Battle of the Eras (1994). A Mortal Kombat Klone that literally sold 0 copies and is extremely broken. The bosses weren't coded in, the game's a complete eyesore, and there's a documentary about the game online. It's abhorrent, yet I can't look away fron it.

Those backgrounds look like they belong in a point&click adventure

"Tecumseh: Born in the Shawnee tribes..." OMG. Did they really just randomly grab a major figure from history to plop in as a random fighter?

Oh blue skeleton lord, until D&D is dethroned, you’re no longer able to say “ Combos” you’re only allowed to say *COMBINATION*

Forget about the Super Bowl...THIS is the must-watch matchup of the weekend!

1:20 A Cheap Pop-Culture Rewind?? D-Von...get the lawyers! Thanks for having me on Mattbrah 😃

Bio F.R.E.A.K.S (1998) Midway's attempt at making another Mortal Kombat-like game, but in a dystopian "Neo-America", with fighting mutants and a really...really weird toad guy as one of the playable characters.

Holosseum (Sega arcade, 1992) - a fighting game that used the Time Traveler cabinet. A lineup of four whole fighters including the all-star "Dave"!

Big nod to using the Eternal Champions CD soundtrack in here, which was the very first thing I thought of hearing the premise.

The end of the video teased _Tongue Of The Fatman_ -- looking forward! 😀

I'm going to take a wild guess that this was originally supposed to be a 3D fighter, a'la the replays. In that context, the voxel graphics make sense. Theoretically, you could get the fluidity of Virtua Fighter combined with something like the digitized look of Mortal Kombat. But given how unfinished the game feels, I bet they had to drastically scale back the scope late in development.

There's no fatalities, because they couldn't afford to put that in. Also, is it just me, or do those animated cutscenes look similar to the classic animated Heavy Metal movie? Furthermore, that boss, looks similar to Skeletor from He-Man lol

I still think it's odd that despite this series going on for a couple years now, you've still yet to cover Tattoo Assassins, one of the games that flashes by in the title sequence. You know what must be done to rectify this.

"Anyone who has ever thought a mechanic that limits usage of your basic special moves in a fighting game is a good idea - let it be known... I hate you!" Art of Fighting:

Of all the places to see Tecumseh's abriged history I did not think it would be in a 90s fighting game.

Just binged the complete “Worst Fighting Game” series. This episode comes at a perfect time!

I miss magazines. It was an art, as were some of the amazingly memorable advertisements. One page could convince a sucker like me back in the day to try a game based exclusively on the amount of skulls and monsters featured, plus how overall metal the ad was.

BoomBots (PS1). It is time.

7:15 Body Blows was released for the Amiga before the MS-Dos version

I think the one object lesson people learned in the 90s was, much like creating an anthropomorphic animal with attitude in a platformer, fighting games are a lot harder to make than they look.

I vividly remember playing this game with my cousin back in the day and mashing buttons them the opponent got dizzy after being defeated hoping to get a fatality. That being one of three PC-only fighting games from back then I remember playing the others being One Must Fall 2097 and Cybergladiators - and the latter truly deserves an episode

16:58 there is one other stage interaction: your character goes up the little step on the side here. groundbreaking stuff. Also, regarding the story: Usually when a fighting game does the "warlord brings everyone to an island" thing there's like, an actual reason for it. Either to harvest fighting energy or to prove some point about being really powerful or whatever, but this guy just seems to be like "hey you, try to beat the shit out of me!"

I really think Catfight (1996) is a worthy contender. A Mortal Kombat Klone where they thought sprites of women in aerobic wear would do enough heavy lifting to forgive not really making anything else.

4:21 That info box was missing a feature: Great game MKII: Yes Warriors: No 😂

Now cover Mortal Kombat 4 for the Gameboy Color.

I was looking away when you mentioned Scottie Pippen.....and then I saw him in the replay lol So bizarre

This is still one of my favorite ongoing series on KZfaq lol. Also in a moment of poetic timing... at 7:15, in the game I was playing while watching this video, an item dropped called "Lie after Lie"... I think the game was agreeing with you lol

Mindscape sure has a lot of shovelware on their resume!

Hi, I'd like to write a quick review of the game in question (I promise I'll be quick). As indicated in the video, Savage Warriors is a game by Atreid Concpet/Kalisto (which is a French studio) and, with some friends, we're organising a voting tournament to elect the "best French game of all time" (on the forum of a French newspaper called "Canard PC") and Savage Warriors was one of them.... ...Before being knocked out in the first round by Empire of the Ants (yes, the 2001 RTS). Just in case, I could put a link just below but I don't know if it'll be blocked in the comments (not to mention that it's all in French!).

Dino Rex deserves a shot on this series. Even though most of these games aren't arcade exclusives, I know Matt has a bit of history with it already and I'd love to see a more in-depth analysis on how bad (or not) it actually is.

3:10 "If you're like me, and I know I am..." I'm ashamed to admit that made me chuckle despite it being such a dumb joke lol

6:43 I heard that Half-life 3 will run on the "4D Echo Vibes" engine. Can't wait!

Before "the Halo killer", we had "the next Mortal Kombat".

Holy shit 7:10 One Must Fall 2097 mentioned. One of my favourite old fighters.

dudes, i'm so amped that matt mcmuscles finally added 4D echo vibes. gonna re-listen to all his videos now with my headphones plugged in, on max

That character select is really neat at least. I guess it wouldn't work in a game with a lot of fighters but I wouldn't mind seeing something like that in a modern fighter

8:44 omg hi Zagreus

18:13 I swear you're one of maybe 5 people who still remembers & appreciates Eternal Champions.

I would have thought 3D Bio Motion meant biologically realistic or motion tracked movements for the fighters, but idk

Heavy Nova (1991) a Sega Genesis fighting robot game with a platformer single player mode that fails on both fronts, several moves have no hitboxes, all enemies can stunlock you, there's no walls so enemies can run forever, and it has an insane stamina mechanic where you're forced to spend more than half the match on the floor. It's worse than Rise of the Robots in every way.

I always wanted the ability to Imitate Chill Penguin in a fighting game.

all the eternal champions music in this video... i miss her so bad bro

lol “if you’re like me, and I know I am…” brilliant

Was just reading through an old issue of Next Generation magazine, Nov. 1995, and they gave Savage Warriors 3/5 stars noting it as a "very competent effort" and saying that its hanging from background items mechanic was "particularly innovative." In that same issue, KoF '95 received a rating of 2/5 stars. (Meanwhile NHL '96 on SNES was given a 5/5 star "revolutionary" review.)

Slaughter Sport, Time Killers(Genesis), Shadow: War of Succession, and Dangerous Streets would all make good contenders.

Battle beasts (1995) for pc I think would make an interesting conversation. I remember playing it when I was a kid and hating the controls.

Suggestion: I can't remember the name but I vaguely recall playing in the early 2000s a PC fighting game where it was basically robot fights like rock-em-sock-em robots, but as a computer game. One odd feature this had was stat ups you can buy with money you get from winning fights. Which yeah, you apparently need to min-max like crazy to beat later enemies. Most clear memory I had was of this lady whose real job is a doctor... kicking my --- with some sort of jaguar themed mech that killed me by pouncing on me like a cat. It's been so long... the frustration of that pounce move is what I remember best.

Cameo by Tongue of the Fatman/Slaughter Sport at the end…that NEEDS to be part of this series. It’s truly awful.

I had this as a kid, I bought it in its big-box out of a charity shop (UK thrift shop) while we were on holiday at the seaside. I felt so lucky to have grabbed what was clearly such an amazing game for just a few quid. I waited all week to get home and play it, and read the manual cover-to-cover once a day until then. I never bought another fighting game again - and let me tell you, it wasn't because I had all I needed in 'Savage Warriors'. I've been watching this series with baited breath, waiting for the day you'd bring the memory of this game screaming back to me. Thanks, it's every bit as awful as I remember.

Man this game really looked at Eternal Champions and went "Hey let me copy your homework" didn't it?

I can´t believe Tekken 7 stole the Infinite Azure stage from this game´s replay feature.

There's no way that they were doing voxels that small back then. Likely its a polygons without anti-aliasing (jagged edges) with pixellated textures.

"If you're like me, and I know I am..." SENT me

These videos have turned into my comfort food, always happy when there's a new one haha

Phew, that ad was a RUSH of nostalgia! I remember staring at it over and over in magazines, thinking that the game must be SO COOL. I'm glad I didn't have a good computer now.

@3:05 Is that Doomcock from DVD overlord?! Man did he ever upgrade from the 90's.

Another fun video. I love this series 💪

the song in the outro really made tingle my nostalgia feel ... but i didn't know where it was from ... bit thinking and it popped in my mind ... ETERNAL CHAMPIONS!

Using voxels for this kind of game is something I haven't seen before, very interesting idea I must admit! The 3D view with the Mode-7-like floor looks awesome. This was for 1995 computers so the alternative I think would have been untextured & low-poly, for characters that move smoothly like this, unless you had a pretty powerful computer, maybe.

I hate how morbidly fascinated I am with how this game looks

core memory unlocked when you showed the magazine ad haha

I know "voxel" is the wrong term to use, and I'm at a loss myself for what to call this particular style for the 3D characters (assuming of course they are actual 3D models), but what it reminds me of is a low-poly 3D modeling technique where adjacent polygons in the model actually _do not_ meet at their edges (like in a typical 3D mesh) but rather slightly overextend, allowing their textures (which include transparent pixels) to fake the presentation of a more curved/complex surface (that might otherwise entail a much higher polygon count). The technique, while not necessarily common in the early 3D era, was not unknown either. For comparison, it's like how the top surface of a table extends outwards from the actual frame/legs it stands on. In "low poly" terms, you wouldn't actually model each individual table leg and the framework underneath it, you'd simply render a simple 3D box with each of its 4 sides textured to resemble a complete "side view" of the table (legs and framing, but otherwise transparent) and then render a final polygon on top to represent the topside of the table. Whereas a "real" 3D table might require a minimum of, say, a 30-polygon mesh (assuming a rectangular solid for the tabletop plus each of its four legs), this technique does a similar thing in just _five_ polygons.

Honestly i'm sort of morbidly curious about the credit for the animated sequences; the art style reminds me of the same style from the animation sequences from both Warcraft Adventures as well as Full Throttle

This series is my life-force, having to deal with some of these games as a kid too, I love it so much haha

Been waiting for the next one of these

I'm going to laugh really hard when Matt and I release Pray For Death videos at the same time.

Interesting choice, dropping the Eternal Champions theme there at the end, because that's exactly what the stamina meter discussion made me think of. Did anyone actually play EC with that "chi meter" or whatever the hell it was enabled? I always turned it to infinite when me and my brother would play in versus, and the fact that it was stuck on made the arcade mode WAY harder than it needed to be. Even with that, EC isn't Worst Fighting Game material, but that's what the topic brought to mind.

Great, as soon as you mentioned _One Must Fall_ I have its catchy af menu theme stuck in my head _again_ XD And this is about a tournament featuring warriors from different time periods? This is the same plot as _Eternal Champions_ Also I think they should've used prerendered _cartoon_ characters, since that opening movie ain't looking too bad.

Oh man, I haven't thought about One Must Fall in ages. I might have to get that running again.

Love these episodes!

17:50 oh you're teasing me SO MUCH run dude you don't even know. Timeslaughter, Tongue of The Fat Man, Pit Fighter, Street Fighter 1, are all games I would absolutely love to see you cover

I feel a lot of love and fun from the sprite art. The aesthetics of the character select, difficulty slider, and replay are sublime to me (I am a sucker for skeuomorphish design). Along with the equally nice background art, I gotta hand it to the 2D artists!

"If you are like me, and I know I am..." This is genius.

said it before but Time Slaughter def needs to be included in the series.

If you’re doing 90s PC fighters, PLEASE do Cyber Gladiators from SIERRA!!! 🙏🙏🙏

I'll be honest, I read the titles as "Sausage Warriors"

I used to own this one!!! it was distributed by Expert software here, still loved it with my brother!

Can't wait for the timeslaughter episode you have been teasing us with it since ever.

17:36 I noticed that "Girl Fight" has been erased from history

Tournament of Legends! Another one of High Voltage Software’s Quantum3 HARDCORE Wii games. I don’t think it’s Iron and Blood levels of bad… but it’s definitely not great. And it might be a nice break from the dregs of forgotten PC MK clones haha

Great Stuff, as always!

Body Blows is a port from the Amiga, tho.

I love how you are able to drag back memories of PC Gamer demo discs that I've not thought about in nearly 30 years.

Man this channel is too funny. I don't know much about many of these games but I love the commentary

Oh god... That clip near the end... Are we going to the Fight Palace soon...?

I love how you mentioned everyone’s weapon but not Scorpion’s rope

Have you covered FX fighter? That was the first cd based pc game I ever had. Came with my creative labs 4x cd drive.

By simply looking at the graphics, I thought this was going to be Rise of the Robots quality.

The intro animation reminds me of the stuff LucasArts was doing at the time with Outlaws and The Curse of Monkey Island. All of the hand drawn stuff in this game look pretty good, gameplay might be shit but kudos to the artists!

I remember playing this way back in the late 90's, to tell you the worst part is playing with a keyboard.

I'd buy a shirt that says "4D Echo Vibes"

Oh please, PLEASE take a look at Time Slaughter! That game was all kinds of crazy!

That was my boy! Two-and-a-half time Golden Nogger winner, Jay Hunter!

oh my god i cannot wait to see you do Timeslaughter

I love these videos!

I do really like the voxel characters thing. If I cross my eyes a little, it almost looks like a Robot Chicken sketch. Perhaps with a more intentional art direction for the character design, it would've looked really cool.

The animation looks so familiar! But I can't quite place it. Mobygames credits Patrice Bruel, Michel Prudhomme, and Pascal Valdes. (In some curious coincidence, the apparent website of Mr. Valdes features a logo that resembles that of Savage Warriors.)

Matt's notes for this video must have been "This particular ad makes me very angry!!!"

This series has left me with two distinct realizations. Firstly, there are Way more fighting games out there than I ever thought possible. Second, there's probably a good reason why I've never heard of them until now... on a show called "The Worst Fighting Game"

I’m pretty sure the only reason we haven’t covered Fatman yet is because it’s almost certainly going to rank as the worst.