Vs. (PS1) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
228A playthrough of THQ's 1997 fighting game for the Sony PlayStation, Vs.
Played all of modes with various characters on the default difficulty level. There is no traditional "tournament" mode, so there are no endings to the game. The closest it has is the survival mode, which will put you against several characters in a row but merely ends with a prompt to save to the memory card.
This is a localized version of the Japanese PS1 and arcade game Fighters' Impact. It features several "gangs", each of which have four playable characters. The fighters were all designed by Marvel's Kurtis Fujita, and there are some interesting designs going on here, like the pimp (Slim Daddy), but many of them are rehashed 90s pop-culture archetypes that aren't particularly interesting, especially having some bare-bones move sets.
On the technical side, it's a good looking game. It got slammed on its release for the simplicity of the character models, but the look is probably due to the game running at 60fps. That doesn't really do much for the clunky animation, but at least it smoothly transitions between the bizarre looking limb-flailing (I would recommend not putting it up against Tobal if you want to give it a fighting chance, though!). The music is pretty hit-or-miss - I personally liked most of it, but your opinion will probably depend on how much you like generic 90s B-side tracks. It's all energetic and upbeat - not at all memorable, but certainly well-suited to the action.
I really wanted to like this game when it first came out, and remember enjoying it until I figured out that there just wasn't much to do. Even with a total of 20 characters, there's no real incentive to play without any endings or real goals once you've gotten good enough to wipe the floor with the CPU and unlock the boss characters.
Does anyone else remember those cringe-worthy full-page ads that THQ ran leading up to this release with all of the "edgy" and "hip" CG images and taglines? I actually bought this thinking that it looked pretty unique compared to the glut of Tekken, Virtua Fighter, and Toshinden rip-offs dominating at the time, and in some ways it was. Mind you, it wasn't really in the ways that counted, and not in ways that prevented me from returning the disc to EB Games less than a week after I bought it, but it's still an interesting footnote in the genre.
Any hey, for a genre that is so overcrowded, this is a serviceable, enjoyable time, and much better than many publishers' first attempts at the versus fighter. It just doesn't do anything better than any other similar game that was competently put together, making its (somewhat extreme) scarcity and obscurity not a surprise in the least.
It did surprise me, however, how little there is to find online about it. There's very little out there on it, even YouTube, so here is my attempt to drum up some aware for anyone that might get a kick out of it. I hope you enjoy this forgotten relic of 90s nostalgia - I certainly enjoyed revisiting it again, even if it only served to remind me of why I forgot about it in the first place almost twenty years ago.
______
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
Visit for the latest updates!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NintendoComplete/540091756006560
https://twitter.com/nes_complete