This is yet another NG game that I used to play a hell of a lot in the arcade a few years back when I was still in school. Back then, I was fed up with Street Fighter, and I wanted something new. Enter World Heroes, which was in many ways an exact clone of SF. First off, many characters were very similar. Hanzo and Fuuma were the Ryu and Ken style fighters that had basically the same moves, Brocken was kind of a cross between Dhalsim and M.Bison/Vega. There was even a wrestler called Muscle Power that played a little like Zangief and looked exactly like Hulk/Hollywood Hogan, right down to the way he rips off his shirt at the start of a match!
Gameplay:
There were quite a lot of similarities between this and SF, but there was also one new feature that was introduced here, namely the Death Matches. These were basically the same as the Normal matches, except you had things like spikes, fire and electrical barriers surrounding the arena. If you hit them you would lose quite a lot of energy. On some stages there were also things like mines, that had an obvious effect, and also small strips that would make you slip across the floor. When you started a game, you had a choice between either normal matches, or Death matches, personally I preferred the Death Matches myself!
The control method was kind of weird too. A+B were punch and kick respectively, and the strength of your attack depended upon the length of time that you pressed the button for. If you tapped it quickly you would do a weak attack, and holding the button down would make you do a strong attack. The C button was used only for throws.
Graphics and Sound:
This is quite an old game, but the graphics were good for the time, and I still get a kick out of them personally. They aren't anything fantastic by todays standards obviously, but back when this game first came out they were quite impressive. If you chose Death Match, most stages looked basically the same, but were surrounded with the aforementioned flames etc. If you picked normal matches, each character had their own stage. Likewise with the sound, on Death Matches the music was the same on each stage, where as on the normal matches each stage had its own music. The music itself wasn't too bad in places, but only having one piece of music on each D.M stage was very annoying. The sound effects were the standard voices and effects (and the voices had that echoey sound that a lot of older Neo games had). Nothing special but they served their job well.
Overall:
Nowadays this game is quite dated, although I still like it. There are many games that are much better than this, and there were also sequels that were better but this game is still enjoyable. There is one fault that really does annoy me though. When you throw someone, it takes off a fair amount of energy. But when you throw someone into the fire or electric barrier in D.M mode, it doesn't always take off as much energy. That's strange because obviously it should take off more energy or so you would of thought. It's also a pretty cheap game, and there are some set patterns that will let you beat the CPU easily.
I can remember that I said this game was way better than the Street Fighter games when it was first released, but looking back now I can see that it isn't as good because it just doesn't have the same feel. However, this game is still decent and is worth a look, especially if you are nostalgic like me.
Graphics: 7/10 Sound: 6/10 Game play: 6/10 Replay Value: 6/10
I actually prefer this game over Capcom's Street Fighter II. I love Death Match mode and the awesome music this game has. When I first beat the game, I only had a sliver of health left (1 or 2% of my health remained), but I knocked Geegus into a landmine and then he landed on the electric ropes with only one second to spare!
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