WORLD HEROES 2

Review Introduction:

I was very excited when I first saw this game in my local arcade. At the time, I really loved the first World Heroes game, and as soon as I saw this I ran over and started spending all my money on it. This sequel was quite a nice improvement on the original, with better graphics and improved game play. There were also some nice new Death Match arenas to add to the fun!

Gameplay: 🕹️

The choice of fighters had been boosted from 8 to 14. All the old characters were back, including Muscle Power who now mysteriously doesn't look as much like Hulk Hogan as he used to! The new fighters include a young girl named Ryoko, a pirate called C.Kidd, a viking called Erick (hehe), and even a football player called J Maxx, among a few others. All the old characters had new moves, and some were tweaked slightly such as Fuuma's spinning kick which now zig-zags up and down the screen instead of going straight across. The controls seemed a little easier, and this also seemed slightly faster than its predecessor although I think it still could have done with being a little faster.

You still also got to choose between the standard fights or the good old Death Matches. I especially liked the new D.M stages. There's still stages with various hazardous barriers around them, like the barb wire fence with mines hanging off it (nice!), but you also get new stages with circular saws running across them that you had to jump or suffer the consequences. Other stages also include a small craft that would fly about, randomly shooting energy bolts at you, and also the mine fields of the first game. One fault of the original was that when you threw someone into a barrier it would sometimes take of less energy than if you threw them normally. This time around that doesn't happen and the other person loses more energy than normal.

For some reason, the energy bars differ depending on the type of game you play though. In normal matches you had the usual one energy bar for each fighter, but in D.M mode you had one long energy bar, and every time you were hit, the bar would move more towards your side of the screen. Once it reaches your side, you get knocked into submission, however that is not necessarily the end of the fight. You get a ten count to get up by bashing your buttons and if you succeed you get a small portion of energy back and continue the fight. It sounds very weird, but when you play it makes sense, although it can be annoying to defeat an opponent only to have them get up and kick the crap out of you.

Graphics & Sound: 👾🔊

Graphically this game is a fair improvement too, with the fighters looking more detailed. The animation was on the characters was OK, while not really amazing; although not many games at the time had amazing animation anyway, so it doesn't really matter. The stages looked great with lots of nice parallax scrolling, although many of the D.M. arenas are shared by a few fighters although they are cool so it's not too much of a big deal. The sound effects and music in this game are passable, although not the best example of the Neo Geo sound chips capabilities. They do their job well enough anyway.

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Overall: 📊

Overall this was a very nice sequel, although not exactly a quantum leap above the first game. If like me you were fan of the original, then you will like this game even more. If you haven't played the first game then give this a try, because it is still a lot of fun even now.