NB Heart Breakers Advanced [하트 브레이커즈] Game Sample - PC

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Published on October 1, 2019 6:27:04 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwtfexX_Xb4

Game:

Virtua Fighter 2 (1994)

Duration: 22:46

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"NB Heart Breakers Advanced" (also stylized as "HeartBreakers" or "하트 브레이커즈") is what many would call a "Top Shelf" fighting game coming from Korea. It was originally developed for Korean Arcades by Family Production and published by eSoftnet, where it was later upgraded (the "New Balance Advanced" part) and adapted for Windows PCs in late 1999. There are few 3D Korean fighters, much less good ones... Family Production tried their hands at many different genres before making this ambitious "magnum opus" (unless you count "Dance Dance Diet" and "KDD") and their official page for the game made rather lofty claims. It's dedicated to the many fans of fighting games and challenged the fighting games produced by leading Japanese game companies such as Namco, Sega, and SNK. It was touted as superior due to its technical capabilities such as using "Onepath Modeling", "Chest Morphing", motion captured animations and strobe lighting and afterimages. Onepath (as they call it) 3D Modeling is described as animations that run smoothly between each joint and moves programmatically, maintaining a strange pose even when twisting or bending joints (in basic terms, think of the "Bones System" in 3ds Max) -- characters produced in this way appear in a more natural form with added details such as curling of hair and clothes. "Chest Morphing" is essentially boob physics.

Taken at face value, these features are impressive, but they weren't unprecedented or anything; Heart Breakers is a hodgepodge of elements from the many games it draws inspiration from with a little of its own identity. It borrows the most from Arika's "Fighting Layer / Street Fighter EX" series (core mechanics and basic attack animations, parts of the GUI, Super Canceling, etc.), but throws in a little "Dead or Alive" (early boob physics), "King of Fighters" (evasive roll, gauge charge) and "Virtua Fighter 2" (parts of the GUI, basic stance system). It's not as refined as any of the aforementioned games... slightly laggy controls, a few balance issues and broken frames can make the game rough and it doesn't help that this Windows port hasn't curbed any of the Arcade difficulty; even on the lowest settings, the A.I. becomes psychic before long and will pull off ruthless combos right out the gate. It doesn't mean they can't be beaten, but later fights are not fun to watch against the CPU (they escape grabs indefinitely and can only reliably be hit by crouching light kicks) and the game would've actually benefited from a training mode.

Even still, the game looks good for a late 90s fighter, especially coming out of Korea (most notably those accents from "Onepath" like Honoka's long flowing hair, Hana's bandana, etc.) and it actually has a great soundtrack. It also has a decent sized roster of ten normal characters, a few extra model-swapped versions of other characters with a few subtle fighting differences, and a boss character named "Evil" (a generic shirtless version of the main guy, Ban, who is transparent). I like that players using the same character aren't just treated with a palette swap, but a character in a totally different outfit as well. There's no in-game story (characters have basic backgrounds in the manual) and no real endings, but at least there's credits so you know who made the game (and it's a surprisingly large group).

Lastly, let's talk about the fighting a bit. It's 2D with 3D graphics similarly to SFEX and features four primary attack buttons (two punches and two kicks). Each character has a variety of special attacks, super moves, evasive/counter moves (throw escapes are here as well as reversals and a guard repel ability for the cost of one gauge) dashing capabilities, and their own super finisher background. Most moves can be cancelled into a super move which can then be cancelled into other super moves. Stances can be switched from Normal to Special and alter throws and moves for some characters. It's kinda fun to play around with the characters, but the problem is that characters don't really feel like they have specializations; everyone moves quickly, can use brutal combos, and feel kinda the same, even though a few characters have projectiles (though you can seldom get far enough to make any real use out of them) and some are suited for grappling, although throws are easier in this game than most as you just need to be near them to throw (you don't have to move into them, but specialized throws have a short distance dash).

This is a video showing a few characters fighting as well as some attraction screens (Damage is set to low). It was recorded with Fraps and FPS capped with MSI Afterburner, though this game has abnormal layering so the FPS counter shows up on black screens. Enjoy.

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Note: D.Rong's original name is "Bruce"... not hard to see why.

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