I like to play the first World Heroes

[BerryTogart]

You cannot go wrong with the game that inspired the Killer Instinct combo system. (Though my personal favorite is WH2Jet)

 

[HornheaDD]

2 > 2 Jet

Because of the death match mode.

Hundo.

Hundo percent.

Hundo.

 

[SouthtownKid]

2 > 2 Jet

Because of the death match mode. Got 1 & 2 on cart.

Plus, didn't Jet get rid of throw reversals and projectile reversals? Fuuuuuuck Jet. Even if I'm misremembering the throw and projectile reversals, losing Death Match mode was bad enough.

Perfect is the worst game in the series

You're out of your feeble mind. Perfect is a masterpiece. Second favorite in the series.

 

[ballzdeepx]

Playing this again today and either just realized it (or forgot) but in the bonus stages, all the monks in the background are doing jerk-off motions.

 

[LoneSage]

Yup, just another reason the first game is the best.

edit: and is it just me or is Geegus's head a penis?

 

[LoneSage]

All right, fellas. Here's the deal. In light of this thread's recent bump, I am going to share with you all something that has never been collected before in the history of the internet.

In Death Match, fighting against Janne is called the 'hair splitting battle'. It's not sure what is meant by this until the battle is over, when you see the character who lost has gone bald in their portrait.

Last year, almost one year ago to the day on January 31, 2023, in a feverish state I fought against Janne to find what every character looked like bald. However, still disillusioned by the roker's earlier disparaging comment about everyone knowing Hanzo's stage is based on a real location, I chose to not disclose these bald portraits.

NOW, one year later, reinvigorated by the community's shared love for this goofy series, I am ready to share with everyone the results of every character's hair splitting battle.

Hanzo:

Spoiler:

Fuuma:

Spoiler:

Kim Dragon:

Spoiler:

Janne:

Spoiler:

J. Carn:

Spoiler:

Muscle Power:

Spoiler:

Brocken (clearly this is the coolest, because Terminator):

Spoiler:

Rasputin:

Spoiler:

Gentlemen, I am honored to present to you the first collected images of every bald character portrait from the Alpha Denshi masterpiece, World Heroes. Thank you for your time and mao bless

 

[LoneSage]

Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that not only did someone collect the bald character portraits years ago, but they even put them next to the normal portraits as well. I have had my own pictures I took while playing the game with me for a year, swelling inside me, never sharing until a few days ago. And now I know it has always been documented.

 

[Azathoth]

In Death Match, fighting against Janne is called the 'hair splitting battle'.

I felt calling it "Skinhead Death Match" in part 2 always had a little more oomph.

 

[Fygee]

Pretty neat that they included that little historical Easter Egg for Jeanne D'arc.

 

[Ralfakick]

I have fond memories of 2 so that will always be my favorite.

A local bowling alley had the game in a cab, and friends of mine from high school (me in tow) would go to a local cheesesteak shop called The Hungry A (where the age appropriate girls at the time were all nice looking with cutoff jeans etc making our steaks), walk to the bowling area in the same parking lot and bowl some games, then finish it up with a group tourney of World Heroes 2. @Stefan knows where I’m talking about. More about the time and place than the game itself.

When I got my AES WH2 was one on the top of my list to get.

 

[Jon]

I have fond memories of 2 so that will always be my favorite.

A local bowling alley had the game in a cab, and friends of mine from high school (me in tow) would go to a local cheesesteak shop called The Hungry A (where the age appropriate girls at the time were all nice looking with cutoff jeans etc making our steaks), walk to the bowling area in the same parking lot and bowl some games, then finish it up with a group tourney of World Heroes 2. @Stefan knows where I’m talking about. More about the time and place than the game itself.

When I got my AES WH2 was one on the top of my list to get.

Maybe Stefan could call me sometime and spend an hour talking about this place?

@Ralfakick takes my text message data, @Stefan takes my minutes.

Jon

 

[Ralfakick]

Maybe Stefan could call me sometime and spend an hour talking about this place?

@Ralfakick takes my text message data, @Stefan takes my minutes.

Jon

I know you’ve been by there it’s by the Hibachi place where Dairy Queen is, tell you what let’s go to the Hungry A as your cheesesteak place when you visit next, place just closes by 3 everyday though.

And yes I’m sure he has a lot to say about Sproul Lanes, funny enough the last time I went it was with him and others.

 

[LoneSage]

I dunno what it is with the first game and me. Started playing it again on the morning commute and 1CCing it with every character the past week.

For the hell of it, I also played the Genesis version which was handled by Sega Midwest, which only released this game and NHL 95. It's as bad as you could imagine it to be, but they did get one thing right that actually improved upon the original - giving Muscle Power blond hair. The original having MP's hair being the same color as his skin never felt right. I always assumed they did it to lower the chances of Hulk Hogan suing.

Some comparison screenshots:








For the bonus stage, they give the sculpture clothes.


The disciples training in the background were taken out, but some stupa was added in. EDIT: In fact, the stupas were in the original as well, but only on the far end of the stage and only able to see half. In the Genesis game we can see them fully.


They got lazy with Doc Brown being surprised by Geegus and also with Geegus himself by only having his very pixelated head fly towards the screen.


Every character's individual ending was changed to a one-size-fits-all with the character's statue in-between two pillars with fireworks going off.

I also just found a short interview with one of the guys who ported the game:

Interview:Jim Reichert - GDRI :: Game Developer Research Institute

gdri.smspower.org

GDRI: Tell us about developing Genesis World Heroes. Was a lot of time and effort put into doing it? Why was an American division of Sega tasked with converting a Japanese fighting game?

JR: Well, as I was only the developer of the game, I can't really answer the question as to why an American development house was asked to do the port. As for myself, I'd never really heard of the game, and I was simply happy to enter into the game industry at the time -- I wasn't about to ask probing political questions.

It was funny; the original "wunderkind" who was supposed to do the port, a British guy named "Steve," turned out to be all talk. But before he "left," he managed to bilk Sega Midwest out of a fair amount of money (he got a car as part of his deal). Ultimately, I came in to restart the port from the ground up and had very little time to do it. Thankfully, another guy at Sega, whose name was John <something>, helped out with certain parts.

It was actually quite a feat to get all of the eight characters, plus the end boss, in the game -- with all of the animations. Back then, cartridge ROM was expensive!

Yeah, World Heroes (even the original) wasn't anything to write home about. I had to squeeze 82M into a 16M cartridge. The source code was in assembly with absolutely no documentation. There were no testers. There was no one to help me port the artwork.

Anyone who owns this little turd can fire it up again, just to type "JJJ" as the 1st place high score initials -- and have an Easter egg to throw tomatoes at (my portrait). Take that, SOA corporate!

[ED: You do not have to have the 1st place high score for the "JJJ" trick to work.]

GDRI: So did you have the source code from the original game to work with?

JR: I already answered that. "The source code was in assembly with absolutely no documentation." What that basically means is that I had a file that looked like several hundred pages of:

0F77:0000 B8790F MOV AX,0F79
0F77:0003 8ED8 MOV DS,AX
0F77:0005 B409 MOV AH,09
Essentially, it was likely that I was working with a post-compiler assembly dump. I'd worked in assembly before, but on a different chipset. I guess you could say I had only the assembly to work from, not the source and no access to the original authors. Basically, the game was written from the ground up by me, a novice at 23.

 

[Neo Alec]

The Genesis port is bad, but it's impressive if basically only one guy worked on it. I'm impressed it has scaling at all. I remember renting that junk back in the day.

I remember generally liking the SNES version (developed by Nova).

 

[LoneSage]

Still not as much a fan of World Heroes 2 as I am the first game. Everything is technically improved upon but it just doesn't capture me. Some of the win quotes are downright gutbusters, however.



Brocken has my favorite. Out of fucking nowhere.

There's a reason this guy was a fan favorite. Just an overall cool dude.





And before the final fight with Dio, when he straight up massacres the entire crowd of spectators, felt odd in a game with such a campy feeling:

 

[TopTierArcade]

I'm with you. Absolutely LOVE World Heroes and the reason it's a permanent slot in my neo geo 6 slot

 

[Kid Fenris]

Still not as much a fan of World Heroes 2 as I am the first game. Everything is technically improved upon but it just doesn't capture me. Some of the win quotes are downright gutbusters, however.

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Brocken has my favorite. Out of fucking nowhere.
View attachment 74563
There's a reason this guy was a fan favorite. Just an overall cool dude.

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And before the final fight with Dio, when he straight up massacres the entire crowd of spectators, felt odd in a game with such a campy feeling:
View attachment 74567
View attachment 74568

The dialogue in World Heroes 2 is hilarious. SNK translations are often known just for being nonsensical and full of errors, but whoever handled World Heroes 2 (and Art of Fighting 2) knew what they were doing.

 

[LoneSage]

Can any homies do me a favor and, uh, play World Heroes Perfect and see if it's possible to actually defeat Zeus before Neo Dio comes and genocides his whole kingdom? Unbelievably, it appears no one's asked this question before on this forum.

The Zeus fight appears to be an unwinnable battle, with Neo Dio coming in after losing. My strategy is to let Zeus hurt a bit and run the timer out but that doesn't work.

EDIT: It is possible to beat Zeus in the first round, but in the second round Neo Dio comes and still kills Zeus.

 

[LoneSage]

Anyways, we all know Doc Brown was in both Ninja Commando (May 1992) and World Heroes (July 1992):


And we all know Zeus was based on Raoh from Fist of the North Star. But did anyone ever figure out that Zeus was possibly also based on Spider, the villain from Ninja Commando, as well? Here's a comparison of Spider and Zeus from the the World Heroes Perfect intro.


Don't forget to like and smash that subscribe button!

 

[SouthtownKid]

You're almost up to 1 subscriber

 

[LoneSage]

You're almost up to 1 subscriber

Do me a solid and play Perfect again, then right before the Zeus fight create a save state and see if it's possible to beat him, cheers bruv

edit: nevermind, yeah it's possible to beat Zeus in the first round but in the second round Neo Dio still comes and obliterates his castle

 

[Stefan]

But did anyone ever figure out that Zeus was possibly also based on Spider, the villain from Ninja Commando, as well?

Since first noticing a purely visual resemblance around '95 or so, Spider in Ninja Commando struck me as being likely somewhat derived from one of "The Bio Booster Armor Guyver" manga's primary villains, Richard Guyot.

 

[Johnny16Bit]

That Spider dude was traced over a Michael Ironside still.

 

[LoneSage]

That is a brilliant observation Stefan, thanks for sharing. ADK fun facts and discoveries abound uitb

Johnny you too, nice eye. I have wondered for a long time why exactly Spider looked like a real person and I think you nailed it.

 

[LoneSage]

Something I just saw, thought it was interesting. Sprite comparison between NGBC Neo Dio and Blackheart.