This was the game that Capcom deemed to be too close to Street Fighter 2, so they tried to sue Data East over it. Fighters History is also known as Karnov's Revenge depending on what country you are from. I'm not sure what the deal is with this name change... or what relation this game has to the old platform game Karnov (also by Data East and one of my favourites!), although Karnov is a playable character. However it is definitely true that Fighter's History bears a resemblance to the said Capcom series!
Gameplay:
Apart from the characters having very similar moves to Street Fighter (although how many beat 'em ups don't?), there's just something about it that really reminds me of that game. The controls and overall handling just "feel" like an SF game. Many of the characters also bear resemblances. There are the obligatory "Ryu" characters (like Ray), the Sagat style kick boxer (Samchay), the Zangief style grappler (Marstorious) and also a Guile style fighter (Jean), plus a few others.
Fighters History Dynamite is basically an all round average game. It plays very competently, but unfortunately it is just a little uninteresting, probably because it lacks any of the cool or well known characters that most Capcom games (or indeed many other SNK games) have. There has always been something "special" about Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown and many others, and even today they are great fun to play; but Fighters History doesn't really have any of that. I played this in the arcade on and off when it first came out, and I found myself playing it for a few hours at home recently and completed the game with a handful of characters. After that, I just lost interest and didn't really care to play through it any more or to see anyone else's endings, as they just weren't interesting to me.
Graphics & Sound:
Graphically it's not too bad at all, but personally I don't like the design of the characters all that much because none of them are very memorable. I would say the same thing about the sound too, which consists of some passable music and average sound effects. As far as the animation goes it is perhaps a little lacking, but the backgrounds are quite nice with some cool parallax scrolling. Again, to me they do seem to have a bit of a Street Fighter II feel to them. One little touch I do like is that when you have hit someone a few times a certain part of their clothing starts flashing (like the lightning symbol on Rays chest), which tells you that they are close to being dizzied.
Overall:
Definitely worth a try, but you will most likely get bored quickly and move onto something else. There's much better fighters out there really, so you'd probably be best save your cash for them unless you are a total fighting game nut.
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 7/10
Game play: 7/10
Replay Value: 6/10
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