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What do you do when you aren’t sure what to write? You do what Drew Kuminski did and raid your game collection for inspiration. Luckily for us, he finds quite a gem to write about.

Well I sat here, for almost four hours straight, just trying to come up with the right topic to talk about. Let’s see, Jack Thompson got disbarred from law practices in Florida… naaa, I’m sick of that guy. Shouldn’t have to waste my breath on him. Let’s see… oooh the new DS that has been revealed. Well… that I could save for another time, it’s not coming out for a little while. New Punch-Out? Yeah sure, I’ll TOTALLY write about a game I barely know anything about! [/sarcasm] Well, maybe it’s time I looked at something different. After all I fancy myself as a real OG of video games. All the way back to when I owned a NES and Atari 2600 when I was two.

So maybe I could talk a little about it, show off something I’ve always been partial too. Let’s see…how about we take a look though the old Sega Genesis (Mega Drive for you Brits out there) collection and see what comes up. Vectorman…no. Madden ‘93…no. Streets of Rage…no. Sonic… well yeah… no. I don’t want the bad memories of that 360 game. Shoot I don’t think there could be anything I could use… wait a second. Well what do we have here?

Back in 1993, the market found not one but TWO mega successes within one genre. Street Fighter 2 from Capcom, and Mortal Kombat from Midway. Both games captured the same audience for distinctly different reasons. Street Fighter had a system that was so airtight perfect it accidentally created the combo system. Mortal Kombat brought unique characters and the bloody match ending fatalities into the mix. As the both of them almost single handily revitalized the arcade industry and later appeared on consoles. The money signs flashed in the eyes of many other companies, who began work on fighting game franchises of their own. Many of these games were nothing more than cheap cash ins on the craze, and it painfully showed. However one franchise stuck out in the batch. Eternal Champions for the Sega Genesis.

When Sega of America began work on the game, they wanted to handle the concept of a fighting game differently. When people usually made a fighting game, Plot, character development, and overall story line all took a backseat. Leaving the characters all looking and feeling generic. With Eternal Champions however, that was changed. The story goes that there lives a god like deity known as the Eternal Champion. A watcher of sorts on the world we know, whose sole goal is to help keep the balance of good and evil. However nine particular souls, each expert in the martial arts, were killed before they could fulfil their particular destiny. Thus throwing the balance off whack. The Champion, knowing that this just wouldn’t do, brought all of them together before their deaths and put them into a tournament. Whoever could beat the other eight, then the Eternal Champion himself, would be given a second chance in life. Returned to their life with knowledge of how to prevent their death and change the course of history for the better. Pretty heavy stuff.

Each of the nine characters hail from different times and origins. You have a half-human, half-fish from Atlantis, an ex-cat burglar from 1920’s Chicago, a warlock/scientist from 1692 Salem, a half-human half robot kick boxer from the far future, and even a caveman. Each of them fought using an authentic fighting style (which the instruction manual went into detail over), and had stages from their particular timeline. The fighting system was first and foremost tough. Button mashing would only get you past the first boss, and that was if you were lucky. You had to study moves and understand how to play the character to perfection. While that would certainly please the SF fans, MK fans would crave blood and violence. Which the game would happily supply in the form of stage fatalities the game would call “Overkills”. To set these up all you had to do was have the final hit be in a particular place in a particular direction, and away they went to their painful death. With an aggressive ad campaign behind it the game went on to have success.

With all the success a sequel was inevitable and in 1995 Sega put one out for its Sega CD. Entitled “Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side”, the game delivered a much bigger, not to mention a much gorier sequel. The second title introduced the Dark Champion, the yin to the Eternal Champion’s yang. Who enters himself into the tournament, as well as hides away four more souls to prevent the tournament’s goal from being fulfilled. On top of the game’s fighting engine being balanced and simpler. The game added four initial and several hidden characters into the mix. The hidden characters ranged from the sensible, like a Vietnam vet, to animals, to a friggin’ senator who fights in Washington D.C., throws pins at his opponent yelling “I am not a crook!”, and even kills them by turning into a mailman and unloading a machine gun clip into them.

On top of all this, the overkills from the last game were given three more ways to kill people, sudden deaths, vendettas, and cinekills. Sudden deaths were essentially the same as overkills, only the victim can be at as much as 25% health for them to happen. Vendettas were essentially the Mortal Kombat fatality, where you implement a code which causes the character to kill his or her opponent themselves. Then there was the cinekill. Where the Dark Champion would teleport the victim to his layer, where in an FMV he kills them. While not all of these were gruesome, some of them are still cringe worthy and in some cases downright nasty.

(Warning: Like I said, some of the death sequences are extremely violent, and the video should be viewed with discretion.)

The sequel unfortunately didn’t fare as well as its predecessor, mostly due to it being put onto the Sega CD. However the series was still popular enough to have two spin off games, Chicago Syndicate for the Game Gear, and X-Perts for the Sega Genesis, which both sucked horribly and should be avoided at all costs. As well as two surprisingly good game books, The Cyber Warriors, and Citadel of Chaos. There was even a cartoon series planned but never released. Alas work began on a third title for the Sega Saturn, titled “Eternal Champions: The Final Chapter”. However Sega of Japan had a fighting game franchise of its own. The graphically impressive but story line voided Virtua Fighter. Since the main head ups didn’t see a need for two fighting game franchises, one had to get the axe. So since Virtua Fighter just so happened to be Sega of Japan’s baby, as oppose to Sega of America’s Eternal Champions. Eternal Champions was given the boot and its third game was cancelled.

The franchise to me was always a fun, addictive series that has been left behind when it could’ve, and should’ve had more. If you want to give it a try yourself don’t be afraid to go give it a look. The first game can be picked up right now on Wii’s virtual console for 800 points, or eight bucks. However the truly great game in the series is still Challenge from the Dark Side. Which if you can find along with a Sega CD, should be on your to grab list.

With that, I shall leave you to begin your search for this awesome title, and return to my sanctuary. Where I shall be… figuring out what the f**k I’m going to write about next week.

If you’d like to download the two game books I mentioned in the column. You can pick the both of them up at this website in two free zip downloads.