the pre-sf2 era was a wash, which brings us to the era i know best in gaming. i was desperate to find a hidden gem, a lizard person of some kind tucked away in an obscure title that no one remembers, or really, anything to avoid having to crown taito's dino rex (1992) as the first fighter with playable lizards.
having been mostly a nintendo and arcade kid, i decided to search sega's back catalogue. and wow, did i find some lizards. gems one and all, but are the games good?
*screech* no, wait! this one was first! go there and then you can come back here.
after the heady summer of street fighter 2 - but on the mega drive - there was beast wrestler. or to give it its more generic japanese title, beast warriors.
either way, the box art is glorious, featuring a black anthropomorphic dragon raising their head in triumph, while stomping on their opponent and clutching a sword, which appears to have a handle of... pierced dragon wings? also the dragon isn't holding it by the handle for some reason. ouch, dragon. i hope your paw-scales are tough.
as wikipedia and several other aggregated-factoids websites will tell you, this image was created by yasushi nirasawa, in his position as a model-builder for hobby japan magazine. i would personally like to know more about it. hobby japan itself is heavily focused on model-making, so is this a model that was built and photographed by nirasawa? so many questions.
released in october in japan and just one month later in the north american market, beast wrestler is, as this title suggests, more of a wrestling game than a street fighter-alike. i'm not much for wrestlers - distinct lack of lizards, y'see - so this was the first fighter i'd played with an isometric perspective!
still, it's 1v1 fighting and you can be a lizard, so i'm satisfied. if you're not, hold tight, there's a more traditional fighting game to come.
but for now let's just wallow in these designs. the creators of beast wrestler have given us that rarest of gifts - not just a lizard, or even multiple lizards, but all lizards.
yes, each player character is some form of draconic creature. from the quadrupedal federico (who the game proclaims to be world rank no. 9 - and number 1 in mexico!) to the insectoid, uh, airhohle, they're all considered to be "dragons" by the game's lore. granted, not all of them look reptilian - octii and arelow stand out as particularly bizarre, being an octopus-like being and an amoeba respectively - but there are enough reptiles of various kinds in here to where it doesn't really matter.
as a kid i would have wanted this game so bad. the MD's sprites have that poppy, neon greebledness to them that characterised 90's toys like dinosaur in my pocket, of which i was a huge fan. the presentation is overall slick, if poorly translated, and there's a beefy instruction manual which is chock full of lore.
the plot of the tournament mode is that you're a rookie "ruler" of a dragon warrior, entering a championship against a group known as the Dragon Warriors Committee. (so why not just call it dragon warrior... oh.) these dragon warriors are "born out of the technological masterpiece of what the life sciences can offer", then... forced to fight by rich bastards, i guess?
i think it's supposed to be more like pokémon than bloodsport, as they mention whether various dragons get along with their rulers, but it's got that layer of 90's cyberpunk grit where you're unsure whether anyone is good. also, one of your opponents is a straight-up right-wing nationalist.
oops, sorry. "not a right-wing nationalist, because he's actually a madman". i'll let y'all dwell on that one.
anyway, this tournament structure isn't just set dressing, but actually dictates the gameplay. as your dragon triumphs over the dragons of shinzo abe and co, more opportunities in the shady world of beast wrestling/dragon warring open up to you, meaning you can buy training or food for your dragon. also, as you climb the ranks you earn the right to buy a gene lab pass, which lets you add genetic elements from defeated foes into your own dragon.
this looks really cool, and it's the reason that in tournament mode, you only get one choice of dragon. it's a neat-looking dragon, though, and the fact that you can grow and change its appearance goes a long way to making up for that lack of choice.
the problem, though, is that for all its innovation, the game isn't actually that fun to play. i enjoy the gameplay style of evading damage by moving around instead of blocking, but the hitboxes make no sense, some specials can hit you from any angle, and the sound and graphical effects for landing a hit are underwhelming, making it hard to tell if something actually hit. this is a big deal, because there are no life bars.
yes, you read that right. the orbs on the hud represent how many times a beast cried out, or was forced to submit; that is, they are round indicators. after you do a certain amount of damage, an "A+" symbol will also appear, which means you can use your deathblow attack, which i think only works if your opponent is close to death? but there is no way to tell how much damage you have done, and thus no way to know when to use this attack! the two little red dots on the hud? they do nothing!
on top of that, gameplay is slow. fights are timed at 7 minutes for 3 rounds, which is ridiculously long. health takes forever to wear down, so you're left chipping away at your opponent with weak attacks until someone falls over. even a visual KO isn't definitive, because the characters can be knocked down for a few seconds and then get back up and be fine, without advancing the round counter. it's frankly quite a mess.
which is a shame, because with the right programming, this could have been something unique. instead, it's barely playable.
oh well. federico, green anthro dragon beast, you will be forever in my heart, in the game you could have been in.
next up in 1991... fighting masters
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