Triple Feature: Licensed 2D Fighters

I've decided to do something a little bit different this week. Rather than focus on one single game, I'm going to rope a few relatively similar licensed Street Fighter clones into one post. This was a very popular route to take back then and it makes sense. Fighting games were popular and so were these franchises, so, easy money right? These games are all certainly SFII clones, but do they have any similarities beyond that? Let's take a look.

Double Dragon 5: The Shadow Falls

So, let's start out with another member of the "Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game" club.  DD5 is based on the Double Dragon animated series, which was based on the series of beat'em up games for the NES. If you're still following, that makes it a video game based on a TV show based on a video game. Weird. They could have very easily just slapped characters from the show into another beat'em up and called it a day, but at least they tried something different...right?

Yeah, Tradewest, don't quit your day job. DD5 is just not very good. I have to give it credit for at least looking and feeling like the show. Some of the stages look pretty good and the character sprites are big and detailed, but the gameplay is pretty much universally terrible. You can choose either Lee brother, Billy and Jimmy for you non-DD fans, or one of the evil Shadow Master's many evil underlings. I was a pretty big fan of the show as a kid, so I recognized all these guys, but anyone who was a fan of the old school DD games that picked these up would have no idea who any of them were. No Abobo here, you have the likes of Sickle, Ice Pick, Trigger Happy, Jawbreaker, Bones and other weirdos that were very much designed to be at least somewhat kid-friendly villains.

It really doesn't matter who you pick though because the controls are barely functional. I was never entirely sure how to do any of the special moves and everyone moves like snails, even the faster fighters. Not that it matters, spamming regular attacks will get you through the game with little issue. It's all a matter of figuring out what attack it is you have to spam. The hit detection is off and it feels like none of your attacks actually do damage, making the rounds go on for ever.

I have to give it credit for unintentional hilarity. They may have done a good job capturing the look of the characters from the show, but the voice samples are straight up garbage. When you win with Billy or Jimmy and they say "Dragon Win" in an obviously stock computer voice, it's way funnier than it should be. You can also read bios of all the characters with their likes and dislikes, and whoever came up with these had to have been in on some inside joke (or drunk). Not the most broken or worst game by any means, but still not worth your time.

4/10

Justice League Task Force

Now we move on from a moderately popular license to an insanely popular one. By now I think even non-nerds know who the Justice League are, so no need to get into any of that. I also want to point out that this was an early offering from Blizzard, a developer we all know would go on to much bigger and better things.

The step up in quality from DD5 was very, very apparent. The characters look great and they are insanely detailed. Everyone has their proper costume and they all have moves that fit. Batman throws batterangs, Wonder Woman uses her lasso, Super Man has ice breath and laser vision, etc. etc. The control isn't Street Fighter perfect, but it's much better than DD5, the special moves actually work when you do them. 

The stages all fit their characters, but they are a little boring. A grand total of one of the backgrounds has anyone watching the fights and I'm not sure they all make sense. Batman fights with the Gotham skyline as the background and Superman fights in front of the Daily Planet logo, those make sense, although they probably could have made the locales more interesting. But is there a reason Green Arrow's stage is a forest? Or the Flash's is an abandoned desert road? Is the Flash from Albuquerque? I should also note that the music in the latter two stages is basically just ambient noise, which does not fit in a fighting game. The rest of the stages have good music though and the sound effects are spot on, the thud it makes when you hit your opponent is perfect for a superhero-based fighter.

Everything chugs along nicely and feels good...until you fight Aquaman. I swear he's bugged or something, his waterball projectile will register as a hit if even a pixel of it gets near you and his hitbox is miniscule. I couldn't get a good picture, but at one point I threw a low kick at him that went through both legs of his sprite and it didn't register as a hit. He's one of the most unfair non-boss characters I have ever encountered in a fighting game. It's at it's worst when battling the mulleted king of Atlantis, but as a whole the hit detection isn't very good and that is really, really gamebreaking in a game like this.

My last gripe is with the villain selection. I'm more a fantasy nerd than a comic book nerd so my knowledge is limited, but who the hell are Cheetah and Despero? I know who Darkseid is, he was a good choice, but that was the best you could do for DC villains? No Lex Luthor? No Two-Face? Isn't there also a clown or something like that who fights Batman all the time? What was that guy's name again? Whatever, JLTF isn't bad, but it's flaws are impossible to get over and it doesn't offer much depth. It might be worth a playthrough for hardcore DC Comics fans and it's not a must avoid, but there's not much reason for most people to play it today?

6/10

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighter

Well, we're 0/2 and already off to a bad start. What kind of title is that? That would be the equivalent of calling Doom "Demon Shooting Simulator" or Final Fantasy VII "Final Fantasy: The One With a Guy With A Big Sword." They couldn't have come up with something better?

Fortunately, things quickly improve in this TMNT-based offering from Konami. You get your pick of all for turtles, as well as a number of villains from the show. It's a pretty good roster and the best part of it all is Shredder is playable from the start. That's just awesome. The only glaring omission from the cast is Casey Jones, but being able to play as the Shredder more than makes up for it. 

None of that would matter if the game didn't play well. Fortunately, it does. Gone are the stiff controls that plagued the last two games, everything is fluent and special moves are nice and simple to pull off. There are no glaring hit detection problems and your characters moves are extremely responsive. Everyone has a unique fighting style and just about all the characters are fun to play as. They really could have gotten lazy and made all the turtles palette swaps, but each of them have completely unique movesets and playstyles. The AI is challenging and you need to have real skill to beat it, but it doesn't rely on cheap attacks or move spams, both of which were problems in the other two games. TMNTTF is also way, way more balanced.

The biggest positive here might be the graphics. This is one of the most impressive looking games on the SNES (we'll get to the Genesis version later),  and some of the graphical effects are on par with AAA, big budget titles from the era. The final boss stage, where you fight on top of a moving train while a news crew films, is amazing and the scrolling effect is incredible. Even the regular stages have so much interesting stuff going on and so many minute details. Raphael's stage is set in a café in Chicago and if you look at the guys in the background, they have what's clearly a Bulls logo on their shirts. This isn't a character, just a stock "guy in the background" and they paid that level of attention to the details. I also like Wingnut's stage with a heavy metal concert going on in the background. This is one place where, dare I say, TMNTTF surpassed the game it was aping. 

Great as it looks though, there are some flaws. It's more balanced than DD5 or JLTF, but that isn't saying much. The action is fun and snappy, but it's not nearly as deep as SFII. It's hard to pull off combos and string attacks together intuitively. You are much more reliant on special moves here, which I think is fine but others might not agree. The priority system is also a little off and having only two of each kind of attack instead of three really limits what you can do. Still this is one of the better licensed games of any genre I have ever played and it's easy to pick up and play. Whether you are a TMNT fan, 2D fighter fan or just a bored person looking to kill time, TMNTTF is a blast. Definitely a hidden gem.

9/10

Version differences: I figured I'd touch on this since all three of these games had both Genesis and SNES versions. DD5's are essentially the same, so no need to get into differences there other than the obvious sound and speed differences. The Sega version is probably a bit better, but it still isn't good.

JLTF has a few more differences on Genesis, namely that Aquaman uses a trident and also doesn't cheat. Most of the backgrounds are different and the characters sprites are a lot smaller. I found the hit detection to be even worse and the AI to be much, much more frustrating, so I guess the SNES wins out.

And that brings us to TMNTTF. Remember all that praise I heaped on the SNES version, how great it looks, how nice it sounds, how it's a hidden gem? Yeah, that does NOT apply do the Genesis version. Most games on both consoles in those days were essentially the same, but not here. Genesis owners got hosed on this one, it's slow, plodding, ugly and unbalanced. Avoid the Genesis version of TMNTTF like the plague, it's awful.