Eternal Champions
| Eternal Champions | |
|---|---|
Cover of the Sega Mega Drive version, painted by Julie Bell
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| Developer(s) | Sega Interactive |
| Publisher(s) | Sega |
| Director(s) | Christopher Warner |
| Producer(s) | Mark Nausha |
| Designer(s) | Michael Latham |
| Programmer(s) | John Kuwaye |
| Artist(s) | Albert Co |
| Composer(s) |
Joe Delia John Hart Jeff Marsh Adrian van Velssen Andy Armer |
| Platform(s) | Sega Genesis |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Fighting game |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
Eternal Champions is a 1993 fighting game developed and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis. It was one of the few fighting games of its time developed from the ground up as a home console title, rather than being released in arcades first and later ported to home systems.
Sega released Eternal Champions in hopes of capitalizing on the fighting game mania that the game industry was in the midst of following the massive success of Street Fighter II (1991) and Mortal Kombat (1992). The game tried to set itself apart with unique features such as a heavier emphasis on its story, characters pulled from different time periods, reflectable projectiles, force fields, fighters that carried weapons, a training mode where players had to defend themselves against robotic traps, a novel method of executing moves, and elaborate stage-specific finishing moves called "Overkills".
Two years later, the sequel Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side (sometimes known as Eternal Champions CD or Eternal Champions 2) was released for the Sega CD. There were also two spin-offs, action/adventure games set in the Eternal Champions universe and featuring some of its characters. Eternal Champions was added to the Wii's Virtual Console download service on December 3, 2007.
The game followed the typical eight-way directional pad/stick with six-button layout common to most fighting games at the time (more commonly in this case, Street Fighter II). Since the standard Mega Drive/Genesis controller has only three action buttons, players would have to purchase a six-button controller or Sega Activator, or else use the start button to toggle the action buttons between punches and kicks. The joystick or D-pad is used to move away, towards, jump and crouch. There are three punches and three kicks that vary based upon speed and power. The weakest punches and kicks are fast but do minimal damage, medium attacks are a good mix of recovery speed and damage, and strong attacks are the most powerful but recover the slowest. Attacks can be blocked by pressing away (for high attacks) or down and away (for low attacks). Grapples are executed by standing close to an opponent and pressing toward or away and either medium or the strong punch button. These attacks cannot be blocked or escaped.
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