After almost two years, it's time to re-visit the World Heroes series.
I had previously covered World Heroes 2 Jet, a tournament fighter from the 90's, and I wasn't particularly kind to it. While it was a well made game, it was overly simplistic and did very little to differentiate itself from it's countless contemporaries. Put simply, it was yet another average Street Fighter clone. However, it was far from the best the series had to offer. That would be World Heroes Perfect, which hit arcades in 1995 before winding up on the Neo Geo that same year. I've been doing this for three years and the only feedback I've received about which games I review was that I should have just skipped Jet and gone right to this game, as it is far superior. But was that really the case? I know SNK has a small but very dedicated fanbase, so could it just be bias?
Well, World Heroes 2 Jet is a Street Fighter clone that's decidedly mediocre. World Heroes Perfect...is still a Street Fighter clone, but it's a very good one. It's not the deepest fighting game, but its combat is far more complex and rewarding than that of its predecessor. The characters are all the same, but they all have more moves that are far more useful. Some of the balance issues remain, but they aren't nearly as prevalent as they were in Jet. The game looks and sounds much better, the controls are tighter, its just better across the board. Throwing some Magic: The Gathering terminology out there, but I would say it's almost strictly better than Jet. However, does it stack up to its other contemporaries? Remember, this is 1995 we are talking about and there are tournament fighters everywhere, so it was really difficult to stand out.
The biggest improvement though, comes from the controls. One of my biggest criticisms of Jet was that it only had two attacks, punch and kick. This led to fights feeling overly simple and every round feeling the same. Perfect switches to a Street Fighter inspired control scheme with weak, medium and strong punch and kick. You still have a taunt and once again, I'm unsure of what exactly it does. Each character has several special moves, most of which are rotation or charge moves.
Unlike Street Fighter, where characters are pretty much either charge (Guile, Chun-Li) or rotation (Ryu, Ken, Sagat) characters, many of the fighters in WHP have a combination of both. I kind of like that, though it does make it a bit difficult to fully access each character's full potential. That could just be me, I'm terrible with charge characters and always have been, but I don't know. There are also super moves, which have crazy but entirely doable inputs that I think were reasonable for the amount of damage they do. Most importantly, the controls are responsive and very rarely did the special attacks fail. I generally found the hit detection to work and the priority system seemed fair. It wasn't anything particularly special, but its a good, solid fighting engine.
The strange balance issues that plagued Jet have also been corrected, largely because of the smaller but more detailed sprites. The bigger characters no longer take up most of the screen, so they actually have to close distance to do damage. This makes it easier to play as the faster characters or turtles, but it also doesn't completely nerf the stronger characters. They still do tons and tons of damage, it's just a little harder for them to do so. WHP also adds a dash, you can double tap forward or back to quickly dash in the appropriate direction. This was a very welcome addition and made the combat feel much quicker. Overall, the game just feels more polished than its predecessor and it feels like all the characters are viable. Some are easier to play than others, but all are worth trying out. It does seem like all the fighters do tons of damage, more so than they should. It makes a lot of rounds feel incredibly short, though it's at least fair.
The biggest issue I had was the lack of stuff to do. There's an arcade mode, which you can play on five difficulties, and a versus mode. That's it, that's all there is. I guess I can't complain, that was common for an arcade fighter in the 90's. Hell, even the original Street Fighter II had that problem. But you would think they would have included something, anything in the home port. They removed the story-esque mode from Jet, which seems like a weird downgrade. It's probably the one and only thing that's worse here. I don't expect much, but even just a tournament or group or gauntlet battle would have been nice. Also, all of the characters are unlocked from the start, which sounds like it should b a positive. However, I've always found it gives you less to work towards. I always liked how Tekken and Soul Caliber made you play through the game with each character to unlock their specific counterpart. At least the roster is a nice size so you don't feel like you are missing too much, though it would have been nice to see some new characters.
WHP is still a Street Fighter clone at the end of the day. That sounds more negative than it really is, as most fighting games from that era fit into that category (and if they don't, they're probably a Mortal Kombat clone). The question becomes whether or not these games play and feel different enough from the series that inspired them. With Jet, I think I made it pretty clear that wasn't the case. Perfect though, I think accomplishes that feat. It has a ton of characters that all play differently and offers something for every style. It has the crazy super moves and highly powered specials that SFII just didn't have. It looks and plays pretty good, it's clear that the developers knew what they were doing. Would I ever choose this game over SFII? No. But if I was bored of SFII would I play this one instead for some variety? Sure.
Strong as it was, there was never another World Heroes game after Perfect. The problem was simple, it was on Neo Geo. Remember, that thing cost $800 when it came out, that's a lot of money today much less in the 90's. I'm admittedly not very knowledgeable about the console, but it seems as though it was heavily focused on fighting games. I know SNK was huge on fighting games, the only SNK non-fighter I can think of off the top of my head is Metal Slug, but to an outsider like me it always felt like they favored Fatal Fury and even Samurai Showdown over WH. I can kind of see why, those games definitely have a more unique vibe and feel less like clones. Samurai Showdown especially feels different from the standard SF/MK copycats of the era. Still, that doesn't make World Heroes Perfect bad. It's not worth seeking out an uber-expensive Neo Geo and a copy of the game, but its worth your time if you can find another way to play it. It's not perfect, but still really, really good.
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