World Heroes 2 Jet

"And you'll finally see the truth..."

It finally happened. After years of hosting private martial arts tournaments across the span of history, Professor Brown sold out. It was inevitable, really. The man was greedy and self-centered from the start. Why wouldn't he want to make a profit on his invention? Brown wasn't stupid, though; rather than selling the designs of his time machine, he sold tickets to people willing to see legendary fighters duke it out in front of a live audience. Unlike the previous contests, World Heroes 2: Jet isn't necessarily about crowning the greatest warrior who ever lived. Rather, it has become more of a spectator sport. Fighters who were once concerned with personal vendettas and rivalries now have thousands - nay, millions - of people screaming for their blood. Such a cheapening of a once great contest is beyond pathetic.

The characters don't seem to mind, however. All of the participants from the previous tournaments are back and ready to get a little piece of glory. Jeanne has been sharpening her blade and working on her combos. Captain Kidd has ditched his pirating exploits, opting to train the impending battles instead. Erik the Red has been bulking up, though his biceps have nothing on his gargantuan gut. J. Max has retired as a San Francisco 49ers benchwarmer, but everyone knows he'll be back by the time the season picks up again. As for Mudman…Well, nobody really cares about Mudman. Perhaps he's been working on his dance moves. Everyone is too distracted by the newcomers to notice. While Jack is obviously a reference to Jack the Ripper, his multicolored mohawk, razor-sharp claws, and questionable win poses make him come across as the bastard lovechild of Freddy Krueger and Chicken Boo from Animaniacs. Then there's Ryofu, whose steroid-chiseled body and addiction to flammable liquids makes him look like a drunken outcast from a Dynasty Warriors game.

While their ‘interesting' designs are certainly worth a few chuckles, their attack styles certainly aren't. The characters of World Heroes 2: Jet aren't the same bunch of inept Street Fighter 2 wannabes that they used to be. While many of the same moves have been retained, there have been a handful of additions and modifications for each moveset. Brocken doesn't just have stretchable arms and legs, but an arsenal equipped with electrical gauntlets and faster missiles. Thanks to Jeanne's new extended attack range, she's able to execute combos previously impossible to perform. If Hanzo and Fuuma weren't already broken enough, their respective teleportation and aerial throwing abilities make them virtually unstoppable. Such drastic changes can be attributed to both the game's vastly improved speed and the inclusion of forward and backward dashing maneuvers. The inclusion of these features ensures that you'll never have to worry about the utterly awful control responsiveness and the other issues that plagued the first two titles.

The biggest overhaul, however, comes with the game structure itself. Since World Heroes 2: Jet is meant to be a highly publicized event, the usual random bouts have been thrown out in favor of an actual tournament setting. Rather than facing a single character for the best of three rounds, you'll have to take them on in groups of three. You could be facing the likes of Mudman, Rasputin, and Brocken in succession; you'll need to beat at least two of them to make it to the next round of the tournament. After surviving the first few preliminary rounds, you'll finally get back into the old-fashioned style of playing. Crafting the arcade mode like this was a great idea; it allowed the game designers to cram as much intense combat into as few fights as possible. Instead of worrying about winning against a single character, you have to focus more on changing your strategy based on whichever foe appears. Since you only have to defeat two out of three per round, you can still advance in the game if you fight poorly against a certain enemy.

But if you have to play the game with the traditional formula, you'll likely spending your time in the Forging of Warriors mode. Unlike the story-driven tournament of the regular arcade, this option lets you play against any character in the usual best-of-three bouts structure. Veterans of World Heroes 2 will likely find this mode eerily familiar; Forging of Warriors is essentially that game, but with the improved mechanics of the newer title. However, this feature comes with a price; the Death Match mode of the previous titles has been completely scrapped. No longer can you smash your victims into spiky walls or shove them in the path of spinning blades. Fans need not be disheartened, though; these changes mark a beneficial shift in the World Heroes series in its entirety. Rather than focusing on what were essentially party mini-games, the game focuses more on direct combat and mastery of the characters.

It's not like everything is completely different, either. The character sprites are identical to their previous iterations; nearly everything from the pre-fight poses to the attack animations has been copied from the last game. There are minor changes, such as Brocken's expanding mechanical gauntlets or Rasputin's array of magical finger pokes. Many of the levels from World Heroes 2 have returned for the Forging of Warriors mode as well. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either. Cherry blossoms will still float down the screen whenever you get thrown to the ground in certain levels, and the drunken patrons of J. Max's level still high five each other with every crushing blow they witness. It's the levels in the tournament mode, however, that steal the show. Crowds of adoring fans will cheer you on from the ringside, and even a news helicopter will swoop in to get a better view of the battle. Early battles will even have a mustachioed referee dancing around in the background in an attempt to add even more atmosphere. The cutscenes are even cheesier; there's nothing more cringe-inducing than seeing Hanzo threaten to make sushi of your entrails or Captain Kidd calling you his little Vienna sausage. Of course, most of this is fairly absurd by contemporary standards, but it still has its charms.

World Heroes 2: Jet marks yet another step in the right direction for the series. SNK strove to improve its otherwise poorly crafted fighting games, and it shows here. Sure, the characters and levels may have been basically ripped from the last game, but there are so many other additions and replacements that the similarities have been minimized. It's a shame that more wasn't done to develop the characters' movesets, however; the game would have been far more entertaining had it featured more than a small handful of new maneuvers supplementing the old attacks. The most important new feature is the focus on speed; as the game's title attempts to imply, the pacing of the gameplay has been vastly sped up with better animation frames, responsive controls, and dashing mechanics. No longer is the player reduced to relying on glitches to get the job done; it's time for real strategy to be used. The new tournament structure of the arcade mode is a welcome change, and the alternative versus mode is definitely a worthy replacement for the Death Matches. World Heroes 2: Jet is nowhere near the perfect 2D fighting game, but it's far better than those that came before it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/21/08

Game Release: World Heroes 2 Jet (US, 06/10/94)