>deep and interesting lore and characters>gorgeous sprites and animations>stellar backgrounds>wicked and gorey fatalitiesHow did this series not take off? It had everything to be a Mortal Kombat killer and yet went nowhere. Why?
the only game i can think of where winning means you could create a massively different alternate timeline by preventing the fall of Atlantis.
you forgot>mediocre gameplay
>>12119821Because the gameplay was mediocre (then again so was Mortal Kombat's) and the game felt somewhat obnoxious to play.
>>12119839>>12119848Mortal Kombats gameplay sucks too everyone has the same exact moves except specials, in this at least attacks are unique. It plays fine. It's fine.
>>12119821The Sega CD sequel (expansion?) is fucking bad ass >>12119832Yeah it had cool fleshed out endings.I blame having ZERO ninja characters as the reason it didn't take off (no that bitch in the domino mask that had a spin off game that was trash doesn't count)Weren't there like two spin off games ala MK Mythologies that were beat em ups? The one with the chick mentioned above and one based around the 1920s detective character named Larson or something like that?It got a comic line too, idk if there was toys or cartoons but it was definitely intended to be a new multimedia franchise.
the fatalities were indeed awesome. they had a much more gruesome feel to them. in the end mk came first and kind of filled the edgelord gore fighter niche i guess. it was more fun/satisfying to pick up and play. also this game was never in arcades. only on genesis then later sega cd
>>12119821Oh boy, is that a dead Sega franchise that nobody cared about? What supernatural force prevented it from succeeding, bros? Could Eternal Champions 3 have saved the Saturn?
>>12119821Everyone was trying to get on the edgy fighter bandwagon and it just got lost in the shuffle. That fad died pretty fast anyway.
Might as well ask why Time Killers never took off.
>>12119848>>12119861MK has its problems but starting with 2 it’s fun to play and has a bit of competitive depth. Not sure you can say that about EC
>>12119821Its a great game and could've been a great series but it just ended up looking like another MK clone. MK was a juggernaut during this time.
>>12119952They had a more mysterious feel to them too since there is no prompt for them like MK. I didn't even know the game had them as a kid till the computer did one to me one day which is very rarely did. As a big MK fan it blew my mind and I spent a long time randomly trying to figure them out till I met a kid who knew some at school.
>>12119978Its a way better game than Time Killers with actual serious lore and looks way better. It's not just schlocky violence for the sake of it, there was actual time and care put into the characters and setting.
>>12119978I remember playing this and eating Dippin' Dots outside the mall theater.
>>12120160you never accidentally did the stage fatalities? some stages like the volcano or mine just require you to kill the enemy on one edge of the screen
>>12119821Because the gameplay was ass
>>12120190I think that is first one I did, helicopters flying in a shooting someone to pieces in the vampire guys Vietnam War stage?
>>12120208Explain how??
>>12120227He can't it's just nonsense
>>12119914The spin off games suck. The one with the detective guy is on Game Gear (nuff said)
>>12120208It was merely mediocre, this one >>12119978 was much worse, at the least the home version:>Time KillersThe Genesis has a surprisingly high number of awful fighting games.
>>12119821I never understood what is going on with the sci-fi nog's gauntlet in this image. Is it a screen (sort of Pip Boy esque) that is shining a bright beam of light from the screen? Or is it a laser beam going up and to the right?
>>12120413*left*Like is that beam going up or towards the viewer in a fucked up perspective attempt by the artist?
>>12119821Was anyone else relieved when this IP bombed? My friend had a copy on Genesis but it was terrible. It was bad enough that MK got so big.
>>12120452It was based.
Sound design is terrible. Generic Genesis screeches and boops.Gameplay sucks, way too floaty, moves are shit.The characters are bland and generic and don't make sense, same with the story. Why is a Vietnam vet some kind of vampire that can turn into mist? What the fuck is an Atlantean doing in the tournament? Yawn.No sense of aesthetics. The sprite work itself is fine but there's no overall style. Mortal Kombat has a unique and instantly recognizable style. Same with Street Fighter. You can close your eyes and listen to those games and immediately know what they are. A single screen shot sells you on it. Eternal Champions was just a buffet of generic videogame shit. Even its box art is generic and unmemorable as hell compared to MK/SFs. It didn't break new ground. It didn't have anything in it that MK/SF hadn't already done (and better). It was just another generic fighting game clone chasing after MK/SF. The question isn't "Why didn't Eternal Champions succeed", it's "Why would this game have ever succeeded"?
>>12119821I really want to like this game, but I don't get the gameplay at all. Like, on Genesis I'm having more fun with Double Dragon V and Justice League Task Force somehow and those games aren't exactly good.I get that I shouldn't expect it to be as good as Darkstalkers or SamSho or Killer Instinct or at least Primal Rage, for example, but I'd expect more from a supposedly decent game, you know. Even as far as Sega's own games go demake of VF2 got it beat.
Most people who played it got filtered by the brutal AI. That's the #1 reason why people say it's bad. The game beats your ass senseless worse than any MK.
>>12119821>How did this series not take off?Sega of Japan didn't want another fighting game to compete with Virtua Fighter on the Saturn, so they didn't let Sega of America make a sequel. That's about it. Another thing Sega of Japan fucked up.
>>12119861The moves aren't the same. Try it for yourself the uppercuts, sweeps,roundhouse, etc they have different hitboxes, speed and priority
>>12120558>Sega of Japan didn't want another fighting game to compete with Virtua Fighter on the SaturnBut they were fine with Fighting Vipers, Last Bronx and lending their arcade tech to Tecmo. Sure, makes total sense.
>>12120498>The characters are bland and generic and don't make sense, same with the story.The characters are anything but generic and the story is pretty simple and even explained in the intro. A bunch of people died before they could fulfil their destiny, which ultimately leads to mankind being worse off. It could be as simple as an important senator getting bombed, to an inventor dying before discovering the cure for cancer, or a caveman not teaching his peers that they need to switch from hunting to growing crops.>Why is a Vietnam vet some kind of vampire that can turn into mist? He's a british biochemist CIA agent who made a virus to be used at Vietnam, but he refused to release it because it would've killed too many. He got gunned down and he fell into a pool of chemicals with his own virus, turning him into a vampire.The CIA then used the chemicals from that accident to create a mass murder virus and release it on third world countries, which are now overrun with vampires. Midknight is searching for a cure and was close to finding it before he was killed.>What the fuck is an Atlantean doing in the tournament? Yawn.Atlanteans had superior science and wanted to share it with the Romans, instead the Romans insisted on a gladiator duel to see which one of their empire would rule, and then rigged the fight to kill the Atlantean champion. This forced Atlantis under sea and their culture and science lost forever.The in-game stories are really varied and make a pretty fun read. Best of all you can do it all in-game, a huge rarity in 1993. The game also had like half dozen training modes, you could train against dummies, by yourself, against static drones, moving drones, etc. I think it may have been the very first game to have that extensive training modes.
>>12120570>But they were fine with Fighting Vipers, Last Bronx and lending their arcade tech to Tecmo. Sure, makes total sense.Nothing about SOJ's decisions make sense, but that's the official story.
>>12120581Of course they won't make sense when told by disgruntled American employees.
>>12120605Yes, because from a japanese perspective, having less games on the system makes more sense, right?
>>12120806Cutting losses where they can rather than financing a nearly certain failure makes sense.It's honestly weird that they allowed Sonic X-treme team to go at it as long as they did.
>>12119821>How did this series not take off?Almost nobody owned a megaCD and the cartridge version of the game is stupidly, outrageously overtuned. Most players will not even be able to win the first fight after a solid hour of attempts.So the version of the game most people had access to is essentially unplayable.
>>12120816>Cutting losses where they can rather than financing a nearly certain failure makes sense.Sega of Japan released Mansion of Lost Souls, outsourced Virtua Racing, and greenlit Death Crimson. Your argument is invalid.>It's honestly weird that they allowed Sonic X-treme team to go at it as long as they did.That's because the console was a near certain failure without a Sonic game and oh wait it did end up as a failure, nevermind...
>>12120816SOJ also shot down repeated pitches by Ancient for a new Streets of Rage, then released Dynamite Cop / Die Hard Arcade and Spikeout.
>>12119821BTW you weren't a 90's kid if you never saw this poster. Used to see this thing on dozens of walls growing up and it was disappointing to actually play it.
>>12120498>The characters are bland and genericNow I have to disagree, Virtua Fighter has a somewhat generic roster (it suits that franchise though), Eternal Champions' cast is anything, but generic due to its setting.I mean, in this game you can fight as a "modern" (1990s) "kunoichi' against a cat-burglar from the 1920s, or against a "wizard" (actually a scientist mistaken for a wizard) from late 1600s Salem, etc. In the sequel you can even play as a corrupt senator, a mockery of anti-game violence politicians from the early 1990s.
>>12120580Yeah the codex stuff in game and the music were both rad
>>12120558lmao, the delusions of SoAfags.Imagine thinking Sega being afraid of Eternal Champions.
>>12120186Unless it was set up on a Genesis or Sega CD at a mall kiosk or something then you're full of shit, there was no arcade version. Had there been, it might've faired better. It's certainly better than Time Killers wtf and the lore is better than Killer Instincts
Better than MK2
>>12119839>Kek la kek>>12119821Another MK Killer that never was.
>>12119971Wow, the cheekyness is off the charts
>>12122132If the game had included one or two proper ninja characters it would've been the one to topple MK
>>12120580Midknight's background in Vietnam makes no sense when the lore reads he died many years after becoming a vampire (The Mega CD version corrects this by giving him a new background, where he was actually killed).
I swear half of /vr/ anons are just Stockholm Syndrome millenials whose shitty parents were too poor/stupid to get them the actually good systems/games of the 1990s and now they're larping like they actually liked all the garbage that's been forgotten by time instead of coming to terms with the fact their parents just never really gave a shit.
>>12122773Eternal Champions on the Sega CD is the best game to come from the ultraviolent 90s fighter boom. It only failed because it was made for a doomed add-on that no one had.
>>12122879That's also what makes it amazing, because only based autists will know of it.
>>12120452I never cared for the game but why were you relieved? Like were you afraid if enough people played it they'd turn into the characters and hunt you?
What people always forget when discussing why Mortal Kombat blew up is the digitized sprites. The violence was cool and all but by itself would have been nothing special especially if it had been with comic book/anime/cartoon graphics like other fighters. Looking at the arcade monitor and seeing what appeared to be actual real life people getting their heads ripped off was just on another level of edginess. Eternal Champions actually had gorier and more creative deaths but none of that matters since it didn't use digitized sprites.
>>12119821It is, objectively, a better game than Mortal Kombat II. It just didn't have the MK hype machine behind it. The splash the first MK game made with "muh blood, muh fatalities" at the time cannot be overstated.
>>12124174The sprites in Eternal Champions are fuckin gorgeous so is the animations.
>>12122773I'm OP and this was a common game dumbass. Hell I think it was bundled with the Activator which is how I got it. That thing was completely useless though, absolute trash.
>>12124174It was the gore. Digitized sprites helped it but no arcade fighter was gorey like that before MK. I remember seeing it for the first time at my local skating rink in probably '93. It blew my mind and the violence made it feel like it was some kind of bad thing that you as a kid probably shouldn't be seeing but there it was. It had a real edge factor that hit at the perfect time.
>>12124174Good point. Digitized CG was a big deal too.
The lore was generic shit. That guy is just a plain ripoff of DC Deadshot. Generui druid. Cave man, but also looks like Blanka. Whore wearing nothing. wtf.
>>12119821I think being on the cd kind of fucked it over. It was pretty good tho
>>12124530The cyborg fighter and Vietnam vet vampire are cool fuck you
>>12124530deadshot is just a desperado archetype ya normie
