Vicious Circle - Atari's Long Lost Arcade Fighting Game (1996)
4Taking a closer look at Vicious Circle, Atari's cancelled arcade fighting game that never saw the light of day in arcades. Originally planned as a release for Atari's COJAG arcade hardware, the game shared many striking similarities to Rare's Killer Instinct series; especially in terms of its characters.
In one example, the game has a wolf like character named Bolok (which we played as in the video) that's similar to Killer Instinct's "Sabrewulf."
Vicious Circle has a dark, dreary horror theme to it, with the game depicting a lot of blood, followed by unrealistic looking gore. The entire game appears to consist of CGI style graphics for both the presentation of characters and stages in the game.
The game utilized a 6 button layout, mostly consisting of hand-to-hand-combat, coupled with a light mix of weapons based combat. One button, the 4th attack button, enables the game's Berzerk Mode; which gives characters a momentary speed up, followed by increased strength. The Berzerk Mode also leaves characters vulnerable to incoming attacks for a couple of seconds as the fighting maneuver ends.
The game does have fatalities. Each character technically has two; one fatality and one brutality.
The game also shares a lot of similarities with Atari's never released Primal Rage II, both in terms of of its use of CGI graphics and character presentation; as well as the fact both games shared some of the same identical music. Even the Berzerk Mode in Vicious Circle shares a striking resemblance to the beast transformations seen in the Primal Rage series.
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