Ultimate Fighter

"A lot of steps DOWN in the Hiryu-no-Ken series"

Culture Brain tries again with a third embodiment of the Hiryu-no-Ken series. However, something went majorly wrong in the upgrade. The jump from 8-bit to 16-bit made the graphics top-notch, but the sacrifice is a majorly important element: gameplay. The variety is still there, but it doesn't help.

In this embodiment, that same bad guy from Flying Dragon pops up again. Good grief, get a mitt and catch a clue fella! Bad guys just don't learn sometimes do they? Well, this time, the "sinister element" (labeled as such to prevent spoilers) is the MAIN bad buy again and this time, the bad fellow has stolen some sacred articles that belong to the Hiryu-no-Ken school. With these treasures the evil guy could learn the sacred arts and wreck the world. Time to call in the Flying Warriors once again to save the world. Nope, Hiryu's still out. Maybe he saw the mess here and wisely stayed out.

First, the good stuff. Ultimate Figher improves on the Flying Warrior engine in one area only--graphics. Absolutely incredible. The character sprites are REALLY big in this game, and the detail is excellent. No disappointment at all here.

Now the bad news. I'll be honest here. The ONLY reason I got Ultimate Fighter was to the the graphical overhaul that Mary would get. Who is Mary? ***SPOILER Mary is the only female Flying Warrior. The character art on the box of Flying Warriors was beautiful, and I hoped that I would get to see the 16-bit version of Mary. What happens? She's gone!! So there went my reason to get the game. Actually, she IS in the game. She is in the two-player tournament mode, so I was relieved a bit. This is still not good enough as I don't get to see her Flying Warrior embodiment. The story explains why you can't use her, but it still hurts.

The gameplay is screwed up too. The Shingan system is flat ignored here. The enemies attack regardless of who the dot is on, and the controls are not at all responsive for you. The RPG element sticks its head into the Shingan system. At low levels the dot moves really fast so it's hard to attack and defend. As you get better, the movement slows for you to see what's going on.

The Flying Warrior tournament element is different, and messed up as well. You fight with weapons this time. Two of the Warriors use swords, the other two use staffs. The staffs are the best though. the swords NEVER hit anyone. The enemies use these weapons too, and are much better with the swords.

Some enemy bosses are definitely inspirations for Street Fighter and clones. Jake Spinner no doubt influenced Terry Bogard, Robert Garcia, and Jack from World Heroes. The claw fellow is Vega and E.Honda. Nice work here.

The magic attacks are cool, with nice 16-bit effects, but the messed up gameplay takes from everything. I would not recommend this game. Everything is the same as Flying Warriors, just looks a WHOLE lot better

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99