World Heroes (SNES) Playthrough
173A playthrough of Sunsoft's 1993 fighting game for the Super Nintendo, World Heroes.
In this video, I go through the game four times on the default difficulty level:
1:36 Hanzo, Normal mode
18:50 Janne, Fatal Match
39:35 J. Carn, Normal mode
59:36 Rasputin, Fatal Match
Coming along eight months after Fatal Fury: The King of Fighters, Alpha Denshi's World Heroes became the Neo Geo platform's second versus-style fighting game when it launched in the Summer of 1992. It was ported to the Super Nintendo the following year and to the Sega Genesis in 1994.
The story kicks off with Dr. Brown, a crazy scientist who has created a time machine, bringing together eight historical figures to compete in a tournament to decide who is the greatest fighter of all time. These figures include:
-[Hattori] Hanzo, an Iga ninja,
-Fuuma, a Fuuma ninja and distant ancestor to Ryu from Ninja Commando,
-Rasputin, a spiritual figure from Russian history who was poisoned, shot, and castrated,
-Jeanne (Joan of Arc), la fillette révolutionnaire,
-J. Carn (Genghis Khan), a famous tribal warrior who unified Mongolia,
-Muscle Power (Hulk Hogan), an American pro wrestler,
-Brocken, an android developed for the Nazi regime's war efforts, and finally,
-Dragon (Bruce Lee), a martial arts expert and movie star.
So yes, World Heroes is, in essence, an arcade fighting game adaptation of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Back to the Future. Not a bad start, wouldn't you agree?
The gameplay is typical of the genre post Street Fighter II, and anyone who knows how to do a hadouken, dragon punch, or spinning bird kick will be able to jump right in and kick butt without a second thought. There are only four attack buttons instead of six and throw is mapped to its own button, but it all feels comfortable and familiar. The game also introduces a new mode, Death Match (renamed "Fatal Match" on the SNES to appease Nintendo's censorship policies), which places hazards in the ring.
What separates World Heroes from most Street Fighter II clones is how well it plays. The characters' movesets are reasonably well-balanced, the movement physics are spot-on, attack animations convey a proper sense of weight and impact, and the controls are excellent. It just feels good.
And thankfully, the SNES version does an excellent job of retaining the feel of the arcade game. It's a little slower, but it still looks and feels similar to the original. That's quite an achievement when you consider that the 82 megabit Neo Geo game had to be slimmed down to fit on a 16 megabit SNES cartridge. The graphics aren't quite as colorful, the characters are smaller, and the audio quality took a big hit in the conversion, but these compromises don't impact the game's playability.
I rented this one often back when it was new. I always had a lot of fun with it, and going back to it now, I think it still holds up pretty well. It's not quite an S-tier SNES fighter, but it holds its own against the A-tier competition.
_____________
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!