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Street Fighter II (1991)

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World Heroes Perfect was developed by ADK and released in 1995. Just when you thought it was all over, all of our favorite heroes throughout time have returned for a fourth and final time! Even though it can be argued that this actually the third tournament - since World Heroes 2 Jet was an upgraded World Heroes 2, notwithstanding the introducting of Jack, Ryofu, and Zeus at least. But hey, who's really counting at this point?!

World Heroes Perfect is very well representative in its namesake, the most perfect and polished entry, and the speediest to date. The gameplay is fluid and fast, doing away with the previous slow almost robotic-like movement of the previous games, outdoing WH2 Jet even. So what's the story this time? Well, Dr. Brown is back at it again. I guess he STILL can't seem to determine who's the strongest of the strong across history, so what does he do? Send out more invitations to all of our weathered warriors of the past, and none of them are sparing any quarter this time around. Figuratively and quite literally.

Every single historic figure returns to fight, and this time only one new character has been introduced, except he's a SECRET character - who is Son Gokuu (no, not THAT Goku from Dragon Ball) who is based off of Sun Wukong from the Journey to the West. Yep, our cloud riding mischievious world traveling staff-wielding monkey. Son Gokuu can only be fought when meeting very specific conditions on a few stages as you play. Of course Zeus, the big baddie is still up to no good, but there's also another fighter ready to return and destroy the competition and that's Neo-Dio!

So any new mechanics in WHP? You bet there is! As you'll notice you now have access to a special ability where you press the A, B, and C buttons together to perform various actions depending on the character you choose, so not everyone has the same special move. For example, J. Max's ability allows him to catch and throw back projectiles, and Janne's ability lets her repeatedly use her sword as a whipping attack. Also we now can make use of the Hero Gauge, which when filled, allows you to perform powered up, more damaging versions of special moves. The desperation attacks return as well, and super desperation moves when your life gauge is low and in the red. The typical fighting game mechanics we've all been used to since KOF '94.

Lastly, WHP is pretty much one of the earliest fighting games to feature Air Guarding, something we'd see in other games such as the Street Fighter Alpha/Zero, Darkstalkers, and VS. series developed by Capcom. Also, WHP finally makes use of all four buttons separating the light and heavy attacks, and even has an early instance of the final match with the supposed final boss being interrupted by the true final boss - Zeus is immediately K.O.'ed by Neo-Dio after either winning or losing the very first match. Kinda reminds us of when Akuma/Gouki does the same to M. Bison/Vega in Super Street Fighter II Turbo, eh?

One final mention is that the Japanese version of the game features personal character commentary under the lifebars as the characters fight - this wasn't translated at all for the English version, being outright removed as a result.

World Heroes Perfect is a pretty perfect title. I was going to say solid, but I couldn't refrain from a redundant reference. But however, what ruins the game is of course, the INSANE input reading CPU. I thought it was bad in the previous games, but in WHP? It's like the difficulty ramped up while pumped with steroids. Certain characters are notably brutal to deal with, particularly Kim Dragon, Captain Kidd, Janne, and Ryoko.

This confirms my theory that difficulty level in most SNK/ADK developed games aren't representative of what it says on the tin when selecting it - and that the difficulty is designed to increase exponentially the further you get in the game. Then again, a lot of arcade games were actually like this back then. In any case, Level 1 feels like Level 8 difficulty. When selecting Ryofu, I had no choice but to use the moves with the best priority, as his standing and jumping strong attack is pretty good and deals excellent damage. I couldn't mix it up without being overwhelmed and punished insanely fast for it.

So that's the end of the World Heroes run! So what's next? Well, you'll just have to wait and see. See you sometime later in the next game...