Eternal Champions

A nine-fighter tournament game that takes the best qualities of the leading fighting games and adds new features. Man!

The key word when talking about Eternal Champions is “variety”. The game breathes variety in its fighting moves, graphics, sound, and gameplay. This game is definitely one of those hidden wonders that has somehow never been recognized as one of the truly great games. I’d recommend this game to any vintage gamer, or any serious fighter fan.

Wer nur gelegentlich zu Street Fighter oder Mortal Kombat greift, sollte eher einen Bogen um Eternal Champions machen. Wer jedoch recht viel Zeit und Geduld investiert, wird aber mit einem sehr gelungenen Beat ’em Up belohnt.

The Eternal Champion - a near omnipotent being with power to manipulate space and time - has pulled a group of fighters (all of whom died before they were able to effect great change to history) from their respective untimely demises, and decides to pit them against each other in a battle of the fittest to determine which ONE of them will be teleported back in time, saved from their unfortunate end, and allowed to go on to effect whatever change they were originally supposed to in their own time.

Can be a very deep and complex game. Good moves and great action aside, the game overall is a disappointment. The background animations in particular are good.

Ett fightingspel som är väl värt att slå en flukt på. Här finns det alla tänkbara och otänkbara människor och rörelser.

But everyone else should just stand clear – because Eternal Champions isn't a game that has much "pick up and play" appeal, instead requiring a fair amount of invested time to practice each character and learn their wealth of maneuvers, and it's not likely that many players who've never previously heard of the game will have the patience to spend that much time getting to know it. Better to save the eight bucks and keep on waiting for the real Wii fighting experience that was meant to release on that same December 3 – Brawl is only a few more weeks away now.

Eternal Champions is designed for the six-button controller, but it's also compatible with Sega's infamous "Activator" controller. Have you tried this thing? It's a motion-sensing ring that was supposed to usher in a new era of "virtual reality", but it's a joke! Instead of mimicking real martial arts moves, you'll find yourself hopping on one leg and waving your arms like some drunk failing an alcohol test! Eternal Champions is really thin in terms of options and playing modes. Once you begin a one-player game, there's no way to quit out of it! And why can't you adjust the difficulty? The CPU blocks everything you can dish out! Eternal Champions will be interesting to collectors and fighting enthusiasts, but its just a footnote in a genre dominated by Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.

A couple of years after Eternal Champions came out for the Genesis, Sega released a sequel for its Sega CD unit called Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side. It offered twice as many characters and added three new types of finishing moves. More importantly, it fixed the timing and sluggishness of the characters' attacks and made it possible to actually chain attacks together into combinations with reliable frequency. If you really want a fighting game for your Virtual Console collection, download Street Fighter II Turbo instead, or hold out for the off chance that Sega will one day make the Sega CD sequel available on the service. Whatever you do, stay away from the Sega Genesis version of Eternal Champions. It may be playable, but it sure isn't fun.