Fighters Destiny

"Unique and deceptively deep, but is that really enough?"

The Nintendo 64 was not exactly a fantastic purchase for the fighting game aficionado. Until Super Smash Brothers splashed onto the scene in the twilight hours of the system, there were very few quality sidescrolling fighters to indulge in. That's not to say that developers tried...unfortunately, almost every effort ended up in complete failure. Mace: The Dark Ages, Dark Rift, Dual Heroes, War Gods, Bio FREAKS, and a plethora of other low-rent buttonmashers were all the gaming public ever got to satiate their needs.

Fighter's Destiny is not a huge improvement, but it could have satiated the hungered cries of most fighter fans were it not so obscure. As the advertisement mill goes, this game got almost nothing. The reviews were lukewarm and the developer's track record was nonexistent. The criminal neglect of Fighter's Destiny was kind of sad, because as the crow flies, this game really isn't all that bad. It suffers from a fairly grave assortment of flaws, but ultimately is not only playable but also kind of fun.

Right out of the gate, the game definitely proves itself rather interesting. We are treated to a somewhat Engrishy and utterly plotless intro screen (NOBODY KNOWS WHO THE SPECIAL ONE IS.) which features a red-haired Japanese man mercilessly suplexing his opponent, all of which is superimposed on a fiery mountain background. When I first played this game back in the day, I wasn't familiar with very many 3-D fighters, and the results here awed me. I was ready and rarin' to face my destiny. The player has a few options upon reaching the opening menu; as with most fighters, there's a 'VS Com' blissfully devoid of story, a versus mode for playing with a friend, options to tinker around with and a practice screen. Pretty stock standard. The two innovative features here are the Master Challenge and the Record Attack, but we can address that later. Let's take a visit to our 1-player gauntlet, shall we?

You're first offered a choice of nine different characters, all of which have fairly lackluster designs. If you want a well-balanced fighter, you can pick Ryuji, the rather shameless Ryu doppelganger that every fighting game seems to have, or Leon, the purple-haired Spaniard who menacingly growls "COME ON" upon selection. Or you can pick Abdul, but he's awful, so you may as well ignore him. There are two basically interchangeable powerhouse characters to choose, either the gloriously stereotypical American wrestler Tomahawk or the creatively-named Bob. If the speedy characters are more your style, then give Chinese firecracker Meiling or silent rogue Ninja a try. Pierre and Valerie, two characters without any particular niche, still remain. Their fighting styles are the most unique and interesting, though all of the fighters have a surprisingly diverse collection of moves.

Upon selecting your combatant, you're then shown a screen which tells you your opponent, your stage and the different actions you can take to get a point. See, Fighter's Destiny doesn't operate on a typical 2-out-of-3 scale, but instead a seven-star system. There are a number of ways to dispatch your opponent, each of which will get you a different amount of stars, and the first warrior to reach seven will take the round. The typical knockdown, which is achievable by draining your opponent's life and slamming him to the ground or just using a knock-down move, will give you three stars. A special, which is a unique move that your character can only do after draining the enemy's life, will give you four. Knocking him out of the ring is worth one, and throwing him is worth two. If you can counter an opponent mid-move then you'll pocket another three stars. Finally, if you run out of time, the judge awards one star to whoever did the most damage throughout the combat. There are an awful lot of ways to reach seven stars, which really makes the fighting system in this game unique.

The problems lie with the actual fighting. Fighter's Destiny operates at 50 FPS, which is a pretty pokey pace for most fighting games (especially during this generation). In execution, it's not as bad as it sounds, but it really robs the game of a lot of its fluidity. There's an alarming amount of slowdown during certain throws or special moves, which you wouldn't really expect from such a spartan-looking game. In the end, the control feels bulky and the characters seem weighted-down. The most important in any fighting game is control, and fundamentally Fighter's Destiny does a pretty mediocre job with it. Once you get past that, however, the game proves itself surprisingly fun. You grow used to the tempered frame-rate after a while, especially when you're playing with a friend.

VS. Com and two-player mode don't bring much to the table, but the two unique gameplay modes give the game a little more substance. Master Challenge takes you to a roulette wheel, with the two options being either a tile of Master or a sinister foe named Joker. If you land on Master, you enter a combat with him; winning will earn your character a new move. If you land on Joker, you're forced to engage in a fight, with all of your new-found moves on the line. Admittedly, this mode seems a little half-assed. The franchise didn't really do anything with it until Fighter Destiny 2, where it breathed a little more life into the system. Record Attack is a fun little diversion, but ultimately useless. Within Record Attack, there are three modes you can select from. Survival puts you in the midst of 100 1-star matches; if you're crazy enough to win them all consecutively, you unlock Joker himself. Fastest is a collection of 4-star matches compiled to see how fast you can beat them all. Rodeo, by far the most interesting, smacks you in the ring with a rather vicious cow named Ushi (which translates out to, surprisingly, Cow). If you can stay in the ring with it for one minute without knocking him down or being knocked down, then you unlock it as a playable character.

For all it's worth, Fighter's Destiny does bring something new to the fighting genre. The game is unduly marred by its pokey framerate and rather glaring lack of variety (a problem that becomes apparent once you unlock all of the characters and get their new moves), but it still proves itself to be an entertaining diversion for some time. It's too bad that more of the jilted fighting game fans who bought Nintendo 64s couldn't have checked out this game.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/21/06