From 1992 to 1995, ADK developed the World Heroes series of fighting games, primarily released on SNK platforms like the Neo-Geo. We've seen several well put together collections and anthologies from SNK lately, and one more to add to the collection is the World Heroes Anthology, which I have been spending some time with this week. The entire four part series is here on one disc at a superb retail price of just fifteen dollars. Any fighting game fan should not pass this up. With that said, let’s get to the review.

The Series

World Heroes came out in 1992, an epic year for fighting games. Capcom released Street Fighter II that year, and Midway also released Mortal Kombat. Most of us didn't get a chance to play World Heroes for whatever reason back then, largely because it was overshadowed by Street Fighter II. While the similarities between the two games are many and obvious, World Heroes did a lot to distinguish itself, although it is in fact the inferior game in comparison to Street Fighter.

That said, the World Heroes games are probably as popular these days with hardcore fans and newcomers as they were in the past. It's a series that's easy to get started in, but difficult to master. The adventure begins with World Heroes; eight playable characters (just one of the many similarities to Street Fighter II) are available from the start. The story is incredible simple and to the point; the opening cutscene is maybe ten seconds long, and is poorly translated. Essentially, the story is that a scientist, Dr. Brown, no less -- has created a time machine and has organized a tournament for challengers to fight in. The cast of characters is pretty entertaining in itself; there is Bruce Lee rip-off character that I was partial too, Dragon. Dragon is a main stay in the series and I enjoyed using him. A bizarre version of Russian legend Rasputin is included, along with a Joan of the Arc type character, a generic Hulk Hogan style wrestler, and a pair of Japanese fighters that are eerily similar to Ryu and Ken. After choosing your fighter, you travel around the world, challenging one fighter at a time. Whether you win or lose, a generic statement is offered by the victor, just like SFII. The gameplay of World Heroes is actually rather slow and easy. I had never played the game before, and I was able to beat it in about forty minutes, defeating all seven other fighters along the way and then the final boss, Gee-Gus, who is perhaps best described as Shang Tsung meets T-1000. Special moves are few, but not overly difficult to execute, and I loved the quick load times in between battles and when I had to use a Continue. Also, the ability to choose Normal Mode or Death Match after each Continue was interesting; in Death Match, players are put in a ring and a single health bar is across the top of the screen. The idea is to pummel your opponent to get the health meter slider to fill up with your color, at which time the opponent falls to the ground and has ten seconds to get back up. It's an interesting concept.

World Heroes 2, released the following year, added another six characters and sped up the gameplay quite a bit. It's a much harder game to be sure; I still haven't been able to beat it, but the super quick load times and unlimited Continues make it easy to continue to play, even after getting beat time and time again. I enjoy WH2 at least as much as the original, even though I am losing so much, because the speed of the game is just about right. New characters for WH2 include Captain Kidd, a pirate who has a ghost shark and ghost pirate ship projectile maneuver, Johnny Maximum, a "quarterback" from America, Mudman, a tribesman wizard, Ryoko, a young female who practices judo, Erick the Viking, and Shura, a muay thai fighter that's got nothing on Joe from the Fatal Fury series. I've read about the new boss, Neo-Dio, but I have yet to fight him. WH2 may have added another move or two to some characters, or changed the way some special moves were executed (like Dragon’s Dragon Kick, the control changed for it slightly), but like most fighting games I found executing most moves reliably, or at all, very difficult. As with most fighting games, the d-pad requirements for some of the special moves and combos are far too difficult; performing diagonal motions on the PS2 d-pad or analog sticks is next to impossible for me.

World Heroes 2 Jet is like Street Fighter II Turbo or Hyper; Jet was the sped up version of WH2, but it also included some other changes. For one, the Death Match mode was removed. Three new characters were added, too: Ryofu, a Chinese spear fighter, Jack (looks very much like Vega from SFII), and Zeus, the new boss who I have yet to fight. The speed of Jet is almost a pinch too fast, but by this time, 1994, ADK had really gotten animations looking quite good and the cast of characters were largely established.

World Heroes Perfect, the final game of the series, came out in 1995 and introduced the final new character, Son Goku. WHP pulls together the series nicely. WHP is the most complete and well rounded of the series, and probably the best in every way, from presentation to characters and fighting system. With nineteen fighters, some great backgrounds that progress through various time periods of the world starting with the molten Genesis stage, WHP is a great cap to a fine fighting series. Someday I hope to be able to beat it, but it’s tough going right now.