Eternal Champions

[Glisp]

Just PM'd Michael Latham on Facebook regarding the matter. Hopefully he'll give me a reply. It might take a bit though as he's very busy with his company and all.

Regarding gameplay itself, Champion difficulty actually functions like the original EC's Contest mode. Where in you get unlimited continues but are forced to go back two people. This is an exception for fighting the EC and Dark EC. Lose to either of them and as usual, it's game over. Another tweak for Champion mode is that when you face the Dark EC you must play as the Eternal. It is the unlockable playable version. (actually both of them. If you lose the first round of the match, you have access to EC2 though personally EC2's kinda weak.) Also, at the end of the fight with the EC, the game acts like Dark EC has come to perform a Cinekill on the Eternal before teleporting him away for the final battle. You also get a special ending. It has a cutscene of the Dark EC fighting the Eternal and them destroying each other. After the credits, you also get a teaser to EC3's plot (which is actually ironically in the US manual also.) and a cutscene of Dark EC summoning his "Infernal Champions".

[The Coop]

If I remember correctly the original EC uses ~30 colors in game.

The Sega CD does not affect color usage at all. It's still up to ~60 colors at once in most games (as shadow & highlight is practically never used).

I would be VERY surprised if the SCD version of EC uses more than 30 colors at once.

Ready to be VERY surprised? I grabbed these via Kega Fusion about ten minutes ago...

= 41

= 45

= 45

= 46

[retrospiel]

Thanks for a lot for taking these! but I call Pah! close enough!

[Glisp]

Ready to be VERY surprised? I grabbed these via Kega Fusion about ten minutes ago...

= 41

= 45

= 45

= 46

What happens if you include the rotating palletes? The game uses a ton of those. In fact, I think there's at least one rotating pallete in each stage somewhere.

Edit: also Mike Latham said this in reply to the following question on Facebook:

Me: Okay, so there's a heated debate going on regarding if Eternal Champions: Challenge From the Dark Side uses 256 colors or not. Can you confirm if it does or does not use 256 colors in parts of the game?

Mike: Both sides are right

[Axl]

Great game. Takes time getting into tho.

Question: Is there any way to quit out of a 1p game without resetting the console? I can't imagine that the option doesn't exit but have tried just about everything.

[Vector2013]

Sega-16 should really do another interview with Steven Lashower and ask him specific details about EC1 (he didn't work on EC-CD)
like why they cut Blast & Chin Woo from the Genesis version.

(was the game originally going to be a 32mbit game?)


As you can see Chin-Wo and Blast were originally part of the Genesis game.
were they just cut or unfinished all together?
also Midknight uses Blast's Vietnam War background, I take it this was not intended originally,
was his bio rewritten to include the part about him being a biochemist who was working on a virus to be used in the war,
or was that always part of his story?
(another proof is that in the CD version Blast's stage is indeed the Vietnam stage)


Steven Lashower's old website where i got the above image from.


and a quote from the interview with Steven Lashower :



Is this the reason why Shadow got a completely new outfit in the CD version?
because of legal reasons?

Also Blade reminds me so much of the comic character who goes by the same name,
was EC's Blade originally based on the comic character? Perhaps a licensing deal that fell through?

Also Blade's bio states that he was chasing a scientist but was then framed by his own government and shot,
and Midknight's bio states that he was killed in the future by someone who drove a magnesium stake into his heart.
Did these two characters originally share a storyline where Blade hunted Midknight?
Because Blade's bio states that he was tracking a scientist with a virus,
and Midknight's story mentions that he fled because they made him make a virus.


I have so many questions about this game and i wish i could ask them. >_<

Great post, not sure if anyone answered but Sega Visions showed the deleted characters in the title screen but were cut because of size of cart it said. So Midnight was thrown in his background, but in Sega CD they had all the room to play with so they put everyone in their correct background, added all characters, and fixed some stuff requested by fans. I love listening to the Vietnam Jimi Hendrix style music on Sega CD. So many extras thrown in, the EC on the Genesis seemed like the beta and the Sega CD the version they envisioned. I like both games. Trident ftw.

[Segadream]

Eternal Champions is the one of my favs.
Double for cd. It makes MK fatals look like a day at the beach.
And it is very good. One of the main reasons to own a SEGA CD.
And you can find the MEGA/Gen 1st cart for reeellly cheap.
I think I paid 99 cents for a loose copy I have.
Its not the best ever but it is close and way better than some of the crap fighters.
I may be in for it but: Brutal, pit fighter (although in its day was pretty good considering), Rise, clayfighters, primal rage,time killers all sucked.
I love Eternal Champions compared to those.
My list goes
1.SF2 (the rest of the Capcom fighters here too With MVSC2 before the rest of those)
2.eternal Champions(CD then the cart)
3.Mortal kombat(one then trilogy)none of the modern
4.Killer instinct (gold then cart)
the rest don't even matter.
P.s. Jetta was tha shit.

[Criss]

Yeah does seem pretty obvious that Midknight and Jetta got Blast and Chin Wo's leftover stages. Wonder if it was cartspace that held them back or just time constraints.

Seems though (judging by this early sales magazine) that 11 characters were planned. Having Blast and Chin Wo makes 11

[NeoVamp]

Seems though (judging by this early sales magazine) that 11 characters were planned. Having Blast and Chin Wo makes 11

We must acquire this prototype!

[Saturn Fan]

Terrible game. Never liked EC, one of those oddball Sega concepts that should have been left on the drawing board. Blehh.

Street Fighter and MK games are where its at on the Genesis in the fighting genre. This one? Ugghhh.


~SF, uhh....

[NeoVamp]

omg proto talk, how interesting let us continue instead of hating!

Yes I agree completely, we must discover if a build of this exists!

or even better, ACQUIRE THE SOURCE CODE! then we can play EC with all the CD characters on the Mega-Everdrive with pcm-wav audio!

and fix the difficulty at last, nice looking game but the cpu cheats.

[Saturn Fan]

omg its made by Sega. Let's love it unconditionally even though it sux

^^ I disagree. Not everything Sega came out with was worthwhile, and this shitty fighting game with its stale music, generic characters, oddball gameplay, and overall DREARY presentation and style was one of them.

Generic fish-mutant looking guy

Vs

Generic trenchcoat 50's detective noir archetype

Fight!

.........


ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz



Edit: Did'nt like those characters? how about....


Generic nightclub stripper

Vs

Generic cosplay wizard guy w/staff (cause all wizards have staffs right?!)


Wait, what are you doing with that cartridge? noooo! Don't chuck it in the trash!

[NeoVamp]

^^ I disagree.

My point was that you didn't need to hate right when we found something interesting to discuss.

hate when a normal conversation is going on, not when we're trying to unravel gaming mysteries.

[Azathoth]

One thing about the original Eternal Champions that always stuck out to me was how bug-free and playable it was when using the Eternal Champion with a Game Genie code. I'm pretty sure the game doesn't even freeze after you beat it with him, it just skips the ending stuff and goes straight to the credit roll.

Virtually all fighting games of this era proceed to freak out when you force them to let you play as an unplayable character with a cheat device (for obvious reasons). Comparing this to the unplayable mess of the SNES SFII Game Genie boss code is like daylight and dark.

Being a huge fighting game fanatic and a big fan of cheat devices I tried to get playable boss characters on every game I could get my hands on. The only other game I can think of that is comparable to EC in this regard is the SNES version of World Heroes; you can pick Geegus with a PAR code and play all the way till the credits roll without any problems.

[Barone]