| Welcome to the
first edition of MAME: Full Access. In this feature,
three unknown arcade games with a common bond are rescued
from obscurity... only to be pitted against one another in a
fierce battle to determine the best of the bunch. Only
one of these titles can be the winner. The rest are
cast back into the endless sea that is the MAME software
library, to be discovered only by those with a complete
collection of ROMs and a complete lack of a social life (man,
does THAT hit a little too close to home!).
In the premiere edition of
MAME: Full Access, you've got a front row seat for a battle
between three tournament fighters you may have missed.
All of these titles were inspired by the Street Fighter craze
of the early 1990's, but only one will be left
standing at the end of this brutal bout. After the smoke
clears and the winner is congratulated, you'll receive a prize
of your own... handy tips to help you get the most out of
your MAME experience. So stay glued to the edge of your
seats, folks! This is gonna be a fight to
remember!
| ASURA BLADE:
SWORD OF DESTINY |
| Fuuki |
| Vs. Fighter |
| 1-2 Players |
| Released in 1998 |
| MAME Title:
"ASURABLD" |
 What do
Chinese food, lite beer, and Asura Blade: Sword of Dynasty
have in common? They all taste great, but are less
filling than most of their competitors. This tournament
fighter, by under-the-radar Japanese developer Fuuki, has all
the outrageous style of a Darkstalkers or Guilty Gear game,
but very little of that satisfying depth that keeps you coming
back for a second helping. You're left with just three
attack buttons in contrast to the usual six you'll find in a
traditional Capcom fighting game, and the high damage ratios
ensure that each round ends almost as quickly as it
started.
Let me tell you though... few
of the fighting games you'll find in MAME's
vast selection will dazzle you like this one. Asura
Blade takes place in a fantasy world filled with dank
dungeons, floating islands, and desolate battlefields with the
remains of long-dead soldiers scattered throughout them.
It's like what would happen if a Conan the Barbarian film and
Guilty Gear X locked swords in a battle to the
death. Speaking of Guilty Gear, Asura Blade's cast
of characters have the same cleanly drawn, cartoony look as
the stars of the long-running Sammy series. The artwork
isn't up to the high standards of the later Guilty Gear games,
but it's a definite improvement over the first release on the
Playstation, and it's crisper and cleaner than what you'll
find in the average 2D fighting game from the 1990's.
Crisper and cleaner, hmm? I guess that makes two things
Asura Blade has in common with lite beer...
The stars of Asura Blade may look
great, but the game's character design could have been more
imaginative. Nearly every one of the heroes and villains
will remind you of a warrior from another game, whether
it's Taros, the medievel robot who you'll swear is an even
less streamlined early prototype of Darkstalkers' Mayan mech
Phobos, or Zam-B, a hunchback with a massive metal glove who
probably wears an iron mask to disguise even more similarities
to Gen-An Shiranui from the Samurai Shodown series.
There are a few memorable characters, like the deceptively
cute master of the undead Alice, and the gun-toting,
hot-blooded boss Curfew, but none of them measure up to the
unforgettable stars of Darkstalkers and its
sequels.
 Then there's
the gameplay. This is where Asura Blade's similarities
to low-calorie brews really become obvious. It's an
experience that's fun while it lasts, but won't stick with you
due to its watered down flavor. You only get three
buttons, a sharp contrast to most arcade fighting games which
offer four or even six. Each of the attacks you can
perform vary in strength and speed, but the kinds of attacks
assigned to each button is anyone's guess... you could get a
kick, and punch, or even a weapon swing depending on the
character and the strength of the button pressed. This
ambiguity doesn't affect the gameplay as much as it had in the
later Fatal Fury games, because special moves can be performed
with any of the three buttons, but it does leave you with
fewer attacks to perform. Of course, the resulting lack
of depth might not even be an issue for most players... since
Asura Blade moves at such a fast clip, and because attacks do
so much damage, you'll barely have time to blink before each
round is over.
Asura Blade: Sword of Dynasty is
a great tournament fighter, but only for players looking
for an adrenaline rush. Anyone craving the complexity of
the best games in the genre will be left hungry an hour after
they've had their fill of Asura
Blade.
|
|
"It may
lack depth, but Asura Blade's got as much style as any
of the big
boys." |
QUICK SHOT: Special moves can be
enhanced by pressing all three buttons when you perform them,
rather than just one. Remember, this will cost you a
portion of the energy in your super
meter.
| DAN-KU-GA |
| Taito |
| Vs. Fighter |
| 1-2 Players |
| Released in 1994 |
| MAME Title:
"DANKUGA" |
 If Asura Blade borrows most
heavily from the Guilty Gear series, and Dragoon Might takes
most of its ideas from Samurai Shodown and its sequels, then
Dan-Ku-Ga is most definitely a clone of Capcom's early Street
Fighter II games. It's got the same bright, even garish,
colors; the same muscular if somewhat generic characters; and
the same six button control scheme, with three strengths of
punches and kicks. Even the gameplay is the same,
without the advancements introduced in the Street Fighter
Alpha series.
However, there are two features in this unreleased special
edition of Taito's Kaiser Knuckle that help ease the pain of
its predictable design. The first is a "Crush" meter
which falls somewhere between the super meter in Super Street
Fighter II: Turbo, and the rage gauge introduced in the first
Samurai Shodown. Find yourself on the receiving end of
too much punishment and your Crush meter will rise and
eventually top off, allowing you to perform an enhanced
special move that does more damage than usual and fills the
screen with crackling bolts of electricity if it connects
(electricity... eeee-lectricity!).
 The best part of Dan-Ku-Ga,
however, is the insane amount of property damage you can do
while battling your opponent. Throw him to the ground
and large chunks of the floor erupt from the point of impact,
leaving an ugly tear in the carpet with wood paneling peeking
out from the hole you've made. You can also use your
unwitting foe as a wrecking ball to demolish nearby walls,
making each stage up to three times larger than when you first
began. This gives this otherwise ordinary fighting game
more variety and impact than the early Street Fighter games,
where the most you were going to break (aside from your
enemy's nose, or the luxury car in the bonus stage) was a
rusty oil barrel or a tiny Japanese sign.
Despite the fact that you can literally bring down the
house in most of the game's highly interactive stages, there's
nothing groundbreaking about the rest of Dan-Ku-Ga. The
characters are pretty typical, ranging from an all-American
bruiser with a carefree attitude to a sexy Asian girl sporting
a traditional Eastern wardrobe. The gameplay is tired as
well... there's very little to distinguish it from Street
Fighter II, aside from the Crush meter which actually robs
players of strategic opportunities. You can't really
decide WHEN to enhance your special moves while fighting your
opponent; it just happens. Moreover, they do so little
additional damage that they barely have an impact on the
gameplay. Finally, there's the soundtrack... it's
typical Zuntata, but not Zuntata at its best. You'll
hear lots of piano-heavy instrumentals that tend to run
together and don't really strengthen the atmosphere of the
diverse locations you'll visit throughout the tournament.
Sure, Dan-Ku-Ga is marginally improved over Taito's
previous game Kaiser Knuckle. There are a couple more
characters, a few new play options, and a nerdy ringside
physician who checks to see if your fallen opponent is still
conscious (or alive... but geez, I'd hate to think I hit him
THAT hard!). Nevertheless, a marginally improved update
of an average fighting game just isn't good enough when MAME
gives you so many other great titles to choose from, including
Street Fighter Alpha 2, NightWarriors: Darkstalker's Revenge,
and The King of Fighters '99.
|
|
"A solid fighter that
improves upon its predecessor, Kaiser Knuckle... but not
by much." |
QUICK SHOT:
Dan-Ku-Ga was never officially released, either in
the United States or its native Japan. The game is so
similar to Kaiser Knuckle that Taito probably didn't see a
point in bringing out this minor
upgrade.
| DRAGOON MIGHT |
| Konami |
| Vs. Fighter |
| 1-2 Players |
| Released in 1995 |
| MAME Title:
"DRAGOONJ" |
Dragoon Magic is going to seem awfully
familiar to fans of the Neo-Geo game system... it borrows a
little from the obscure Neo-Geo fighter Savage Reign and a
whole lot more from SNK's popular Samurai Shodown
series. So it's not original, but at the very least,
you've got to give Konami credit for taking the time to make
Dragoon Might a whole lot better than their last arcade
fighting game, the lackluster Martial Champions.
 In your quest
to piece together an ancient artifact, you'll battle
weapon-wielding warriors in best of three matches (or three on
three team fights) that are more than slightly reminescent of
Samurai Shodown. The damage adds up quickly as you trade
blows, but there's limited combo potential... you'll be lucky
to string together more than three hits with standard kicks
and weapon strikes. Like in Samurai Shodown, there
are objects in the background like hanging chains and icicles
that can be cut down with a swipe of your sword.
However, these objects serve a second purpose... press all
three kick buttons and you'll swing from the nearest post or
tree branch, letting you briefly escape your
opponent. There's also a special "bomber" move,
best saved for emergencies... smash all three punch buttons
and you'll perform an especially powerful attack that drains
your energy slightly but does a lot MORE damage to an
unblocking opponent. The bomber moves are in no way
preferable to Samurai Shodown's rage attacks, but at
least they're one of the few features in Dragoon Might not
lifted straight from that series.
Dragoon Magic's gameplay closely mirrors
Samurai Shodown, but the setting has been updated, with more
contemporary backgrounds and characters. Along with the
usual comical monks and cocky young swordsmen, you get a beefy
Australian brute with an enormous Bowie knife and the
tonfa-wielding, kinkily-dressed blonde bombshell Layla.
Only a few of the fighters really stand out... my personal
favorites are Suiko, a wacky Japanese priest who looks like he
snuck out of an episode of Lupin the Third, and the
disciplined martial artist Kodama, who's got one of the best
moves in the game. Make the mistake of striking him
while he's in a counter stance and he flips you behind his
back while stripping you of your weapon in a single graceful
motion.
 Finally,
there are the audiovisuals. Here's where the
student really outperforms the master... although the
soundtrack is below Konami's usually excellent standards, the
graphics look better than in any of the Neo-Geo Samurai
Shodown games. The characters are sharply drawn and
beautifully shaded, and the more subtle color scheme sands
away most of the rough pixelization you'd expect from SNK's
fighting games. The backgrounds are a mixed bag... while
there are animated characters in some, the rest feel very
lifeless and empty, and none of them are especially
imaginative.
Dragoon Magic doesn't try to hide its
similarities to Samurai Shodown, but at the same time, it
doesn't go out of its way to disguise its roots with awkward
new play mechanics, like Konami's last fighting game Martial
Champions. If you've burned through all five Samurai
Shodown games on the Neo-Geo and would like to see the formula
done with a distinctive Konami flair, you owe it to yourself
to give Dragoon Magic a shot.
|
|
"A big improvement over
Konami's last fighting game Martial
Champions." |
QUICK SHOT:
Repeatedly striking a blocking opponent
will disarm them, making them more vulnerable until they
retrieve their weapon.
...Asura
Blade: Sword of Dynasty. Sure, it's got less depth than
either of its competitors, but it works harder to make a
strong first impression. Dragoon Might is crippled by
its lack of originality, and the low resolution graphics
and lethargic gameplay in Dan-Ku-Ga make it hard to
appreciate the game over a decade after it was created.
However, Asura Blade doesn't suffer from the issues that
dragged down its two rivals. Its frantic pace and
dynamic visuals offer the kind of adrenaline rush you just
won't find in either Dragoon Might or
Dan-Ku-Ga. It's not a game you'll want to play for
hours, but Asura Blade is one hell of a blast in
small doses.
Although the subject is
clearly up for debate, the best fighting game controller of
all time is, in my humble opinion, the second model of
the stock Sega Saturn joypad (model MK-80116). This
was packed with the Sega Saturn at launch in Japan, and
debuted later in the United States in 1996, after the bulky
American controller was poorly received (and rightfully so) by
players.
You may be wondering how this
information will be of any use to you, the MAME player.
There are adapters which allow you to use the Sega Saturn
controller with your computer... of the ones available, I
personally recommend the 3 in 1 PC Joy Box. Simply plug
it into a USB port on your computer, wait for the adapter's
internal drivers to install, then test it under the
Control Panel (on a Windows PC, click on the Start bar, go to
Settings, then Control Panel, then Gaming Options).
The PC Joy Box has ports for
Saturn, Playstation, and Dreamcast joypads, and I've found
that it works extremely well in MAME, with a level of
precision that rivals using the controllers on the actual
systems. You'll find the 3 in 1 PC Joy Box available for
about twenty dollars on Jandaman's import accessories site
(www.jandaman.com). |
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