SEGA CD

Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side

Good Sega CD games are going to be few and far between from this point on - grab this killer disc while you can.

They've made a great game better, then put in enough violence to make people notice. Incredible game!

Fifteen modes offer an outrageous number of ways to play, from "Russian Roulette" to "Sell Your Soul". After each match a statistics screen is displayed which breaks down the types of attacks used. This is Eternal Champions the way it was meant to be. Had the original been this good, the series may have enjoyed a better fate.

There's only one bad thing about EC CD and it's the timing. It probably couldn't have been helped but this is perhaps the last good game we may see coming out for the Sega CD. With so much emphasis being put on 32X and Sega Saturn titles, an original and playable game for the Sega CD may get lost in the shuffle. I certainly hope not. This gem is too good not to be discovered.

Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side ist eine klare Verbesserung des Originals. Mehr Kämpfer, mehr Moves, mehr Blut, mehr Spielmodi, bessere Technik. Wäre da nicht der nach wie vor immens krasse Schwierigkeitsgrad, wäre das Spiel wohl nahezu perfekt. Empfehlenswert ist es trotzdem, aber man braucht starke Nerven.

Fighting and blood are two things that go hand in hand. Gamers love fighting, they love blood, and they usually love the two together like cops love doughnuts and coffee. With all the controversy surrounding violent games, many people thought erroneously that fighting games like Mortal Kombat would disappear after the congressional witch hunt of the early '90s. Thankfully, the industry survived such censorship and has even managed to get bigger, badder, and bloodier.

Eternal Champions is a sore subject for Sega, I have always thought. The game Sega stacked up against Street Fighter II: The World Warriors (SNES) was the original Eternal Champions. And even though they won't admit it, it was surely a sad day for Sega. But Sega knew what they had. They had a good concept, they had engaging characters ... but it wasn't until they had their Sega CD that Eternal Champions finally found what it was missing.

Putting out a decent fighter isn't as easy as Capcom or Namco make it seem. Sega put forth a good effort with the original Eternal Champions, appearing on genesis. It wasn't until this Sega CD update, though, that the series really came into its own. With Street Fighter-style characters, Mortal Kombat gore, and some very impressive CG for its time, EC was quite the fun fight.

Despite the insane difficulty, Eternal Champions: Challenge From the Dark Side is a real blast to play, and I frown at the fact that it went practically unnoticed in the fighting game community. While certainly no Street Fighter II, EC is loaded full of challenge and fun, and it even boasts an impressive roster of twenty-four characters! Yes, there are many hidden players besides the default thirteen. See if you can try to find them all! Keep in mind that this was 1995, before hidden playable characters in fighters were all the rage. With 256 colors, great music, and all those characters, how can you refuse to give EC a try? This game was my main reason for owning a Sega CD, and I still play it to this day. How many other games can say that they have a Senator as one of their playable characters with Washington D.C. as his stage? None, that's how many.

With all that's packed into EC, players will probably be hunting a long time to find everything. Yet instead of taking us to the next level, EC has merely taken us to a different part of the same one.

Eternal Champions CD is basically the Genesis version with computer-generated animation and a heavy concentration on "fatalities", in this case, "cinekills". They're not much of an improvement. The only cool parts of ECCD is the CG eye candy (which isn't much because of the dithered graphics) and the cinekills. I'll have to admit that some of the cinekills are quite entertaining with plenty of morphing and gore. If you're into blood, there's definitely plenty here.

There are enough little surprises to keep you hunting and certainly the developers have done a fantastic job filling this game with a sense of history. I'm actually really looking forward to playing Eternal Champions on the Saturn. But, as it stands right now, Eternal Champions Challenge From The Dark Side is the best game you can buy for a very obsolete system. Sorry Sega, too late with this one I'm afraid.