Game:

Genei Tougi: Shadow Struggle (1996)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 8:58

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Genei Tougi: Shadow Struggle is a fairly flawed but nice Japan-only fighting game effort from at-the-time fledling developer Racdym (now Racjin), and predecessor to the Playstation game, "Critical Blow". If you're not familiar with Racdym/Racjin, maybe titles like "Snowboard Kids", "Trap Gunner", "Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land", or "Fullmetal Alchemist and the Broken Angel" might sound familiar. Many of their titles are either Japan-only or published overseas by Atlus.

Developed in 1996 and published by Banpresto, the game features blocky 3D characters and stages typical of the time with largely 2D gameplay. The game has a faster pace than the average 3D Playstation fighter as characters can quickly chain together strings of punches and kicks, execute juggles and more flamboyant melee special attacks, pull off very limited technical/evasive skills, and even enter a hyper state (think Bloody Roar or SFA Custom Combos) where you can execute lightning fast attacks for a brief period and cancel into any move, making it less realistic like Virtua Fighter and more like Street Fighter EX or Bloody Roar. The game also possesses an interesting "Arena Mode" where you can edit a characters' special moves by shopping and gaining credits. There are three hidden characters, a nice soundtrack, lively backdrops that aren't all just static scenery, and smooth 60FPS gameplay.

The problems with the game aren't plentiful but the few that exist are significant. One, most characters have very limited range and there appears to be no way at all to escape grabs, which can quickly be abused in the game. Another problem is that some characters have 100 percent (or near 100 percent) damage combos even when you're not in hyper mode, and Hyper Mode is way too overpowered and all a character needs to do is repeat an approaching attack and end with a special to take all of a character's health. There are also infinites in the game. Still, it's an interesting piece of Racdym's early history and very cheap and easy to purchase (or emulate).

This is a sample of the game showing Chiaki, who is sort of like a cross of Street Fighter's Sakura and Chun-Li. Enjoy.

Note: Video was reuploaded several times with different encoding settings but the video only looked marginally better. I had no choice but to upscale this clip to 720p (without bloating the video size) for it to look presentable during the scenes with lots of dark colors, so watch it in 720p if you must. YouTube really needs to stop screwing with the player and encoder settings. It's becoming a pain in the ass.