Game:

Battle Arena Toshinden (1995)

Duration: 27:22

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... honestly I've played this game, I've played the sequel, I've played the GameBoy port, and I've even watched the OVAs.

And I still couldn't tell you what the plot of this game is.

But that's OK! The character designs are cool, and the music's pretty good.

This, e-frens, is Toushinden: one of my guilty pleasure series. In particular, this is the Saturn port of the original title. It's not the fastest or even most comfortable fighting game, but it's one I can cheese my way through, so sometimes I like to play it for stress relief. (I also like to play it for the goofy accents.) And for what it's worth, it has some of the basics down: it's actually possible to cancel weak normals into stronger normals, as well as cancel into special moves. There's also rolls for dodging, and radial attacks that can still hit an opponent who's a little too roll happy. On paper, it's not too different from Fatal Fury, or the Soul series.

But what breaks Toushinden is not the goofy dub for its story mode, nor is it the absolutely nonsensical plot that surrounds these games: it's the speed. By '95, we were already blessed with the likes of Virtua Fighter and Tekken, not to mention Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Children of the Atom, and Fatal Fury Special.

While Toushinden does also suffer from janky hitboxes, they're not the worst: in a way, each character has a way to jank right back if they get janked on, and in an extremely bizarre way, it balances things out. (Duke's Southern Cross can go straight to HFIL with its obscene chip damage and range though.) But that doesn't excuse how goofy movement feels at times. I know it's an earlier 3D fighter, but even Tekken and SEGA's 3D fighters don't feel as stiff or floaty.

The big thing for me though, is that Toushinden's speed isn't just noticeably slow compared to other fighters, it's even outsped by its own GameBoy port, "Nettou (Deadheat) Toushinden". Interestingly enough, the GameBoy port offers a glimpse of what Toushinden would play like if it were significantly faster AND tighter, and it's honestly hella fun.

Looking back at the first two Toushinden games and Deadheat Toushinden, I sometimes wish TakaTomy and Tamsoft would come back and revisit the series. The characters and music were really good, it just needed some more fine tuning. I think if you took the graphical and aural fidelity of 1, 2, and URA, and matched it with Deadheat's gameplay feel, that'd churn out a pretty fun game. At least, that's what I think.

... well, at least I'll always have Kayin McDuck.

Played on Sega Saturn, Normal difficulty.

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