World Heroes 2 Jet

So today, we are going to talk about a fighting game.

This game is the second entry in a well known 90s tournament fighter franchise.  It’s sort of a sequel to a sequel, with extra modes and the ability to make the action a little faster.  It features a colorful cast of characters representing various countries, each with their own unique fighting styles and special moves.  You all know which one I mean.

Of course, I’m talking about World Heroes 2 Jet!  What? Street Fighter II Turbo?  Never heard of it.  In all seriousness, World Heroes was one of many tournament fighters SNK produced in the 90s. Fighting games were incredibly popular in those days, but most companies stuck to one or two franchises.  Capcom had Street Fighter. Akklaim/Midway had Mortal Kombat.  SNK had World Heroes.  And Fatal Fury.  And King of Fighters.  And Art of Fighting. I think  there are others that I am forgetting, maybe I’ll play them later.

I should also note, most of these games were released for SNK’s Neo Geo console, which was rare and incredibly expensive even back in the day.  Some of their games were also ported to the SNES, Genesis and other consoles, but the Neo Geo had the superior versions of most of them, including Jet.  Full disclosure, I played it as part of “World Heroes Anthology” on the PS2.  I can’t afford a Neo Geo and even if I could, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually laid eyes on one.

The graphics here are excellent, the characters are well done and the backgrounds are incredibly detailed.  These are some of the best graphics of the era, which is to be expected as the Neo Geo was essentially a console sized arcade machine.  It was one of those consoles where its lack of success came less from its technical capabilities and was more due to it costing $800 in 1998.  The sound is similarly high quality, although I don’t think any of the tracks are particularly great.  

It’s nice that it looks great, but is it any fun? Meh.  

World Heroes is just another standard fighting game from the 90s.  I wouldn’t call it bad, its just uninspired.  Outside of the cool character design and great graphics, there is little to no substance here.  Much of the problem comes from the overly simple, yet incredibly unresponsive, controls.  Your only standard attacks are punch, kick and taunt.  I can’t for the life of me tell what, if anything, the taunt does, so that leaves us with punch and kick. 

At least there are special moves, with a good variety of rotation, charge and button combo attacks.  The button combos work ok, but the charge moves are finicky and the rotations are very unresponsive.  A lot of the rotational moves use more obscure rotations than most tournament fighters, clearly a function of the game being designed for arcades.  I could see how they would be okay with a joystick, but they are difficult on a controller, even an analog one.

There are two main game modes, a standard fighting game mode and a “tournament” where you have to win two out of three rounds against different opponents to advance.  It may not seem like much, but that was pretty standard for fighting games at the time.  These things were designed more for quick playthroughs in an arcade rather than continued play on a home console.  The replay value here comes from being to play against a buddy, but who the hell do you know that would come over and be like “hey, lets play some World Heroes 2 Jet!”  I have to give them credit for the tournament mode visuals though, the opponent intros are top notch.

There is a nice variety of characters here, but all of them either look or play like Street Fighter characters.  It’s time once again for our fighter roll call.  World Heroes features:

-Generic not Ryu ninja

-Generic not Ken Ninja

-Zangief, but American

-Judo Chun-Li

-Nazi Robot Dhalsim

-A big fat guy who attacks with his butt and gut, like E. Honda

-Balrog with kicking

-Super fast karate dude

-Stereotypical savage with giant mask

-Big angry Viking

-A huuuuuuuuge football player

-A gaggle of random characters based on historical figures.  But really random ones like Captain Kidd, Joan of Arc, Jack the Ripper and Rasputin.  

At least they all look unique, even if they don’t play unique.  And there’s a nice variety of countries represented.  One of the fighters is from Papua New Guinea.  Can Street Fighter say that?  No it can’t.  Take that Street Fighter!

Unfortunately, the characters don’t feel balanced at all.  There are definitely some that are just straight up better than others.  Some fighting games run into a problem where all the characters feel like the move at the same speed or hit with the same force.  World Heroes has the opposite problem, the quicker fighters are blazing fast (and difficult to control) while the big guys lumber around the stage, but take off huge chunks of life if they land their hits.  The problem is, the low speed/high damage characters are all HUGE, with most taking up a substantial portion of the screen.  This means the don’t have much ground to cover to hit their opponents, negating much of the advantage of playing as them.

World Heroes 2 Jet should be a good game, but something’s missing.  I think a lot of it has to do with the balance and inconsistency.  It’s also incredibly simplistic for a fighting game of this era and most of its contemporaries just have more to offer.  I appreciate that they didn’t include an obnoxious button combo system like Mortal Kombat 3, but this was just too easy.  Not bad by any means, but too many of its peers are so much better, so I can’t recommend it.

5/10

Play this if:

You are looking for your 90s fighting game fix but don’t want to play one of the old standbys 

You are an SNK fanboy (do they have those?)

Avoid if

You have access to one of the better options