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World Heroes 2: Jet (1994)

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World Heroes 2 Jet was developed by ADK and released in 1994. The third game in the series and an update to World Heroes 2, the "Jet" providing an obvious meaning to faster paced gameplay, doing away with the turtle-like movement of the first two games. Considering around this time that Capcom's Street Fighter II series was proudly adorning the speedier gameplay since its inception of Street Fighter II Turbo, I guess it only seemed natural for World Heroes to up its game also. Speed-wise, at the very least.

So what's the story this time? Well, it takes a different turn this time around. Looks like Dr. Brown has decided to take a backseat considering he's nowhere to be found in this venture, but the journey to determine the world's strongest historic figure is still ongoing - since apparently after the events of WH1 and WH2, its still a title that hasn't been set in stone. Ergo, a new tournament has been organized, and with it a new set of rules.

This new tournament takes place over the course of five days, and it appears that there's a shadowy unknown whose responsible for organizing this entire debacle. Who could it be? Let's knock some heads and find out, shall we?

World Heroes 2 Jet introduces a new format where you can choose which kind of tournament setting you want to participate in - "Entry to the Tournament" and "The Forging of Warriors". In "Entry to the Tournament", where as mentioned before, you fight several warriors in teams of three, over the course of five days. As you could expect, all of our familiar fighters return to take part of this battle, and this time each match consists of tiers. For example, we have the Close Range tier where you'll fight Ryoko, Janne, and J. Carn. Then there's the Long Range Tier which has Brocken, Mudman, and Rasputin. No matter how many times you play this mode, the four tiers of who you fight is never randomized, as you'll always fight the same three characters in the same tier teams. Makes sense since it matches their in-game fighting categories. Also, a new spin on this mode is while despite the fact you fight three opponents, you only have to win two of three matches to progress onto the next.

After defeating all of them, you'll begin the last half of the game, where you begin the Final and Boss tiers. The finals consist of Captain Kidd and Hanzou separately (you have to fight them in a best-of-three rounds match), and then finally, you go up against Jack (who is based on real-life serial killer Jack the Ripper), Ryofu (who is based on Lu Bu from the era of The Three Kingdoms in ancient China), and Zeus (who is based on the mythological Greek god of thunder, Zeus). As you could have guessed, Zeus is the final boss and the one responsible for the shenanigans of this current tournament.

As for the other mode, "Forging of the Warriors", its just the standard normal best-of-three rounds gameplay. Death Match is long gone, so that's not a real surprise.

All in all, I've only played WH2 Jet once in the arcade when I was still a young teen. I hadn't played again until I bought World Heroes Anthology (known as World Heroes Gorgeous as part of the NeoGeo Online Collection) for the PlayStation 2. WH2 Jet isn't particularly too bad overall. The faster gameplay and some additional moves added for the character roster adds a little freshness to the mix. The CPU is still an input reading bastard, but that is STILL unsurprising - I apologize to any viewers that may have again, gotten bored from the repetitive gameplay. The thing is about the WH series, much like other fighting games at the time, always has special moves that aren't always particularly safe to use in a match. For example, Hanzo's Kou Ryuu Ha (DP+P) can never be thrown out raw because the CPU will punish it during recovery. Hanzo's safest move is his Ninpou Hourin Kyaku QCB+K since it covers a wide range and he recovers from it fairly fast, and punish window is relatively small depending on where the CPU is positioned. I had no choice but to keep cheesing the opponent with it, because as always, good luck trying to play the game normally without being punished for throwing out any special moves willy-nilly.

The three button system is still the same, with the strength of your attacks depend on whether you tap or hold the button down. I still noticed a discrepancy where the CPU always seems to do more damage than you do in most instances - it was like this in WH1 and WH2, but I'm not sure if its because the button strength mechanic, or it was intentionally rigged this way, but I'm fairly certain the CPU's damage output is overall higher. ADK and SNK always had their little quirks in their fighting games that put the CPU in a more favorable position (for example, in Art of Fighting, Mr. Karate can move faster and perform special moves several frames faster than the player could).

So that's all I have to say for this entry. See you in the next game!