaled down the six-button configuration to an easier-to-follow four. Of these four, two are for attacking, one allows your bot to dash about and hover in midair, and the fourth fires a projectile weapon. Purists need not worry, though - dragon punches, fireballs, and hurricane-kick style motions remain the basis for special moves, so you won't need to alter your strategy much.

Visually, Cyberbots is a masterpiece - if Capcom has perfected anything through its many endeavors, it's the sharp look of their games. Cyberbots takes full advantage of the Saturn's superior sprite-handling skills, delivers a sharp display, and has great animation. It also sports interactive backgrounds where buildings and other structures can be pummeled as each fight progresses. By comparison though, the soundtrack is merely good - not spectacular.

If you loved Darkstalkers, Marvel Super Heroes, and the rest of Capcom's fighting games, Cyberbots is a must-have for your library. Although it's not a big-name fighter, it's a welcome variation sure to please any die-hard fan picking it up on import.

Marvel vs. Capcom Review

OK, let's bypass the intro to this review and make one thing perfectly clear. The gameplay score in this review is based on playing the game with Sega's arcade-style joystick, which is sold by Agetec here in the States. If this joystick didn't exist, and the only option was the standard Dreamcast controller, it's likely the gameplay would have gotten a lower score.

Marvel vs. Capcom is the latest incarnation of Capcom's Street Fighter vs. series. But here, instead of limiting the characters to X-Men or Street Fighters, Capcom has taken characters from all over the Marvel and Capcom universes. Marvel is represented by new additions like Venom and Onslaught, as well as fighting-game veterans like Spider-Man, Captain America, and Wolverine. Capcom's lineup includes Street Fighters Ryu, Chun Li, and Zangief, but also include non-fighting game characters like Captain Commando, Strider Hiryu, and Mega Man. The result is an ultimate (albeit a bit condensed) lineup of fighters from all over the place. This cross section of comic book heroes and video-game characters gives the game a truly new and diverse feel, even if the gameplay hasn't changed too much since the last Capcom vs. fighting game, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter.

The matches are still fought in typical tag-team fashion. You can swap between your two fighters at any time, letting one hop out and regain a little life. There are also team-up attacks, where both fighters hop out and do a super move together, resulting in big damage if the attack connects. New to Marvel vs. Capcom are helper attacks. After picking your two fighters, you're given a random helper character, whom you can call out for a quick attack a few times during the match with a quick press of both medium attack buttons. The helper characters are also taken from various places in the worlds of Marvel and Capcom. Some of the more notable characters include Marvel characters like Jubilee, Cyclops, and Colossus, while Capcom's helpers include Arthur from Ghosts N' Goblins, the Unknown Soldier from Forgotten Worlds, and Devilot of Cyberbots and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo fame. There is also a new team-up attack, which behaves a bit like Street Fighter Alpha 2's custom combos. When you execute the attack (which takes all three levels of your super meter), your backup character hops out, and you control both your characters at the same time. You have an infinite super meter while you're double teaming your opponent, so you can simply start the frenzy, then bust off supers as fast as you possibly can. There are also little differences in some of the returning characters. For instance, Ken and Akuma aren't in the game. Instead, you pick Ryu and change into a Ken or Akuma "mode," which changes the color of Ryu's suit and gives him all the moves of the character he's emulating. Similarly, Zangief can change into a robot version of himself, which can breathe fire, yet can't block.The game has all the modes you've come to expect from a Capcom fighter, including the standard arcade, versus, survival, and training modes. However, there's one mode that really sticks out as being innovative in a "hey, why didn't they think of that sooner" sort of way. The cross-fever mode is a four-player mode that lets players one and three fight against players two and four. So when you tag out to your other fighter, your teammate takes control of the fight. This also comes into play during the custom combo-style attack, because each character is controlled by a different person.

Graphically, Marvel vs. Capcom looks terrific and once and for all proves that the Dreamcast can definitely do justice to 2D games. Even when all four characters are onscreen, filling the arena with projectiles while the background goes crazy, the game doesn't slow down a bit. The utter lack of load times (save for a short load before fighting Onslaught's second form) keeps the game moving along at a nice, brisk pace. The soundtrack, which comprises music from all sorts of different Capcom games (the Strider theme song, Mega Man music, and so on) is unmatched. The game's sound effects are also crystal clear and extremely well done. The copious use of stereo separation helps make the audio perfect.

While I wouldn't call Marvel vs. Capcom the most balanced fighting game in the world, it makes up for its shortcomings by simply being a whole lot of fun. After pumping out inferior vs. games for a few years now, Capcom has finally gotten it right. Marvel vs. Capcom is everything you'd expect from an over-the-top, ultra-flashy fighter, and then some. But do yourself a favor and pick up a few joysticks instead of punishing yourself with the inferior standard pad. The joysticks are definitely worth the extra money, and really give you the feeling of having the arcade machine in your home.

By Jeff Gerstmann, GameSpot, Posted Apr 2, 1999 11:23 am PT

Rise 2 Resurrection Review

In Rise 2 Resurrection you assume the role of Coton, a cyborg created by an Electrocorp scientist to destroy a rogue robot called the Supervisor. After defeating Coton in the first installment of Rise of the Robots, she (the Supervisor takes a female form) destroyed his body and kept his mind alive, integrating his essence into her neuralnet as a tutor for her subservient droids. Once they realized that Coton had failed, the scientists hatched another plan to overcome the Supervisor. They introduced an A-virus, or Anarchy virus, into the neural net that all the Supervisor's robots were plugged into. Now the virus has reached Coton's conciousness and he has formed an escape plan. Download his knowledge and abilities into one of the subordinate robots and battle his way out.

Rise 2's beautiful graphics and entrancing techno soundtrack are impressive, to say the least. Backgrounds are colorful and well-implemented; the music and sound effects are strong and vibrant, and work well together to create an exciting play atmosphere. You can choose from a large number of great-looking robots—some are big and strong, while others are small and quick, and each has special moves that only it can perform. One particularly nice feature is that you can get extra projectile moves by performing a termination move on your defeated opponent.

But none of this means anything if the game isn't fun. And unfortunately for us, Rise 2 isn't. The moves feel awkward and clumsy, and if you don't use the keyboard, a six-button controller, or Gravis Grip Adapter, you won't be able to perform all of them anyway. If you're looking for easy-to-perform moves and reliable functions, try out Mortal Kombat 3, One Must Fall 2097, or FX Fighter. If you're looking for an expensive screensaver, this is the title for you.