Eternal Champions Impressions: Now And Eternally Crap

Dec. 4 1:40 PM by Sardius

In 1993, Sega found itself with a niche to fill. SNES owners had been enjoying a console port of the mega-popular Street Fighter II for more than a year, and Street Fighter II Turbo was already on its way to store shelves. Capcom's Sega Genesis port of Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition was poorly received by critics prior to its release, and went back into development for months of retooling. With the growing fanbase of one-on-one fighting games welcoming even poor knockoffs like Data East's Fighter's History in arcades, Sega saw an opportunity to stake its own claim on the Genesis with Eternal Champions.

To put it politely, it wasn't as good as Street Fighter II.

I rented Eternal Champions back in the day. Even back then, I hated the characters, the mushy controls, and the limitations on special moves. I remember getting as far as the last boss, who proved to be much more difficult than any other opponent. After I lost, it was game over. No continues. Back to the title screen. And back to Videocentral it went.

Imagine Street Fighter II if your characters could only pull off a limited number of special moves during a match. Worse, your opponent might use tricks that would drain you of your own special attacks, leaving you defenseless. Did you like Art of Fighting's spirit meter? Actually, did you like any part of Art of Fighting? Yeah, nobody did. Nobody liked Eternal Champions, either.

Eternal Champions is a technically competent Street Fighter II clone otherwise. The characters are varied, it's got a decent backstory, and there's even some cheesy PG-13 fatalities in place, in a nod to Mortal Kombat. But oh man, the gameplay. Whereas Street Fighter II has tight, responsive controls, Eternal Champions feels floaty and imprecise. Few of the characters possess worthwhile moves that might actually help you in a fight. Not that it matters anyway, because you'll run out of spirit energy quickly and have to wait for it to recharge before you can use more worthless special attacks.

Eternal Champions wasn't worth your time back when it was released, and it sure as hell isn't worth it now, with the much, much, much better Guilty Gear XX Accent Core being available on the Wii for only $40. Buy that and a classic controller, and you're set. Or if you're in the mood for Street Fighter, buy either Street Fighter II or Street Fighter II Turbo on the Virtual Console. The dark days of the Genesis fighting game ghetto are over, and there's no need to suffer further with Eternal Champions.

Look at this garbage. You don't want to spend eight dollars on this. Listen to that music!

Comments

I used to be of the opinion that vampires were pretty cool, and that robots are great, and this game had both of them whereas Street Fighter II DID NOT, so I rented this game a couple of times. I eventually realized that vampires aren't nearly as cool when they're falling apart from decomposition, and robots are still great, but cyborgs that bear a slight resemblance to Gary Busey are pretty lame. Your 8 bucks would be much better spent on ground-breaking scientific research to cure the kind of cancer this game suffers from.

 

I'm almost ashamed to admit that I actually like the Sega CD version of Eternal Champions... it was pretty fun at the time and had some decent combos and all that. The regular Genesis version? Not so much.

I'm glad companies realized that having a separate bar to limit special moves is a bad idea.

 

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