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In Praise of Excrement: Fighting Masters
Ivan .M
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
A giant red sun will go nova within hours ... 12 star systems inhabited by sentient beings will be destroyed. An omnipotent race, known only as Primaries, declare their power to save one civilization from extinction. To win the right to survive, each race must choose a champion strong enough to compete in a tournament to the death. Only one warrior can emerge triumphant ...
Oh dear.
Before the eventual release of Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition on the Genesis, Sega entertained many wretched endeavors in a bid to counter the exclusive Super NES port of Street Fighter II. Some titles in this vain were memorable; most were not. Only one of these, however, enabled you to play as Venus Flytraps, bipedal griffins, and even cyclopic boxers. The Genesis having been the lone console I owned at that point, my game library played host to such a curious miscreation. Localized and published by Treco, it was called "Fighting Masters."
The urge to talk about this questionable experiment in 2D combat has metastasized into an itch as of late. Let's scratch it together --- you may wear gloves if that makes you feel more comfortable. :winky:
Check out this promotional poster. The game seems awesome, right?
It wasn't. It was not awesome.
No sane person would’ve expected Fighting Masters, or any other ensuing fighter for that matter, to challenge Capcom's behemoth. SNK may have pulled that off in the long-run with the King of Fighters series (to some extent), but at the time of SFII's home console debut, developers and publishers were still learning the basics of what constitutes a "proper" fighting game. Under all of Treco's woe, regardless, the failure was charming.
You'll notice that the above poster advertises "78 DEVASTATING ATTACKS IN ALL!" Anyone here who still owns the original cartridge and casing should know that on the back cover, it instead proclaims the availability of "65 Devastating Attacks." I felt cheated. I went to the local game store and complained about my arsenal being neutered by a deficit of thirteen attacks. Since my indignation was not easily extinguished by their attempts to remind me that they, the store employees & owners, were not responsible for the development of the game, this guy at the register offered a boyhood me the following consolation:
"Well, your devastating attacks might have been cut from seventy-eight to sixty-five, but they're still devastating."
He actually said that.
There were only four battlegrounds in the whole thing. The sprites, by the fledgling standards of the era, would make you shake your head. The move sets had about as much depth as a pygmy's esophagus. And finally, the awkward control scheme was capped off by the allocation of jumping to the C button rather than the d-pad. I cannot tell you how many fights I lost because of this. Adapting to the controls was only fairly difficult most of the time; other times it was like crying, while standing atop the Empire State Building and trying to aim your falling tears into a paper cup down on the street ... during a windy day.
For the character roster, you were offered twelve warriors of different species from all over the cosmos, ranging between the curious to the comical. One of them was a humanoid crustacean named Zygrunt. A friend of mine captured both the fighting style and nature of this character in his response to my question over why Zygrunt appeared so tough to beat in single player mode: "He's offensive."
Indeed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjMT6Jy16QQ
Two other standouts were Grinder and Rotundo. Grinder was, for all intents and purposes, the illegitimate child of Wolverine and every breakdancer who has ever lived. A fast, close-range combatant with exceptional leaping ability, this cybernetic vehicle of death was frequently my go-to character. With his overly fancy footwork and a trio of sharp claws on each hand, anyone who habitually uses Ken in Street Fighter games (as I tend to, due to my being an asshole) can quickly begin kicking, spinning and slicing through the competition with Grinder. As for Rotundo, what you have here is a gelatinous invertebrate with belly-flopping dodges and cannonball attacks. In the hands of a ruthless player, such an impossibly agile foe will make you hate Jellyfish even more than you already did.
The overall gameplay in Fighting Masters was simple enough. Crude aerial thrusts and low leg strikes were at your general disposal. Each character had a stun jab you could use to daze your opponent for execution of a power move. These more formidable attacks usually consisted of a grab/throw of some kind, often catapulting both participants airborne before slamming the victim back to terra firma. These moments showcased the best in-game animation achieved in the game. The percentage of damage done along with the exaggerated, aerial flair of such attacks, ending in thunderous impacts, were extremely fun in versus competition with other players. Although, even if you didn't succeed in finishing your opponent off in so bombastic a manner, any K.O. felt satisfying as the screen would always explode in a glaring light.
Another notable feature was the ability to increase your health bar beyond its default size if you kept securing dominant victories or perfects. On the other side of the same coin, though, this had a drawback. If you barely managed to vanquish your adversary and escaped with only a few health points, the replenishment to your health between fights did not go much of a long way. Against some of the heavy-hitters like Grinder or Mastodon, this handicap could be devastating. If you walk into your showdown with the boss in that kind of shape, God help you.
A funny thing I observed about the character selection was that it listed giant sizes for all of the fighters. The average height was 58 feet, and weight varied from over 1,000 pounds to nearly 2 tons. What was the point of this? Considering how the lifeless, static backgrounds utterly lacked any capacity to convey enormity in the characters (like in King of the Monsters), you have to wonder if Treco was attempting to compensate for the diminutive stature of the sprites when contrasted with fighting heavyweights of the day. Funnier is the idea of an upright lifeform standing over sixty feet in height and weighing only one or two tons; such an oddity would be the biggest wafer to take delicate, brittle steps on its insignificant planet.
After dispensing with the twelve playable fighters in single-round bouts, you face Valgasu, the boss. It is unclear whether or not this ivory-clad likeness of Satan is a "primary." What is certain is that he holds some form of high status, as indicated by the removal of his cape just before he proceeds to lay waste your pride. Big V has a default health bar nearly the length of the ENTIRE SCREEN, its points dropping a measly two or three a piece against your best moves. He routinely lunges at you from the other side of the arena in one bound and his attacks inflict outrageous amounts of damage --- such as the one in which he dribbles you like a basketball prior to delivering a few kicks to your sack. That’s assuming whatever nonhuman, alien character you’re using has a scrotum to begin with.
If you want to know who wields the cheapest, most broken special move among all the selectable characters, that dubious honor is awarded to a dragon-like creature named "Xenon." His unblockable flame breath knocks off quite a bit of health points and it has higher priority than almost every other force in the entire game. It's so absurdly fast that you often can't avoid it. What's more, it stuns you in addition to making your sprite flicker after recovery. To get a better idea of what all that means in actual fights against Xenon, try this analogy: Imagine if Sub-Zero's freeze attack goes through all other projectiles. Imagine that it's impossible for you to interrupt his firing animation at close range, and you're also unable to jump over the ice ball at mid-range. Then on contact, the ice ball wipes out ten percent of your health. Okay, now let's make it so that even if Sub-Zero somehow failed to attack you while you were frozen, your character blinks on and off after the freezing effect ends, leaving the sprite unresponsive to your control commands for five seconds.
I'm bitter. Perhaps I owned a defective cartridge. :x
If you can survive Valgasu’s unreasonable onslaught and defeat him, you will protect the existence of your people from a stellar nova large enough to annihilate multiple galactic neighborhoods, despite the fact that no astronomer alive has ever heard of such ridiculously powerful novae; but whatever. One aspect of this game I must commend the Japanese developers on is the music. Even though there are only a few tracks altogether, every one of them is excellent. The opening credits score and temple stage theme are some of the best 16-bit tunes I've heard from that era. You should definitely acquire the soundtrack if it's within your ability to do so.
Fighting Masters is doubtlessly one of the worst games I’ve ever played, so terrible and yet so entertaining.
Ivan .M on
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And I think that was on the SNES too.
Interesting writeup. I know I've seen Treco's logo somewhere before..
When did that come out relative to SF2?
To be perfectly frank, I hadn't the slightest idea what to make of ClayFighter when I first laid eyes on it. However, I do remember my Catholic grandmother claiming that it was surely a product designed by heathens and sinners. :?
Man I wish I was 9 years old again.
Oh and yeah Fighting Masters. Never knew about it, but I agree, the music is quite good.
that type of person (catholic old people) tend to classify a lot of things in the modern world that way.
Don't even joke about that man. Do not EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. :shock:
Ya know, irrespective of the simplicity and limited repertoire in the Fighting Masters combat system, the game still facilitated a healthy amount of strategy and anticipation in versus mode. Pretty much entirely, the whole struggle came down to distance and maneuvering, as the hit damage the combatants were able to dish out was more or less equal, with the exception of a few characters.
Oh, and if EVO ever did pick this game up, Xenon should be banned from tournament play. :evil:
Seriously.
Thanks.
You probably remember Treco from the Genesis port of Street Smart, if you played it. Of course, the home version was a far cry from the arcade experience. Still, it rocked playing as a main character named Karate Man!
Another game I never managed to complete in my youth was Burning Force. Now THAT was good.
I can't remember any terrible games I played on it, only the good ones...I do remember borrowing SFII from a friend and getting a blister on my thumb from playing it so much. <-,/,|,\,-> moves on that chunky d-pad killed my thumb so bad.
I'm looking through my old game covers and for most of them I'm thinking 'Damn, they had sucky covers!'
I did fire up Michael Jackson's Moonwalker the other day, just to prove to my housemate the game actually existed. Saving children from pool sharks. Indeed.
Oh man, the Genesis port of Street Smart! I totally played that. I remember being quite underwhelmed after enjoying it in the arcade, but I still played it to death.
I never played Fighting Masters, but I'm glad I read this thread. I'm not even sure I knew it existed until just now. Ivan you were right about the music though, it's amazing. Nothing quite like some classic Genesis tunes.
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
Mega Drive? My colonial ears shall not tolerate so hideous an oppression from the agents of the crown! I'll see you at Yorktown. :twisted:
Now that you mention the epidermal Hell inflicted on all our young thumbs by the d-pad motions required in Street Fighter II, the lack of this was another saving grace for Fighting Masters. With the jump function being mapped to a button along the lines of side-scrolling beat'em-up control schemes, along with the move commands asking that you only perform double-button presses -- in combination with down on the pad for throws -- Fighting Masters was very easy on the digits. I never had to concern myself with the prospect of a finger falling off.
This is why I like games like Smash Bros. Why learn a bunch of complicated combinations when you can just use a couple buttons + direction and still have impressive looking moves and deep gameplay?
Amen to that.
This raises some very curious implications, particularly in the jungle stage. Go watch fights that take place in that stage and look at the trees on the edges of the screen. They TOWER over the dueling warriors; so that would make them, what? Hundreds, possibly thousands of feet tall? On top of that, their branches have claws protruding from them and the roots resemble human fingers.
Scary. o_O
Fighting Masters was no anomaly in this regard:
"CLIMB INTO THE INTERSTELLAR RING!"
"JAWS OF DOOM PUT A FEARSOME HEADLOCK ON A FOUL, FEATHERED FOE!"
"EACH WARRIOR HAS A DEADLY FORCE ALL THEIR OWN!"
LOL.
The tragedy is, publishers and the marketers who work for them have not changed this formula to any great degree over the last twenty years. The sole difference I've observed in most contemporary back covers is that all the grandeur and boasting is organized into bullet points. :?
The full Fighting Masters case sleeve can be seen here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/7van.Martin/Miscellaneous#5474966210321872610
Now do one for Clay Fighters
(May Clay Fighters was awesome, but playing it again now its almost impossibly clunky)
PSN - sumowot
I don't know about ClayFighter, so I cannot speak to the purposes or impetus behind its creation. Primal Rage, however, was more of a reaction to Mortal Kombat rather than a run against Killer Instinct. As a matter of fact, the game was something of an homage to MK, littered with subtle references throughout.
As much as I'd love to see new entries in the ClayFighter or Killer Instinct franchises, I will always scream bloody murder that they need to remake Fighting Masters first. Keep the controls simple, increase the combat depth, implement destructible backgrounds consisting of human habitats (which would correct a grave deficiency in the first game), and use modern technology to render even more magnificent slams that soar into the stratosphere before ending in a kilometer-wide crater. 8-)
Surely, if we were not enduring the early ravages of this worldwide depression, there'd be some publisher and developer out there willing to jump on such a project. The threat of exploding stars? Carnivorous trees? Elephantine wrestlers? Nightstick-wielding amazons with scarce clothing?
What's not to like? :winky:
What nooo! KI was released really late like in 1995, by that time the whole market was flooded with fighting games.
There are two that I've always been in love with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2_hzLmkpHs
Eternal Champions
Yeah, it can surprise people where Treco left fingerprints over the course of their short existence. Speaking of Street Smart, that was the first game I played wherein it was implied that I was worthless if I lacked money. It's one thing to be penalized if you're short on currency; that's common in many video games. What happens in the bad ending of Street Smart is something else altogether:
"You are scum! You are scum because you're poor! Oh, you won the fight? Well who cares!? You're poor! It doesn't matter that you conquered hordes of mooks and defeated the final enemy ... because you're poor! You are scum and you are poor!"
That was my interpretation of it, basically. :?
Here I've put together the best music tracks from Fighting Masters, free from the distractions of gameplay noise. We have the title screen (0:04), prologue/character select screen (0:13), versus screen (1:08), the temple stage theme (1:14) which is easily my favorite, jungle stage theme (2:38), end credits (3:43), & game over (4:46).
It's only a flesh wound!
Some of those fatalities would make Midway blush.
I watched the videos you linked and I have to say that both these games look ridiculous.
I think it's perfectly appropriate if we chat about fabulously awful examples from the onslaught of fighting games that poured into market following Street Fighter II's success. I wrote this piece on Fighting Masters in that context. So as long as we keep the posts in that specific context, I don't see any problems on the horizon.
Eternal Champions was quite delicious, so I don't know why you're mentioning it. Its only major flaw was that it lacked the fluidity and ease of movement (read: it felt stiff) found in Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. If it hadn't been for that single issue, the game would've been a masterpiece! It had a unique storyline, well-designed characters with intriguing personal histories, fantastic special moves, satisfying overkills, cool training modes, and top-notch music.
So yes, I don't see it having a place in the discussion. I suppose, though, that it's a matter of opinion. I've met people before who claim that Eternal Champions is outright terrible.
And no, I never defeated the Eternal champion. I usually mained Xavier or Midknight, but he still mopped the floor with me.
Side note: I had to edit the initial post to clarify that Fighting Masters was localized by Treco, rather than developed from the ground-up by them. I apologize for the oversight.
I appreciate the compliment, and I'm glad you enjoyed this little indulgence of mine.
Hopefully, I'll be able to do more of these, but what I'm going to be primarily writing about is far more important, as it concerns the collapse of Western civilization occurring and accelerating before our very eyes, and what we can do about it RIGHT NOW. That's a future thread.
And don't think I'll go all serious on you even when I write about that stuff. I behave strangely no matter what I happen to be doing at a given moment.
Did I mention that I hate Xenon?
I never did but one of my friends kept telling me about it waaay back in school, about how you could rape people etc.
Needless to say, I'm pretty sure it was banned.
They went on to use the engine for the Wu-Tang Clan fighting game actually.
But yes, the stuff in Thrill Kill was pretty graphic in both brutal and sexual content.