Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side

"Honestly, the best fighter of it's time...."

I think this is the only fighting game that I have decided to give a 10 too. Okay before I get on with the review here's alittle history lesson. Back in the early 90's, Mortal kombat part 1 hit the arcades, people were either disgusted by it's violence or amazed that it was there, none the less, it became almost an over night smash...The verdict was clear, violence sold! As the big game system's got thier own verisons of this bloody fighter, other gaming company's came up with thier own respectable blood-filled fighter games, and sega was no exception, thier first attempt at a fighter game was for the genesis system, they released a little game called Eternal Champions. Now this was a good game, the characters were big, backgrounds were well done, and every background had it's own secert kill spot(called an Overkill), for example, On a character named Shadow's background, if you hit your oppent in just the right spot before thier energy was totally gone, they'd end up flying into an electric light in the background and get shocked to death till they exploded. veyr creative idea, and the game did have it's 15 mintues of fame, however, when sega released thier hook-on system called the sega-cd or Mega drive, etrenal champions took a already cool game and added a whole new meaning to it. The sequel to eternal champions blows every bloody fighter outta the water, and even by todays more complex fighters, this game still holds it's own.and so on with the review...

Story-line-
Eternal champions has the most complex and interesting story-lines of any fighter I have ever played.The crew that worked on this did a darn good job and I applauded thier effort. Like the first, 9 people from different time era's are saved only seconds before their doom by a mysterious force known as the Eternal champion, this force has weakend from all the power it has used to save these people and there for can only send one back to thier time with the knowledge to elude death and fullfill thier destiny for the good of mankind,but thier is another force, a dark force, who was born only seconds after the eternal champion was created and has managed to hide 4 main fighters from the tournament inorder to keep the furies of good and evil unbalanced. This dark force has finally made his presence known, these 4 new fighters have been returned to the fight, However the dark force is alittle more stronger then the eternal champion and has turned the eternal champions noble tournament, into a blodd-bath of survival. This is ''Eternal champions: challenge from the darkside''.

Grapix-
Oh boy. where do i start? If anyone that is reading this right now is familiar with the original EC, try to picture the backgrounds of the fighters, slightly upgraded with new additions and brighter colors, not to mention 18 backgrounds in all, and the characters are very nicely detailed,along with the addition of 2 new female and two male fighters, there is 11 more secert charaters to find(this game by the way is LOADED with secerts). Some of the old characters got some new moves and even some new outfits,shadow's new outfit is hot (drools). Along with all of this, Full motion movies were added for each characters, including beginning intro's, endings, and shorts of your player being horribly killed by the dark force himself in a death sequence known as a cinekill. As if that was'nt enough already to give the game spunk, 3 additional kill moves were added to that. Your overkills are still there, and even easier to do(and bloodier),(first one they were alittle tricky to pull off). then you have sudden kills, which is basically an additonal overkill, and each character has also been given thier own personal fatality to preform (like in MK). Real Effort was but into this game!

Controls-
the moves for each character are pretty easy to pull off, However I strongly recommend you use a 6 button control, as a 3 button control just wont cut it.

Sound-
Wow! Ever character (including the secert charaters) have thier own taunt, yeah there is nothing like calling your oppent a ''Coward'' in the heat of battle. and the music just plain rocks! You may even find yourself dancing to some of the tunes. Another nice addition to the sounds is the grunts that come from your fighters, and thier horrifying screams of pain during some of the death sequences, greatly improved over the first game. Though let me just state for the record that there should have been just a tad bit more screams.

Overall- After years of waiting to play this game (almost 7 years) I was able to get my hands on this game, and I was not a bit dissappionted, as I said above, real effort was put into making this game, unforunatly it was released too late on a dieing system and never got the attention it deserved. When the sega saturn was released, eternal champions 3 was being made, but was scraped due to the fact that sega somehow thought Virtual fighter was better and worth spending the time on. Really a sad ending to this tiny bloody gem.

Last comments-
If you have a sega cd, and you happen to stumble unto this title (thats if you dont already have it), Grab it, play it, give it a shot, at last check the price is pretty good for it now a days 9.95, though I warn you it is a rather hard game to find these days. just a side note, the company that had a big part in this game (Kronos) went on to make another fighter game a few years later for playstation called ''Cardinal syn'', another good fighter, so check'em out, I give you my work as a fighter lover, this game is GREAT!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/03, Updated 02/20/03