Does anyone have information on Eternal Champions 3?

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
1

I know it was scrapped a while ago, but I’ve started to search for info on it. Here’s what I’ve gathered so far…

-It was scrapped for VF in the USA. Sega of Japan held crown over Sega USA and killed it to push VF. Bitch move. Fucking bitch move. VF4 Evo is the only great VF, I don’t care what anyone says. Eternal Champions 3 deserved better.
Now, if they had scrapped EC3 to make VF from scratch, I’d be calmer. No. They wanted to bring Virtua Fighter to the USA, and fucking deleted a perfectly good series “to focus on a single fighting series.” Looking at VF1, I’m sure they meant “we didn’t want the third EC to rape our shit in sales, and we have the kill switch, so bye bye.” Bitch move. Now I see why SEGA had so much failed shit.

-Eternal Champions 1 was about the contest between the champions for their shot to change their history. In Eternal Champions 2, the Dark Champion tossed in and hid some more champions to screw up the balance. In Eternal Champions 3, the storyline was Chaos (the third and most powerful being created at the dawn of time) going insane and making a contest where even the Eternal and Dark Eternal Champion have to throw down. The dark champion gathered some “infernals,” or evil champions that have some relation to the original dozen. It was to even the odds of him coming out on top. There was a WWII nazi who founded an assassination guild that became the Black Orchid (Shadow’s agency). That’s how far down the line could have gone. Here’s a blurb from the creator:

“The third game is all about time travel. The idea was that you could
play the side of the Eternals or Infernals and then try and go back to
the place of the murder and avoid it. As you won, or locked in a time
zone, it would change the present and characters would changes and
story lines would change. The idea was for one side to lock out the
other to win the game, but instead of being over, it would leave to a
battle with Chaos, which was the true evil purposely pitting the two
sides against each other to weaken and he wants to total breakdown of
the timeline so he can bring on true chaos in all time frames.”

There were powers the combatants could trigger too, like making their opponent’s older for a little bit, speeding up the battle, and others. All this with the regular kills, like Overkills, Sudden Deaths, Vendettas, and Cinekills.

But that’s all I can find. If anybody knows more, or has pictures, I would appreciate them.

2

Does it really matter? According to you, MK’s the best US fighting game regardless…:lol:

Seriously though, to answer your question: No. There will never be an EC3. A majority of the team of whom worked on the first two titles have disbanded from the gaming industry (including Kronos to whom also worked on Fear Effect). In fact, the lead designer of the EC project (who’s no longer in the gaming industry) attested to this awhile back (& that there would be no EC3).

Even if there was to be an EC3 (which there won’t) don’t expect Sega to be behind it (but rather an outside company). They have a terrible track record for killing off classic franchises (Streets of Rage, Vectorman, EC, Golden Axe, etc.). With their less than stellar attempts at resurrecting classic franchises (Altered Beast, Shinobi, etc.), please no sequel. Just leave us with the good memories that we all once held dear. Let’s not forget what almost occurred with that attempted resurface with Vectorman PS2, that wasn’t even done by Sega.

Can’t we just move one?

3

It’s the only successful one fully made in America. That’s what I said. Don’t get it twisted. I don’t care if you are joking.
And it probably wouldn’t be the only one if EC got another chance to shine. It did have some popularity around the time Sega pulled that bitch move…
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Wait a second! Doesn’t SAMMY own Sega? Guilty Gear SAMMY? Sammy, in effect, holds the rights to the third EC, doesn’t it? In the third EC, it’s chaos, literally. Sammy has free rein to go fucking nuts! Why not?

4

Er, I kinda lost you when you said Eternal Champions was a promising series…

5

You have a point. The gameplay was hard; I couldn’t get through contest to save my life. I was split on the whole yin/yang thing for special moves. Other than that, it had some potential though. The storyline was great, and the third installment allowed for chaotic shit. Guilty Gear tells me that’s right up Sammy/Arc Systems’ alley. It would be great in this gen if it was made.
It’s just… I don’t like to see anything killed off with a bitch move like that.

6

R.A.X. forever.

7

there wasn’t even an EC 2

8

Wasn’t there a sequel on the Sega CD??

9

there was a eternal champions 2 for sega CD.

Anyway yea the game was cool. I will say though its probably the hardest fighting game ive ever played. The one player mode is pretty ridiculous. I also hated that shitty yin and yang meter you had to do specials. And you couldnt turn it off if you played in overdrive speed setting mode for some random ass reason. I remember there was some code, bug thing to get rid of it. Like play with it off in a match, then play a match with overdrive on and turn it off, then go into the main option screen(i think there were options for every mode), and then switch it to off or on or whatever it was again. Anyway it was random, and you shouldnt have had to go through all that trouble to get it to work anyway.

10

EC was successful as well, despite whether people will agree with that or not. It was the top selling US developed title for the Genesis. This was back when fighters weren’t even popular (with the exception of SF and MK). I’m not getting anything twisted.

I don’t know how hard I have to stress this, but Sega didn’t own complete rights to EC. Deep Water (team that worked on X-Perts and EC2) owned a good share of it as well, and when they went under (due to to the cancellation of EC3) a part of the EC license went under with it. They (Sega) didn’t own complete rights to Streets of Rage either. Yuzo Koshiro (game’s composer) owned some rights to the franchise. In fact, I believe that he managed to attain full rights to series shorlty after SoA denied Streets of Rage 4 for the DC. Yuzo then moved the project over to the Xbox. However, the title later died off without scrutiny. This is a prime example as to why you’ll never see another EC or SoR title from Sega.

Do you honestly think that SoJ would allow Sammy to make a sequel to the series in which they burried? Much less, an America one? Why would they want to resurrect a dead fighting-game franchise (EC) when they have VF? Why else do you not think that Sega (as of to date) hasn’t included EC on any type of Sega collection or Greatest Hits? We are (afterall) talking about the top selling American developed game for the Genesis, put out by none other than SoA. SoJ did everything in their power to kill off any aspecs remotely related to EC once they had decided that they wanted VF as a household Sega name. As nice as it would be to see an EC3, it’s just not going to happen.

People seem to forget that at one point in time, EC had a larger fanbase than that of VF in the States. EC1 was well received and EC2 even better (fixing alot of the balancing/controls issues ) the game was way ahead of it’s time. So much better infact, that SoA asked Deep Water to do a third and final installment to the series for the Saturn. The game would have had better balancing, slicker controls, and an even more diverse combo system than EC2’s. Then, just as SoA gave Deep Water the thumbs up for EC3, SoJ stepped in and demanded that SoA ceased production on the title because they wanted VF to be the top selling fighter for the Saturn?:confused:

I’ll never understand Sega and their marketing decisions. For one, if EC3 was that much of a threat to VF, wouldn’t common sense be to release EC3 after done marketing VF for the Saturn? Secondly, why wouldn’t they want EC3 to be a top seller? So what it were to outsell VF for the Saturn? The game’s being distributed by Sega. So, regardless if EC3 outsells VF or not, SoJ will still get a profit of what the game makes inside/out of the States. SoJ seemed to have no problem with Fighting Vipers being a VF competitor. Oh, wait. It was produced by SoJ. Could you imagine how it would sound if Namco were to suddenly announce that they were cancelling production on Tekken simply to focus on Soul Calibur (or vice versa) & have it be the companies top selling fighter? I can however say that SoJ’s plan did work, being that VF2’s the top selling fighter for the Saturn.

Sometimes I wonder if SoA denying Streets of Rage 4 is karma for SoJ canning EC. Guess what SoA’s reasoning was for turning down SoR4 was? That they didn’t feel that a fighter/beat em’ up would bode well for the DC. For crying out loud, IT’S FRICKIN STREETS OF RAGE! Fans were begging Sega to develop SoR4 for years!

One thing I’ve notice is that the people who complain that they didn’t like EC or that it was a bad game, always had the same cornball arguments that:

A) The controls were bad
B) The game was too hard
C) The game was supposedly a rip-off of SF and MK

Here’s what I respond/ask to that:

A) Did you play the game using a six-button pad? Answer: Nope
B) Did you try entering training session?
Answer: Nope
C) EC didn’t play anything like MK or SF. Granted the game shared the same violence factor as MK, production for EC started around the same time as MK (with MK slightly earlier). Though MK was released alot sooner. In fact, some of what was incorporated in EC2 (such as Vendettas, New special moves, characters etc.) were originally going to be in EC1, but due to time constraints, SoA was forced to pull some stuff out at the last minute.

If you ask me, I’d say that Darkstalkers was inspired a little by EC.

11

Thanks for all of that. I didn’t know all of the facts. I knew Deep Water would retain some rights, but not enough to pour cement into EC’s grave plot.
And sorry for snapping about the MK comment.
After that, I’m gaining Sega hate. I used to just have pity, seeing as they had failing consoles one after another. This one bitch move by Sega of Japan pissed me off though. I don’t even need briefing on the others I’m sure exist.

12

Never did care for the EC games and I was the biggest SEGA head around back in those days.

13

Man I wish I had a Sega CD now because I always wondered about sequels.

14

So did the EC3 (Dark Water) team have anything done, or was it in the Idea stage before SoJ told them to stop?

15

I’m assuming very early development phase. I only saw a simulated picture of it (shadow in a black dress fighting Larcen) in a magazine, but I heard around the net that they were trying to tweak EC2’s system a bit to “ready” it for EC3 before SoJ made it walk the green mile.

16

Dug up an EC Sega CD combo vid, has plenty of infinites, kill combos, etc. for everyone, think Yappy the dog is the only one not represented in it. Can someone host this for me or can I upload it somewhere?

17

Considering how EC and VF play completely different from one another, I don’t know why SoJ was worried about it? It’s just a game that was more popular in the US then in JP (I’m guessing?).

About the infinite combos? Those are great if you know them!:rofl: But if your friends are like mine, they’ll suddenly stop playing you in it!

18

True :rofl: Back then I found that the more retarded ones like Ravens HK, HK, HK…infinite would make someone drop the controller and sigh, but the more stylish ones like Raxs made them want to learn more.

I so wish thise series would comeback, tons of potential IMO, Ramses, Xaevier, Larcen, Midnight…those guys are bad ass designs. :tup:

19

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Terrible, just terrible. :confused:

20

By chance, are there any Eternal Champions combo videos floating about? I loved this game back in the day, but had no idea about infinites and such. I’d love to see 'em, or even some decent combos.