This* Week in Retro: World Heroes Perfect [1995] (Patreon)

Sorry for the delayed post; my weekend was chaotic, to say the least. We'll be back on schedule starting with the next entry!—Jeremy

May 25, 1995: The World Heroes' battle across time comes to an end

by Diamond Feit

I don't know if I've said this out loud recently, so let me say it out loud for any readers unsure of this fact: I love fighting games. I've written multiple columns this year alone about well-known fighting games (e.g. MvC2 & MK3) and I also professed my undying love for the NEO•GEO which was the home to many of the greatest fighting games ever made... and also home to the subject of this week's column. If that sounds like shade, that's not my intention, because World Heroes happens to be one of my favorite video games. It is also wholly unoriginal and by most standards, mediocre—yet I love it.

When the first World Heroes debuted on the NEO•GEO in the summer of 1992, it was already late to the fighting game boom that arose in the wake of Street Fighter II. By that point, the best way to stand out was to have a gimmick or a hook that made your particular take on the well-established Street Fighter II formula seem fresh. Mortal Kombat had two: Real actors and graphic violence. World Heroes went in a slightly different direction: "Real" people and also time travel.

(Funnily enough, in late 1992 Time Killers would be an amalgam of these two, combining graphic violence with time travel... but that's another story)

World Heroes tells the tale of a mad scientist named Dr. Brown who, using his time machine, is seeking to find the strongest fighters in all of human history. And while fighting games have never been shy about relying on stereotypes for character inspiration, in the case of World Heroes every character is, to varying degrees of specificity, based on historical figures or even living people. The basic "Ryu" and "Ken" archetypes of World Heroes were adopted from the legendary ninjas Hanzo Hattori and Kotaro Fuuma, while other fighters were named for Genghis Khan, Rasputin, and Joan of Arc. Not all the characters were based on people from the distant past: Dragon was a clear Bruce Lee homage, and Muscle Power was the spitting image of Hulk Hogan (still an active pro wrestler at that time). Rounding out the original cast was a walking, talking JoJo's Bizarre Adventure reference and the final boss, the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgement Day (albeit with bigger muscles).

As a Street Fighter II knock-off with a cast of familiar faces, there wasn't much original about the original World Heroes save for one element: A mode-select option. After choosing a character, players could select "normal" or "death match," with the latter taking place in obstacle-laden arenas that threatened both fighters equally. Such contests were popular in Japanese pro wrestling at the time and would soon make their way to the U.S. "hardcore" circuit.

World Heroes found an audience, and it became an annual series of sorts: World Heroes 2 was released less than a year later with seven new characters, followed by an incremental update called World Heroes 2 JET in 1994 which added another three. 25 years ago this week, the final game in the saga World Heroes Perfect was released. If the title is any indication, the developers might have known this was the end of the series. So, rather than expand the lineup again (there is just one new face), they made the ultimate version of what World Heroes could be.

I don't want to say World Heroes is a "bad" game, because I love it, but it's lacking a lot of depth that its peers had, to say nothing of the gold-standard Street Fighter II. That game uses six buttons, three for punches and three for kicks. The NEO•GEO only has four buttons, yet World Heroes only uses three of them: Punch, kick, and throw. Characters have "light" and "strong" attacks, but the only way to differentiate between the two is to hold the button down for a different length of times. So when players find themselves close to their opponent, mashing the attack buttons is a legit strategy.

Imagine my surprise when a recent interview with Kimitoshi Yokoo, a planner for the first two World Heroes games, revealed the simple, basic nature of the series was an intentional choice: "Our game aimed lower than middle and high school students who the 'core gamers' of the time, targeting elementary school students." NEO•GEO arcade cabinets, thanks to their small size and multi-cartridge capacity, tended to end up in a lot of places outside regular arcades like "supermarkets and toy stores", according to that interview, where Yokoo also said, "I think there was a strong sense of 'let's make a game kids will really love,'" adding "the [NEO•GEO arcade] MVS was also popular overseas, so with that in mind, I was asked for characters and a style that were easy to understand." The secret's out: World Heroes is a game for little children and foreigners, and I was at least one of those in 1992.

Yokoo's insight explains a lot about the origins of World Heroes, but what's less clear is what happened as the series evolved through its annual installments (and Yokoo's involvement was scaled back, at least according to the end credits). Perhaps there was a push to court older players, or to age-up the material along with its original audience, but the games became more complex. World Heroes 2 JET dropped the "death match" option entirely, adding a dash option and an ability to feign dizziness in order to lure opponents into dropping their guard.

As a final installment, World Heroes Perfect radically changes the fundamentals of the series. Suddenly all characters have the option of three punches and three kicks by using all four NEO•GEO buttons, relegating the strongest attacks to pressing both punch or kick buttons together (similar to how Samurai Shodown handles attack inputs). All characters gain a new, unique move when pressing the ABC buttons together, and a new "HERO" bar at the bottom of the screen allows for enhanced attacks and super attacks (similar to the original DarkStalkers' "special" bar). There are even desperation attacks available when characters are low on health, already a common feature in other NEO•GEO games like Fatal Fury 2 or Art of Fighting. In other words, this ain't your kid brother's World Heroes.

There's a sense in video games, especially from this era, that sequels refine ideas from previous games and improve upon them, making them better by default. There are countless examples of this, not the least of which was Street Fighter II, a game that is so much better than its predecessor that they feel like they came from different universes. World Heroes Perfect is, objectively, more World Heroes: Everything has been refined from the combat to the character art and players have far more options in battle. But is "more" always better if it comes at the expense of distinctness? As a viewer of many Japanese arcade livestreams, I know World Heroes Perfect is a more exciting game to watch skilled players compete in than any earlier entries, but as a player myself I miss the "death match" option which was—and still is, I believe—unique to World Heroes 1 & 2.

World Heroes Perfect marked the end of the series, but not the end of the World Heroes themselves; several characters have made appearances in other games, most recently SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy. And with The King of Fighters XV reported under development, there's no reason to rule them out as a participant in that tournament either, seeing as how Samurai Shodown characters saw fit to join KOF XIV via the miracle of... time travel.

World Heroes is not high on the list of ’90s fighting franchises that people talk about these days, although it's clear that at least a few of those elementary school kids (and foreigners) grew up and retained a fondness for the series' quirks and eccentricities. I'm pleased to see all four World Heroes games are available on modern platforms thanks to Hamster's Arcade Archives series, and I hope the motley cast of almost-real characters all get a chance to return to the global stage someday soon.

Eh, except for the robot nazi. He's not so "quirky" anymore.