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WORLD HEROES 2 Company: Takara Released: September 1994 Genre: Fighting Graphics: 9.0 Control: 8.0 Sound/Music: 8.0 Storyline: 6.0 Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 SUPER-NES.COM

Takara developed quite a reputation for porting thoroughly butchered Neo Geo fighting games over to the Super NES and Sega Genesis systems. After some very poor ports of SNK's Fatal Fury series, not many people were expecting much from their port of the second World Heroes title, but Takara managed to somehow pull a rabbit out of their hat and released an extremely well done port of World Heroes 2 for the Super Nintendo. Coming in at a whopping 24 megs, this game featured all of the characters, moves, and backgrounds found in the original Neo Geo coin-op classic and turns out to be a surprisingly fun one-on-one fighter. As I mentioned above, the graphic quality in the early Takara Neo Geo ports were average at best. I guess Takara heard enough griping from the fans and decided it was time to turn things around a bit as the graphics in World Heroes 2 are very good. Excellent detail in the backgrounds of each area and even the fighters manage to look almost identical to their Neo Geo counterparts. The characters do lose a few frames of animation but still have a much more fluid look than characters in previous Takara ports. Having been a big Street Fighter 2 fan, I'm normally quite critical of fighting games when it comes to visuals and animation, but I can honestly say that Takara did a very good job with this port and obviously put more effort into this one. I might even go so far as to say that some of the graphics in this game rival that of Street Fighter 2 itself. No kidding. To be honest the one thing I never really liked about the arcade version of World Heroes 2 was the music. I always thought it was a little too repetative and didn't have much variety within the game. For that reason I honestly can't fault Takara for the music in this game as it actually mimics the Neo Geo version fairly closely. I do think the characters voices and sound effects are much better done in this game than those Takara did for Fatal Fury and you can also hear them a lot better in this game as they're not as muffled. Overall this is yet another area that is very close to the Neo Geo original. Before I go any further I must say that the World Heroes series of games doesn't sport the type of depth of a Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat. You won't find combinations, counter-attacks, or much of a special move system for that matter. What this series is, is a nice change of pace and more of a "get your hits in while you can" type of game. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "button masher" but it's close. As in other fighting games, each character has quite a few moves at his/her disposal along with some special moves that require the normal controller motions and button taps to pull off. I always found the special moves in this game to be much easier to pull off than those in SF2, in fact so much so that I tend to special move an opponent to death if I'm playing someone that's not very good. Takara also managed to tighten up the response time. I always felt like there was a slight delay when I tried to execute moves in the Fatal Fury games for the Super NES, but this one felt just as responsive as the Neo version. I think I enjoy playing this game so much now because I got so burned out on Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat back when these games were first coming out for the SNES. World Heroes 2 just has a different and looser feel to it that allows you to enjoy the experience more instead of trying to think three or four hits ahead. Takara went a long way in restoring its' reputation with their port of this game to the Super NES. Not only did they take the time and effort to make this game look and sound like the Neo Geo title, they also put the work in to make the gameplay system accurately bring the fighting style home to the Super Nintendo system. Although this game's fighting system isn't quite as advanced or intricate as Street Fighter 2, it still manages to take the one-on-one fighting style game and turn it into a game that a lot of fun to play and a nice change of pace from the complicated Street Fighter 2 control system. If you're a fighting game fan this game belongs in your collection and for those still stinging from the Fatal Fury releases, you can relax. Takara finally got one right.