Power Moves (SNES) Playthrough
171A playthrough of Kaneko's 1993 fighting game for the Super Nintendo, Power Moves.
Power Moves (known as Power Athlete in Japan) is the Super Nintendo version of Deadly Moves, a 1v1 fighting game that had been released for the Sega Genesis a few months prior.
You play as Joe, a kid from small town America who dreams of becoming known as the strongest person in the world. One day he comes across an old man who tells him about a secret worldwide group of fighting masters, and this inspires Joe to seek out and challenge each of these masters in order to learn their "power moves" and become the champion.
And with that bit of master storytelling, we're off. There are seven fighters to defeat before Joe can throw down against the current reigning champ, and he can tackle them in any order he likes. The order matters, too: Joe powers up after every fight he wins, and the gains are based on how his stats compare to his opponent's. If you want to hit harder, fight someone who is much stronger than you are. If you want to become greased lightning, start with whoever has the highest speed stat. It's a simple system, but it does nice job of providing a few customization options.
The fighting itself is simple and fairly mindless: you get a single punch and kick, and special moves are done by hitting both buttons at the same time in combination with a direction on the d-pad. It's fun to play, though, and the weird cast of fighters keeps things interesting.
The game looks nice - some of backgrounds are real eye-catchers (especially the construction platform overlooking the city at sunset) and they all feature tons of parallax scrolling and raster effects to create an illusion of perspective - though they come at the cost of some nasty slowdown and can hit the framerate pretty hard.
The music is also pretty good. It was composed by Hideki Suzuki (not the wrestler), who you may recognize from his work in Zoom's x68000 games like Genocide and Lagoon. Just check out the music from Gaoluon's stage at 3:15. It sounds an awful lot like the intro theme from Lagoon (https://youtu.be/Q310C6TEh9k), don't you think?
If you don't require any complexity in your fighting games and sometimes enjoy randomly pressing buttons, Power Moves is entertaining enough to keep you occupied for a half-hour or so. It's certainly not a favorite of mine, but I like it well enough to pop it in for a quick game on occasion.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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