Retroulette #28: Eternal Champions

The year is 1993. Jurassic Park is breaking box office records, What Is Love by Haddaway is taking the charts by storm, and Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter have captured the hearts and minds of young men and women in every arcade and home the world over.

Sega looked at those two games and said "Yes. Both of those things."

"At the same time."

Thus was born Eternal Champions.

I have a history with Eternal Champions.

I can't not have this game.


Seriously, I've had a copy of this game since it released pretty much and I don't know how. I've sold it, traded it, I've moved like a dozen times, once all the way across the country. Eternal Champions is always there. I've never once bought it, I can't remember anyone ever buying it for me. It just is. It's Eternal.

And I hate it. I always have. But let's get on with playing it.

The game opens up with a character from the game beating up the Sega logo. This part is neat, because it's random every time.

We have Blanka B.C...

Green Lantern...

Shang Tsung sucking the soul out of the logo...

Jean Grey/Phoenix...

A a wizard whose mighty powers include changing colors of things, and taking his robe off...

And a cyborg who, I shit you not, loses to the Sega logo.

There's more characters, but after resetting the console like 30 times I never seen any ones other than these. And as much as I like turning off Eternal Champions, every time I turn it back on it kills me a little inside.

Ok. So. This is the Eternal Champion:

He lives somewhere in time and space. In his own words:

Of course, the very next thing he says is:

So he's really shitty at his job. Who made this asshole Champion forever?

Long story short, this guy decides he can't do this alone. He finds a whole bunch of badass fighters throughout history. The warriors have all for some reason met untimely deaths. So he decides to make their souls all fight, and the winner gets to fight him for the chance to reclaim their soul and return to life a few seconds before they died. Then, somehow, that fighter is supposed to make everything better.

Great idea man. That's why you're the Champ.

"The world is going to explode you say? I know! GHOST FIGHTING!"

Ok, let's do this. First things first, which fighter shall I choose to represent the hope of mankind?

An Assassin named Shadow. Don't think too hard about these characters Sega.

A human with cybernetic limbs, and you name him RAX? Sega, you aren't even trying to pretend anything in this game is original.

I mean.....do I even need to say anything?

What the shit is this? An actual name? Are you sure her name isn't Pain or Punchwoman or something?

Yeah, that's more like it.

At what point in Earth's timeline is the world populated by Goblin Aquamen?

  Another real name. Sega could have given this guy another generic forgettable name like or Nightmare or Midnight.

Son of a bitch. At least they added that K to make it extra kool.

I picked this guy. He was the last in the roster and I wasn't going through all those characters again.

I'm not a big fan of fighting games for one very simple reason: I fucking suck at them. It's not the games' fault, I just don't have the dedication necessary to really compete. I'm the bloke who button mashes his way through every match, and with some fighting games I can have a measure of fun doing that. Not so with Eternal Champions.

Our match begins atop some buildings in China or something.

"Somehow Shadow's hair has turned red. This is a case for Dick Gumshoe!"

This fight is embarrassingly short. With karate she kicks my ass back to Tienanmen Square. Her fighting style is "Mileena + Kitana and nothing else". My guy can....kick.

"Your powers of teleportation and deadly fan blades are no match for my sensible loafers!"

No joke though. This lass fucks my shit up good.

In case you missed it:

Yeah, and it just goes on like that. For like 20 rounds. I don't win a single one. Every combination of buttons does nothing but produce a kick that she laughs of with a punch to my face. And she constantly taunts me with a single sound bite that I guess is supposed to be "Coward" but sounds like "Kawuwahh". I can't blame her though, my main strategy at this point is to cling to the air at the top of the screen to stay away from her barrage of strikes.

"Oh god oh god. Maybe she can't see me behind this life bar."

The worst part is I can't even figure out how to quit and go back to the menu, because clearly this guy is in way over his fucking head here. Shadow can shoot power out of her hands. He has pretend cat claws. Every time I lose two fights in a row, it just starts the next match. No "Would You Like to Continue? Because you are getting your ASS handed to you." So I just have to reset the system every time. I imagine there's an easier way to select a new fighter, but leave it to this shitty game to make it harder than "Do you want to select a new fighter Y/N Pick One"

So next I decide to play as Rax. I'm not too confidant in his fighting abilities. He got his ass kicked by letters. But maybe he can shoot laser beams out of his robot eyes or something.

The match pits Rax against Xavier.

 How did I do? Well, the best I've ever done in this game. I managed to get his health down to 20%. Mine was even lower mind you, but I was hopeful I could mash my way to victory. When it looked like I could win my first round, I fucking ran out of time.

And that's the best I managed to do. The next few dozen rounds looked the same. I managed to learn a few moves other than Punch and Kick with Rax, but all of them amounted to jack fucking shit.

"Dat ASS!"

Ok jerkass, time to bring out the big guns. Caveman Blanka is going to kick you in the dick.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh shhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

HOW MUCH DID THE COVER ART LIE?

Kudos to Sega. They weren't selling this under any pretenses that this product was anything other than a soulless cash in. The box tells you everything you need to know. "It's Christmas and your parents procrastinated so Mortal Kombat was sold out."

What more is there to say? This game is an example of copying everything from something great without realizing why that thing is great.