World Heroes

When Street Fighter 2 exploded on the arcade scene in early 1991, other developers quickly scrambled to cobble together some form of fighting game they could call their own to cash in on the burgeoning success of Capcom's masterpiece. SNK's development partner, Alpha Denshi Corp., saw an opportunity to develop a fighting game of their own given the unprecedented success of both Street Fighter 2 and SNK's Fatal Fury. Released in the summer of 1992, Alpha's World Heroes followed SNK's Fatal Fury as the second fighting game released on the Neo-Geo hardware. This wholly original take on the formula took the arcade scene by storm and was met with considerable critical and commercial success upon release. 

In 1992 World Heroes was a top grossing game month after month in both Japan and the US, with the industry publication RePlay naming the game the fifth highest grossing arcade game in the US in all of 1993! The wacky premise, fun characters, and unique battle mechanics all helped World Heroes stand out from the slew of "me-too" fighters that came out in the wake of Street Fighter 2. While the first two games in the World Heroes series were quite popular, the series sadly fizzled out after 1995's masterful World Heroes Perfect. Despite not feeling quite as solid as Street Fighter 2, this first iteration of the World Heroes concept still feels great to play today, and it's fun to see the origination of the series' staple gameplay elements take form. 

World Heroes was forward thinking in its simple mechanics design, looks better than both Fatal Fury and Street Fighter 2, and the Death Match mode is too much fun! It's still such a solid little gem of a game, even in the 2020's. Let's dig in and see what World Heroes has to offer.

The premise of World Heroes caries over in each game: Doctor Sugar, a renown scientist, has developed a time-machine in order to take renown heroes from across history and pit them against each other in one-on-one battles to see who is the strongest warrior of all time. While this isn't the deepest story ever conceived, it does provide a clear reason why there are so many figures represented from across history...with a bit of fictional whimsy thrown in to avoid controversy.

Players can take control of one of eight heroes from the selection screen, with archetypes ranging from Hanzou the Iga Ninja, to Rasputin the Russian warlock. Taking a cue from Street Fighter 2, the two "main characters" Hanzou and Fuma are pallet swaps like Ryu and Ken. But as an early fighting game fan myself, I can clearly understand why this is the case. As the fighting game genre was still relatively new, having a "Ryu and Ken" knock-off helped early fans quickly and easily identify the most approachable and balanced characters to play if it was their first time. Ninjas were also a popular trope back in the early 90's, so these characters ended up being very popular regardless of their similarities to Ryu and Ken. Despite these two ninjas, each character has their own unique style based on popular historic figures. 

Early 2D fighting games were not the most complex affairs, with high level game concepts often being easily exploitable glitches. Still, the six-button layout of Street Fighter 2 and even the five button layout of Mortal Kombat were daunting to arcade players who had grown up in a world of two button shooters and platformers the decade prior. World Heroes, then, is one of the more approachable fighting games in these early days due to its simple three button layout and familiar "historical" characters. 

While the three button set up is approachable enough for just about anyone to jump in and give the game a go, there is some nuance here that would define the series first three entries. The strength of your punches and kicks are determined by how hard you press the button, resulting in four unique attacks using only two buttons. 

• A Button = Punches

• B Button = Kicks

• C Button = Throw

• D Button = Unused

What's special about this set up is that you can link light and strong attacks together to create short combos. For example, you can link a crouching light kick with a crouching hard kick for a quick two hit knockdown with Hanzou. Handy stuff like that makes the gameplay surprisingly fresh for the era it was released in, and still provide a nice, brisk game of mind-game chess for the modern aficionado. These small but satisfying combos become more complex with the Death Match mode which we'll get to later in the review.

Special moves in the game (special controller inputs plus a button) use the same controller sweeps and charge motions as other popular fighting games of the day. New players can jump right in and quickly figure out a character's move set based upon what they know from other games just by tooling around a bit. Basically, if you know Ryu from Street Fighter 2, you basically know Hanzou in in World Heroes. That doesn't mean you can use the same tactics as with Street Fighter 2 across the board, though. Even though Hanzou has a "dragon punch", projectile, and a spinning kick move, his normal move set is significantly different than Ryu making how you approach opponents in the confines of World Heroes meta an entirely different beast. 

World Heroes is also the first game to my knowledge to use a double quarter circle forward motion and the first to have an "ex" special move. Ex-move being an enhanced version of one of the character's normal special input attacks. For example, Hanzou will produce a more powerful version of his ninja star projectile if you use that input over a standard, single quarter circle forward + punch. The "ex" version of this move would continue to be carried forward in subsequent World Heroes games. We wouldn't see ex-moves resurface in the genre until Capcom's 1994 release Darkstalkers (Vampire), which is a core part of that series' meta. 

To spice things up in game variety, ADK added an innovative Death Match mode in addition to the normal arcade mode. In Normal Mode the game runs like your Street Fighter 2 "clones" of the day with individualized backgrounds for each character and a world map that ties everything together. Death Match mode, on the other hand, still has you run the mill of all combatants in matches that are a best two out of three rounds but now you do it with stage hazards and other fun gameplay tweaks! The stage hazards are mostly relegated to wall hazards, like lining the sides of the stage with spiked walls for example. What's fun about these hazards, though, is that they will juggle the opponent if they are hit into them which extends your combo opportunities to deal even more damage. There is also a push-pull tug of war mechanic going on in the background that changes the momentum of your moves that push you forward and throw you backward. This makes the game a bit of a physics puzzle as well. 

Basically, if you want the traditional arcade game experience go with Normal Mode. If you want something more wacky and unique, fire up Death Match mode. Death Match was carried over in World Heroes 2 but was unfortunately done away with in Jet and Perfect. While I prefer the Normal Mode in World Heroes 2 with it's somewhat redesigned mechanics, I think Death Match is the optimal way to play this first release. It's an incredible amount of fun. 

Graphically, World Heroes is a real looker with large, detailed sprites and well drawn backgrounds. The use of color is about on par with what was coming out of SNK proper at the time, and the animation is slick and fluid. The entire World Heroes series uses a beautiful line-scroll effect on the floor tiles on each stage, giving a pseudo-3D shift in perspective depending on what direction you're moving. It looks great! Street Fighter 2 also employs a similar effect with the floor. 

What I don't like, and find a problem with in most classic fighting games, is that the large character portraits used in the selection screen and other areas is...off? The portraits of the characters just don't look at all like the excellent marketing art for these games. In World Heroes the hand rendering looks especially strange, along with some weird angles on faces. Thankfully, the playable sprites themselves look rather good for the era and the overall presentation continued to evolve with each release in the series - evening out the less desirable and odd looking parts. 

The music and sound design is fine, but nothing too memorable. What's nice is that there are a bevy of individual voice clips for each character which helped to display their personalities in ways that most fighters of the day hadn't quite grasped yet. A neat little touch is when your character is dizzied or looses a match, a crowd begins to chant your character's name to give you some encouragement to jump back into the ring. It's a small touch, but implemented well. I've never heard anything like this in any other fighting game. 

World Heroes will hardly blow your socks off, but if you were an early fighting game fan in 1992 there was a lot to be excited about. Today, this first edition of World Heroes is still a lot of excellent fun but not something I'd take too seriously as a competitive game. I heartily recommend a play, though! Sadly, the World Heroes series doesn't get much love these days, which is a shame as each entry is a unique and fun fighting experience. 

Thankfully, this is one of the cheapest Neo-Geo games on AES at $70 - $100 or so for a complete Japanese copy. US editions don't run much higher than $220. On MVS I've seen the game go for as little as $20. The Neo CD version is the rarest of the bunch, releasing in 1995 with a fully arranged soundtrack. Prices for this edition are slightly above the AES release because of its rarity. Due to the popularity of the game upon its release, it was ported to the popular 16-bit consoles of the day with Sunsoft developing the awesome SNES port which is releatively accurate to the source. The Genesis/Mega Drive port is generally panned for being a pale representation of the original. There are plenty of ways to play the game today via Hamster's Arcade Archives series on modern digital store fronts, and that is where I recommend you spend your money. Since the Neo-Geo version is so widely available thanks to emulation, compilation packs, and mini-systems, there really isn't any point to play classic home console ports unless you have significant nostalgia for those experiences.

If you're an aspiring Neo-Geo collector, this is an excellent game to add early to your library if your aim is to PLAY your games - which is what you do with video games of any vintage. Although, I feel the second game is the better of the two...and it's actually a bit cheaper in the modern market. Watch some YouTube videos of the two to help you decide which one to go after. On the flip-side, if you're getting into the Neo as a collector piece, prices across the board have all but plateaued for World Heroes, with the Japanese version being one of the cheapest games on the hardware complete in box. World Heroes is also one of the cheapest, and easiest to complete full series sets in the Japanese or Euro/US variants overall.