Game Details
Name: Fighting Masters
Format: MegaDrive
Genre: Beat 'em' Up
Region Reviewed: Japan
Year of Release: 1991
Reviewer: Megatron's_Fury
Now im gonna start off by saying 2 things...
1.) Fighting games suck balls!
2.) I like plants!
The second part of those 2 very intelligent and not at all scripted points was to highlight that this is a game not quite like a lot of the other shovelware fighting games (seriously I hate fighting games, they can all lick my balls) Dragon punch, fireball, tiger uppercut, get over here, finish him BLAH BLAH BLAH... SHUT UP!!!!
Let's get this started so you can see why...
Now this game is very unique in that the back story in the manual and the back story in the intro are 2 COMPLETELY different stories, the manual tells of a 12 star system tournament to help convince a super race to help save the 12 worlds inside another universe (ahhh Japanese developers, eh?) The game intro and even end sequence tell the story of a demon forcing everyone to effectively fight for their lives, sounds much better right???
Its a standard looking creature for a fighting game, you have a good sized roster of fighters (for the time) and in this case some very interesting characters, my favourite being a plant... See point 2.
Each character has a back story, you wont care... And each character has specific standard moves unlike that drug mule rectum game series Mortal Kombat where every fighter has the SAME DAMN MOVES apart from their specials, that game utterly eats donkey butt! Its a very simple game and has a nice difficulty curve, no moments of insane spiking hardness to make you eat pads or in the case of Sieone throw a TV at it, it plods along at a good pace and even rubbish fighters will be able to complete this game in probably the first sitting.
It actually holds a special place in my heart as it's a game I first found back in about 1991-ish when I had my megadrive copier and loads of discs I got from a friend, me and a group of peeps played it every single saturday night after work. I've never lost a fight on this game in 2 player mode, the plant suits my fighting style of all up in your face perfectly plus my trash talk is legendary, it's a double whammy of sensory overload.
Fighting Masters was never released in my home territory of Europe and probably for a good set of reasons, It's very poor in almost all respects from empty backgrounds to a very bad soundtrack and even worse sound effects. The animation for the fighters themselves are ok and as mentioned earlier they do have different fighting styles but it all still feels somehow generic.
With vastly superior games for the format such as Street Fighter and Eternal Champions this was never going to get noticed however it is a prime example of bad game that's totally worth a play, for me it's kind of the Steven Segal of video games in that it's a train wreck to look at but somehow you have to sit through till the end. I'm sure a lot of you reading this will wonder why I even picked this to review but it's games like this that make Retro Game Geeks what it is, every website on the planet reviews the accepted classics and seem to forget about the other stuff that although sometimes terrible are no less important when it comes to remembering the good old days.
As the saying goes... You have to have the bad times to appreciate the good.
RGG Scores
Graphics
Sound
Playability
Lastability
Overall Score:
3
3
3
2
3
Verdict:- This game is so far below average it's amazing, no wonder it never got released here, it's pants but i'm amazing at it. It made about 2 years of working a crap job bearable and I got the original copy you see in the picture at the top of the review the same day I met a famous person I tried to fob my then girlfriend off onto for his game collection so basically it's perfect,
If you dont agree then next time I see you remind me to roundhouse kick you to the face.
Second Opinion:- Any game that has a character in it that is in fact an alien plant is fine by me. It's those mad and weird videogame moments that remind us all why we play this stuff, only in a game world could you save the universe as foliage. That has to count for something surely?
It's not great, hell it's not even good, but it will make you chuckle and scratch your head at the same time. Not even remotely essential in any possible way it will give you a short smile for a very small amount of time.
Transbot Scores:- 3 out of 10
