"The most technologically advanced, in depth fighting game you will ever bear witness to!!"

OK, OK…that was a joke, but this game is a classic…to say the least.

What fond memories this game brings…either waiting so long to get a $400 3DO to play it, and discovering what a cheesy game it was, or playing it with my cousin and bursting out laughing at the ridiculous characters, animation, and voices (now that's a knife!)… the nostalgia slightly overcasts any negative traits attributed towards WotW.

Storyline

Well what can I say? A bunch of generic and stupid characters are going to a tournament to fight some evil lizard dude named “High Abott” to be a winnar…doesn't get any more original than that!

There's some full motion video cinemas scattered throughout the game to give you some storyline as you play but the voices during these are so garbled sounding its hard to tell what's even being said.

The characters each have their own biography in the instruction book, they are all laughable with such original names as Ninja, Dragon, and the all powerful bodyguard known simply as “Fox”.

The character “Shaky Jake” (who is a rip off of Crocodile Dundee) apparently was a kid who left home, went to a bar, had a shot of whisky, and (exact words of the booklet) “blew his first fireball”. Simply amazing…seems down under the initiation rites of a boy is “blowing his first fireball”. But in all reality the story is just a cheap rip off of Mortal Kombat with funny results, as is the entire game.

Graphics

Well what can I say? At the time the graphics were better than Mortal Kombat, because of the larger digitized sprites and 3d backgrounds. But Mortal Kombat definitely was “less” cheesy than WotW. It's hard to imagine Naughty Dog were actually serious with the art design of this game when it clearly seems like a parody of Mortal Kombat.

The special effects of the moves are quite lame. The ninja character shoots a lightning bolt from his hands that's simply a lightning bolt sprite that stretches itself out across the screen as if you were stretching out a bitmap in MS Paint, even cheesier is the chun li rip off girl who bends over to unleash her deadly ponytail attack which stretches across the screen in the same stupid manner.

The animations and special effects are bad…to say the least, but I guess that's where the game gets its laughable charm. Where the game's graphic DO shine however is the gory and ridiculous “fatalities” gee, that's not ripping off Mortal Kombat either!

Moves such as Shaky Jake's impale fatality where he says something along the lines of, “It's time for a bobby!” (Australian way of saying shish kebab apparently?) While he impales his victim on his staff showing the blood running off the staff in a choppy cheesy manner, or the samurai character “Nobunaga” (yet another innovative name lol) who does an fatality which slices your foe in half basically looking like you cut and paste a bitmap image in half and add gore effects in-between the cut part, haha.

Sound

Decent enough, the sound is clear and hilarious at times. Lots of cheese with the one liners, very good soundtrack by white zombie (thunder kiss 65, very good song), but the special effect for special moves and such are pretty pathetic, but when you play this game with a sense of humor you won't mind. Here are a few memorable lines I remember…

Ninja: “You have no honor!”

Shaky Jake: “Now that's a knife!”

Fox: “Grrrrrrrrr!” (That's all he ever says)

Playability and Controls

To be honest, horrid! This is a very unbalanced fighting game to ay the least…but what can you really expect from a parody of Mortal Kombat? The AI is extremely cheap on anything harder than easy difficulty. The special moves and fatalities are a pain in the butt to perform with the 3do's mushy dpad. Just wait till you get to the cheap ass bosses in this game on the harder difficulties, I've owned this game for years and played it to death but I still cant beat the damn first boss “Kull the Despoiler” on anything higher than easy.

The way your special moves which are hard enough to pull off and do little damage, where a normal jumping strong kick can take off half a life bar is just ridiculous, its got a somewhat interesting magic system that allows you to cast funny spells such as shrinking your opponent or poisoning them

Another interesting game play feature that seems borrowed from samurai showdown is items thrown into the ring randomly you can pick up for various effects…but like I said, the game play is extremely unbalanced and most the game play ideas don't work well because of this

It's a shame how bad the game plays because it's pretty entertaining to watch the fatalities when you actually get them to work. The game does have some interesting secrets to unlock if you are so inclined…most of them are little easter eggs with character victory poses, secret characters including an Arabian dude named “Gulab”, and even a little shmup mini game.

Conclusion

I'm going to be fairly forgiving with my score for this game simply cause its so hilarious to play and make fun of, if you go into it expecting a well balanced fighter with a serious storyline you will be severely disappointed. I have to give it a good score for the entertainment it provides, but for the horrible game play, I must detract a few points. I would still suggest buying this game if you happen to find it somewhere for cheap, it's worth it for the laughs.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/20/05