World Heroes 2

The World Heroes series has always been the underdog fighting game series on the Neo-Geo hardware despite its critical and commercial success. When the second game released in mid-1993, it was met with competition from other marquee SNK titles such as the wildly popular Samurai Shodown and Fatal Fury Special later that same year. While Capcom's Super Street Fighter 2 (released the same year) continued to iterate on old ideas, SNK's strong showing in 1993 solidified the fighting game rivalry between these two legendary companies that would last the remainder of the 1990's. 

Despite the growing competition in the fighting game market in the both Japan and the US/West, World Heroes 2 was met with universal acclaim upon release and sold very, very well in all territories. The US arcade industry publication RePlay and the Japanese publication Game Machine listed World Heroes 2 as a top-grossing arcade game in 1993 for multiple months in a row. It was popular enough in the arcade to warrant numerous, well-received ports to home game consoles that we'll talk about in more detail at the end of the overview. 

World Heroes 2's story follows in the footsteps of the first: Doctor Sugar creates a time-machine to bring history's strongest fighters together to battle it out to see who is the undisputed champion! Being the second game in the series, six new fighters were added which brings the total playable roster to 14 combatants. All eight prior characters return for this entry with new moves, numerous balance tweaks, and new animations. New to this edition are:

• Mudman - Shaman from Paupa New Guinea

• Erick - Viking

• Johnny Maximum - US football champion

• Ryoko - Modern day Japanese martial arts master

• Captian Kidd - A pirate

• Shura - 18th century Muai-Thai boxing champion

In addition to the six new playable combatants, the boss from the first game returns as Neo Geegus. Dio, a new final boss, was added to give the game an ultimate bad guy. 

The second game doesn't change up the gameplay too much, as World Heroes 2 is still a two button game with the variations on punch and kick being pressure sensitive: a quick tap of the button produces a light attack, and holding the button produces a hard attack. Additionally, the overall speed of the game was kicked up a notch to make it play as fast as Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting. Like in the prior game, some characters, like Hanzou, have EX versions of their moves they can perform by doing double controller motions. Sadly, there are not any new movement options - that would come in later releases. Despite the game being pretty basic overall, the solid hit-detection, well designed key frames of animation, and some semblance of character balance make this game a joy to play despite its simple control set up. 

Just like the prior game, World Heroes 2 includes both a Normal Mode and Deathmatch Mode. Normal mode works like your typical arcade mode in a fighting game where you fight against a series of opponents in best two-out-of-three matches on individualized backgrounds tied to each character. Deathmatch Mode sees some changes for this release, though. It still has stage hazards, but the hazards are more varied this time around in addition to multiple new backgrounds. The biggest change here is the way the life bar works. Rather than having two separate life bars for each character, the combatants now share a life bar. Each clean hit works in the favor of your opponent and if the balance tips all the way to one opponent or another, you get a knock down - not a knock out! Once your character is knocked down you have 10 seconds to mash buttons to wake up for a comeback opportunity. This can only happen twice, and if you are knocked down a third time it is guaranteed knock out. 

The World Heroes games have always been strong visually despite having some odd looking characters. What we have here are big, detailed, and well colored sprites with a decent amount of animation. Backgrounds are varied and colorful, with loads of animation and fun little quirks and details. Music is good, but it's not as good as what was coming out of SNK proper at the time. Sound effects are great, though, and character voices are clear, crisp, and well delivered. World Heroes 2 is a handsome game and one of the best looking on the Neo-Geo up to this point. 

World Heroes 2 is a good game, and a wonderful upgrade from the first. No, it's not the deepest fighting game, but there is just enough meat here to satisfy hardcore fighting game aficionados or novices new to the genre. ADK would go on to release an "upgrade" of this game in 1994's World Heroes 2 Jet, which may as well have been a new numbered entry as it's more or less a complete overhaul with brand new mechanics, characters, backgrounds, and modes. While 1995's World Heroes Perfect is leaps and bounds better than any prior release, World Heroes 2 still stands tall as a fan favorite and will be a welcome addition to any Neo-Geo archive. 

As I mentioned before, World Heroes 2 was ported to just about all home consoles at the time with the PC Engine version looking the best of the bunch due to the use of the Arcade Card memory module in tandem with CD storage. While it looks the part, it doesn't play quite as well as the Sarrus developed SNES/Super Famicom port - which also looks remarkably close to the source material. In the modern era, you can find World Heroes 2 on a multitude of store fronts via Hamster's Arcade Archives series, SNK's own mini-system variants, and a great compilation on the Playstation 2 called the World Heroes Anthology which includes all games in the series.

World Heroes 2 is an amazing "bang-for-your-buck" title. A complete Japanese AES copy will run you as little as $35 up to around $75 or so making it one of the cheapest Neo-Geo AES buys in the modern era. The Western AES release rounds out to $250 or so. Of course you can get the MVS or CD release, but with the AES version being so cheap that is the edition I recommend unless you really want that Neo CD arranged soundtrack. At the end of the day, World Heroes 2 is a no-brainer that I feel should be in every Neo-Geo AES collection.