Released when the avalanche of Street Fighter 2 clones hit arcades in the early ‘90s, World Heroes was a minor success that gained a cult following thanks to a combination of impressive graphics, crazy characters and half-decent gameplay.
Like so many games of this type, World Heroes lifts ideas from Capcom’s seminal brawler. The two main characters have almost identical move sets (like Ryu and Ken) and have ‘fireball’ and ‘dragon punch’ moves in their arsenal (again, like Ryu and Ken). The rest of the cast is a little more inventive, thankfully.
The developers have assembled a truly weird and wonderful assortment of fighters here; you’ve got everything from female fencers to deranged German robots. To top it off, you can play as Russian monk Rasputin.
This crackpot collection of brawlers helped World Heroes stand out from the crowd back when it was released and it’s somehow pleasing to see that they still look delightfully strange even today.
Another feature that makes World Heroes unique is the ‘death match’ mode, in which players fight it out in arenas packed with deadly weapons and traps. It’s little more than a gimmick and doesn’t really work that effectively, but at least it’s different.
Sadly, World Heroes doesn’t quite cut it these days. Whereas games like Street Fighter II, Samurai Shodown and Fatal Fury have aged reasonably well, World Heroes looks tired and old in comparison with only the deranged band of fighters giving it any kind of identity. Unlike SF II, World Heroes went for a un-gritty, rather cartoony look which still holds up reasonably well.
Sonically the sound effects are nothing to write home about, but there are some good background tunes running throughout the game, especially the death matches and muscle power’s stage.
Conclusion
If you were a fan back in the day then there’s no reason why you won’t enjoy this on the Virtual Console, but newcomers should be sure to check out the better fighters that are currently available before downloading this.
Comments 1
This game has a very unique style to it, and manages to stand out graphically with it's oddball cast of characters.
Unfortunately, there's not much more to it - the game itself isn't much more than a second-rate Street Fighter II clone. A lot of the characters are rather annoying to use, hit detection and priority is a bit... not off, but weird, several special moves are tough to pull off (Fuuma and Hanzou's in paticular), the two-button control scheme is icky to use, and the deathmatch is a failed experiment, doing nothing but annoy players. It's not awful, and it has it's charm, but it doesn't stack up to Street Fighter 2 very well, and for such a blatant clone, doesn't offer too much else of a reason to get it.
Also, the final boss is lame as hell.
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