World Heroes
World Heroes | ||||||||||||||||||
Neo Geo - USA - 1st edition. |
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World Heroes is a fighting video game developed and published by Alpha Denshi Kogyo for the Arcade on 1992-07-28. It was subsequently ported to several other platforms. The game is shamelessly based on Street Fighter II: The World Warrior with most of its fighter designs, controls, and special moves taken directly from Capcom's more famous title. It is the first game in the World Heroes series and was followed up by World Heroes 2.
In the game, a scientist has built a time machine to solve one of the most pressing and philosophically important questions of humanity: who was the best fighter in history? Contestants include a ninja, a similar ninja in a different colored gi, a Mongolian warlord, an über-Nazi-cyborg, a fencer who is allowed to use her sword for some reason, and a washed-up professional wrestler from the 1980s, you know, only the best. After you irreparably disrupt the time continuum, you have to defeat a shape-shifting space alien from the future, as one does.
Contents
Personal
Own? | No. |
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Won? | Yes. SNES - USA - Difficulty: 3 - Hanzo, Fuuma, J. Carn. |
Finished | 2024-09-06 - SNES - USA. |
When a video rental store was liquidating its SNES titles around Christmas time in the mid-1990s, I saw this game sitting in the bin. I had never heard of the game before, but, at the time, I was still interested in fighting games, which I assumed it to be based on the cartridge art, so I bought it. Having already owned Street Fighter II: Turbo - Hyper Fighting, I immediately saw it as a cheap ripoff and wasn't very impressed by it. However, I still spent a fair amount of time playing it. Not yet familiar with how to game the AI, I kept getting frustrated that I couldn't beat the game. I only ever beat it on the lowest difficulty level without seeing any of the endings. At some point, I got rid of the game, possibly when I gave my SNES to a friend. In my 40s, I tried playing it again to see if I could beat it to get it on my list of beaten game. I found a decent strategy and beat the story mode at level 3 difficulty with Hanzo without much effort. Just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I tried the fatal mode at level 3 difficulty and beat it with Fuuma.
Review
4 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 5 |
Best Version: ?
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- The graphics are well-drawn. Although, the style is largely "borrowed" from Capcom, so it's hard to go wrong.
- The death match game with hazardous arenas adds some interesting play style.
- I like the idea of pitting fighters throughout history against each other. too bad the game's story doesn't make any sense at all.
Bad
- I didn't find any of the background music to be enjoyable on its own and the voice acting all sounds a bit off.
- The game borrows the hold style special moves from Street Fighter II, which are the worst ones.
- On the SNES port, at difficulty level 3, the level needed to see the proper endings, you can mostly just throw your opponent over and over again to achieve victory.
- The game doesn't have any minibosses, and the final boss just shape-changes into the other fighters without any special moves of his own, so it's a boring way to end the game.
- Destructible background objects were removed from the SNES and Genesis ports.
- In the SNES port, difficulty is increased, not by making the AI better, but by having the player do less damage.
Ugly
- Because the game shamelessly rips-off Street Fighter II, you can't help but compare the two, and you'll notice that World Heroes does everything worse. The characters aren't as interesting (especially the final boss), the background scenes aren't as alluring, the bonus round isn't as fun, the endings aren't as enjoyable, etc.
- Just like with other fighting games of the time, it allows its AI to use hold style special moves without a delay creating cheating AI.
- The Genesis port has a pretty awful frame rate.
Media
Arcade Art
Box Art
Documentation
Videos
Play Online
Arcade, Genesis, Mega Drive, SNES (Europe), SNES (USA), Super Famicom
Representation
Strong female character? | Pass | Janne is both strong and playable. |
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Bechdel test? | Fail | There is only a single woman. |
Strong person of color character? | Pass | Hanzo, Fuuma, Dragon, and Carn are strong and playable people of color. |
Queer character? | Fail | There are no queer characters. |
Titles
Language | Native | Transliteration | Translation |
---|---|---|---|
English | World Heroes | ||
Japanese | ワールドヒーローズ | Warudo Hirozu | World Heroes |
- MAME code: wh1
Links
- Video Games
- 1992 Video Games
- Video games developed by ADK
- Video games developed by Sega
- Video games developed by Sunsoft
- Video games published by ADK
- Video games published by Sega
- Video games published by SNK
- Video games published by Sunsoft
- Arcade Games
- Genesis Games
- Neo Geo Games
- Neo Geo CD Games
- SNES Games
- Video Game Genre - Fighting
- Media Theme - Action
- Media Theme - Martial arts
- Media Theme - Time travel
- Multiplayer
- Multiplayer Simultaneous co-op
- Software Distribution Model - Commercial
- Video Games I Don't Own
- Video Games I've Beaten
- Video Game Rating - 4
- Video Game Graphics Rating - 7
- Video Game Sound Rating - 4
- Video games which can be played online
- Video games with a strong female character
- Video games that fail the Bechdel test
- Video games with a strong person of color character
- Video games without a queer character
- Video Game Prime Order - Action, Strategy, Adventure
- Game Mechanic - Playable Female Character
- Game mechanic - Playable person of color