Breakers (Neo Geo CD) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
380A playthrough of Visco and SNK's 1997 versus-fighter for the Neo Geo CD, Breakers.
This video shows two playthroughs of the game: the first is of the standard arcade mode with Tia at the default settings. The second, beginning at 19:11, is played with Bai-Hu in "extra mode."
The CD version of Breakers offers a few cool new features that weren't available in any other version of the game. In addition to allowing you to play as the last boss without any hacks (just hold up and press start on the character select screen!), the also game gives you a code to make Extra Mode available after you've successfully cleared it - you can see the code at the end of Tia's ending in this video. And finally, rounding out the new features is the inclusion of survival mode and a dedicated versus mode.
Extra Mode totally changes the rules and the mechanics of the game, and it makes for an awesome bonus for anyone that can't get enough. It introduces all sorts of systems to the action that make it feel just as chaotic and fun as the biggest Capcom games of the era - it provides for advancing guards, air combos and throws, easier combo breakers, guard crushes, and all sorts of other meaningful tweaks, making this mode feel much more like a brand new game than just a set of tweaks to the base one. It's especially fun to play as the hyper OP last boss with the new rules. There's something very cathartic to being able to completely lay waste to the AI.
Breakers on the Neo Geo CD is an excellent conversion and upgrade over the original AES and arcade MVS versions, and it is more than just a half-step between Breakers and Breakers Revenge. It's a substantial improvement - more than you would expect from an incremental "super" or "turbo" style upgrade.
The sound also got a nice upgrade. It's not remixed, but the PCM-heavy music from the original game has been rerecorded for Redbook at much higher quality, and it makes for a pretty dramatic improvement on what was already a great soundtrack.
The only downside to the CD version is the introduction of loading times, but as you can see here, they aren't bad at all. On a unit with a 2X CD-ROM drive, they're comparable to those you'd find in any PS1 fighting game, and you can turn off some of the between match splash screens if you're willing to cut some downtime at the expense of a bit of flash.
If you want to see more, you can find my playthrough (done using Sho and Pielle) of the original home version for the Neo Geo AES system here: https://youtu.be/YaByCvJXafI
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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