Update [Fri 17th Jun, 2022 12:45 BST] A previous version of this article stated that Red Earth had not been released outside of Japan before. This was an error as the game did release in arcades in North America in 1996. The article has since been corrected.
Original article [Wed 15th Jun, 2022 19:00 BST] Capcom Fighting Collection is out very soon, and with it, it's bringing together a couple of lesser-known fighting games along with some bigger releases. One of these is the 1996 fantasy beat 'em up Red Earth, known as War-Zard in Japan. This will also be the first time the game is available in Europe and the game's first home console port.
Launching alongside two Pocket Fighter games and five Darkstalkers games, Red Earth stands out for its RPG inspirations, including its single-player 'Quest Mode' which lets players choose between four characters and fight a series of bosses. Each boss you beat nets you experience which you can use to upgrade character stats and even learn new moves.
In anticipation of the collection's release next week, Capcom's community and social media manager Andy Wong reflects on the upcoming rerelease for PlayStation.Blog. Wong talks about Takashi Sado — a producer on the original 1996 — and his thought process behind releasing a more-unique take on the fighting game genre at the time:
Takashi Sado, one of the producers of Red Earth at the time – and still at Capcom – started working on the proposal for Red Earth in the mid-90s. Since fighting games were growing increasingly popular at the time, he followed this trend and initially planned to make Red Earth just a fighting game. However, he was feeling that the skill level between fighting game players was growing where more casual players couldn’t keep up with more top-tier players. In order to bridge this skill gap, his team wondered if they could get creative and compensate for it by changing parameters, equipment, or other facets of the genre.
Wong mentions that Sado used his interest in fantasy action games such as the 1990 arcade game Magic Sword and the 1991 fantasy beat 'em up The King of Dragons to inspire work on Red Earth. Both of these games have progression systems, which Sado wanted to use in his new game.
Not only do characters level up in-game, but the four heroes, in particular, are also all based on recognisable RPG classes. Leo is a half-lion half-man warrior with a huge sword; Kenji is a fast and nimble ninja; Tessa is a mage or "sorcerologist" specialising in magic; Mai-Ling uses martial arts to take down her foes like a monk.
While Red Earth has made cameos in other Capcom games — such as Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen and Street Fighter V — this is the first time we'll get to officially play the game on consoles, and we're excited.
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You can read the whole post on PlayStation.Blog in the link below. In the meantime, let us know if you're picking up Capcom Fighting Collection on 24th June in the comments below.
[source blog.playstation.com]
Comments 17
Wtf... what do you say? This game launched on NA.
In a way it's similar to World Tour Mode in Street Fighter Alpha 3 for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn in that you build your character's stats and then use those in the actual fighting mode of the game and also allow characters to unlock classic variant of their moveset or play style for example Chun-Li's Spinning Bird Kick (which she did not have in earlier Alpha games) and Sodom wielding his katanas like in Final Fight instead of sais like the previous two Alpha games.
So to make it more appealing to casual players, they went and made it more niche hahah (/s)
It had a very limited North American release on CPS-III. And I mean very limited. Unless you lived in a major US city like Los Angeles with actual “premium arcades”, you didn’t see it. Then again CPS-III games were pretty uncommon outside of Japan anyway. Red Earth was just stupid rare among an already rare series of games. It’s why SFIII’s NA audience mostly come from a Dreamcast or PS2 background; it was far more widely available on console at the time.
This is the first time Red Earth has been released on console though. I played it on MAME a long time ago. It’s a fun game, but it’s got broken balance. Tessa dominates the other three characters in multiplayer to an absurd degree.
Been wanting to play this for years. The closest I got was Capcom Fighting Evolution.
Capcom were really good at blending RPG elements into arcade games back then. Even things that wouldn’t initially seem like an RPG would have elements like levelling up your plane in Area 88 or Willow’s magic meter in Willow.
Red Earth isn't being localized for the first time, it's being ported for the first time.
It never saw a re-release on homesystems or computers.
The game was released in arcades in America, if in very limited quantities. So your title is wrong.
You must improve your research.
@OldManHermit
Ah the good old CFE.
A fun game that was also horrifically unbalanced.
The Darkstalkers and Alpha characters took a fat stinking dump on the rest of the cast.
Red Earth was released in America, because Red Earth is literally it's localized name. It was called War Zard in Japan
Are we sure that's not Cammy?
Red Earth was released in NA, just not outside the arcade. Please correct this article. It’s misleading.
This isn’t the first time it’s been in English considering we have MAME or similar emulation software to go off of. The first time it’s been out of the arcades most certainly
It's an interesting idea, but it's much simpler to just include a handicap mechanic for local multiplayer like some fighters do.
Although, I do wish more fighters would include such a handicap mechanic.
@OrtadragoonX If only I could ACTUALLY PLAY IT ON EMULATORS, because every ROM of the game I find just doesn’t want to work.
@alanahagues please correct your article. Almost every comment has pointed out that Red Earth originally was released outside Japan, hence the name change from War Zard.
@Ryu_Niiyama Thanks, I'm not sure how I missed this or the comments! I've amended the article and issued a correction at the top. Thank you for tagging me.
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