I randomly fired up Eternal Champions on my Sega CD about a year ago. The introduction scene for the SCD version has got to be 10-15 minutes long. It’s great.
In light of this thread, I’m going to play it tonight!
sega better not tamper with it nor mess it up like they ruined Shining Force and Valkyria Chronicles’s new game.
and they should use Challenge from the Dark Side as a foundation for roster size and ultra violence, even if its a new spiritual successor IP under a different publisher
I’m all for a modern Eternal Champions game, especially if Senator makes an appearance as a Secret Boss character with his awesome theme music.
To this day, EC is still the best storyline I’ve seen for a fighting game. It is the only fighting game where I made the effort to play with every character just to see how their lives played out if they didn’t end prematurely. Really liked the endings of Xavier, Raven, Larcen, Jetta, Slash and Dawson. Good times, man.
This is the honest opinion of someone who played both versions of the game a lot in childhood, and now I don’t think its gameplay still holds at all.
If you guys really want to revive the title, take Mortal Kombat 2011 as your best example of what to follow.
Eternal Champions has unforgiving difficult and it exploited a few moves of the characters to be playable both against the CPU as other player (just look at youtube and you can easily notice). Scrap this, make the moves with easier inputs, not necessarily like Street Fighter, and bring back what makes each character individual but working the necessary to make them fit the new gameplay, like Xavier’s gold magic, Trident’s colored barriers and so.
EC had a great advantage over MK in art direction back on the day, with great sprite work and very different style of fighters and stages thanks to its theme. It’s a colorful game despise the violence. Try to not change this much, but scrap the ridiculous things like some secret characters from the Sega CD game (animals, Senator and Xavier with a face-swap). Also it has a great soundtrack, paired with Killer Instinct qualitywise, mainly the Mega Drive version, but the Sega CD also have some killer tracks like the themes of Midknight and Ramses. Don’t try to modernize this like Capcom is doing with SF, just do like the team would have done back in that generation.
It have a exaggerated number of fatalities and they could be resumed for the sake of a better cost-effective player experience, without kill the trademark gore. Again, look at MK and not KI, which removed them in favor of a more family friendly game.
For the last, do a robust story mode, preferentially retelling the events of the original games since they’re almost obscure by this day, and focus on the online component. Don’t be like Capcom or Netherrealm in this one, look at what Microsoft achieved with KI.
That’s all. Good luck and would be cool if you guys share a few more details, like if Sega is planed to join the production or if you’re following the new ToeJam & Earl way.
Ugh, please don’t. NRS’s games are full of questionable decisions (not using hit stun, using 3D hit detection, bad meter management in all their games) and decisions on top of those to try to justify those decisions, and shouldn’t really be seen as a standard to be copied.
Thank you all for the support. we hope to hear more feedback and get even more interest before we take the next step. 800 votes is a great start in the right direction.
If we do this game, it will inherit the unique story features which made the first games unique. Violence factor definitely noted.
Make the execution more forgiving but keep the 90’s style simplicity.
I would absolutely want a real reboot! This was such a fun franchise and it never really got a fair shot. Would love to see it make a comeback like Killer Instinct.
Remember waiting for my brother to be born in 93 and this was being advertised. I was so hyped about it, but my house was to poor to own a Genesis. Now, that can all change!
Oh, yes please. You have my full support for a remake/spiritual sequel.
The MD and Mega CD versions are among my favorite games of all time. Too bad that Eternal Champions is only available on Steam, and Challenge from the Dark Side isn’t available anywhere…
^^^^^ i agree. Very sound advice.
Do’s:
Do follow the success of Mortal Kombat 9 and MKX closely. At the end of the day, it’s the best selling fighting game right now. Of course MK isn’t perfect, but clearly they’re doing more things right than wrong. When it comes offering the “full package” to consumers, be more like MK than any other fighting game on the market.
Do follow SF4/3rd Strike/MVC3 when comes to creating a fighting game with a long shelf life and building a dedicated competitive scene. You don’t want to have to keep making new content post-launch just to keep the game alive. Make sure the gameplay is deep enough for players to be stuck in training mode for hours. Of course make the game easily accessible to pick up and play, but make sure there’s a deep side of the pool & its loaded with discovery.
Do look to Killer Instinct & Netherrealm when it comes to community outreach. Listen to us, keep us informed, be consistent, frequent the message boards, build hype, do Twitch streams.
Do have solid netcode. Killer Instinct and Skullgirls are my best examples. The "pass/fail"connection stress tests before going into Ranked Matches in KI(PC) is genius. Punish rage quitters at launch.
Do make the game FUN. Make cool looking characters with personality, make it flashy, make it violent, make it look like cool stuff is always happening. Learning curves are alot easier to climb when it’s fun climbing them.
Don’ts:
Don’t launch this game half-baked like Killer Instinct & SFV. First impressions are too important, and a lot of the FGC is super fickle about anything that’s not Street Fighter, so there isn’t a lot of room for mistakes here. Take your time and launch with a roster no less than 16 characters, with standard single-player features, and with solid netcode.
Don’t over patch the game like Mortal Kombat 9 and X. Of course, patch blatant infinites and glitches, but don’t go overboard trying to balance the game every month. Let the game evolve a bit on its own, let the community solve some of these match-up problems.
That’s all for now. Whether it’s a new Eternal Champions game, or a new IP in vein of EC, I’m excited about what you all can come up with. 
I hope you can bring back at least some of the characters! I loved Shadow and Jetta. I remember Shadow had her own spin-off game. Experts? X-Perts?
Hmmm, who are these FG vets involved? Also what engines are you looking at?
Wouldn’t the opposite be better for a smaller game by a smaller company. A lot of smaller indies do this (SFV notwithstanding) and it allows for them to have a smaller development budget and it allows the game to keep growing beyond its initial scope, while continuing to earn money for additional content and patches for it (e.g. Skullgirls).
Good question.
Engine: UE4
The team we will reveal if we agree to move forward.
Right now planning is Michael Latham and Adam Starcaster.
Im not saying there should be no additional content and patches, I’m saying that the game shouldn’t be too DEPENDENT on additional content and patches to maintain hype & keep the game alive.
You don’t want to be in a situation where the foundation of your fighting game is so weak that the DLC character that you’ve been developing for 6 months only earns you one week of new buzz after release. You want everything, from the base game to the DLC, to be a slowburn; that way the devs will have the time to work on quality future updates without feeling the pressure of the game dying prematurely.
A good analogy would be that you want your fighting game to live “paycheck to paycheck”, and if you miss one week of work, you get evicted. Lol
Personally I liked the SF4 model of releasing expansions instead of individual characters. I feel like it was the perfect amount of content at once to keep me interested and make the wait worth it.
Now that companies do a character at a time I’m like ok hype for this character, ehhhh I don’t really like the character back to the same old same old. Wash rinse repeat until a character drops I actually like.
When its expansion based I’m like whaoh I like this old characters changes, I want to try them out , I like these new characters I want to try them out, this new stage is cool, I like this feature. It gives me different avenues to explore new and old parts of the game and THEN get set on what I like. Its a far less disposable experience.
The problem with that is that it costs more to do a full expansion than just smaller bits of content at a time.
Yes want it! But please 2D sprites as there are already shatloads of polygon fighters. 2D needs more love.
Should you bring back a game in the vein of Eternal Champions? The answer is…YES!..PLEASE!!..I’VE BEEN WAITING 20+ YEARS!!!
In my opinion, no other fighter has had as varied, interesting, and at the same time cool cast of characters (Killer Instinct is the closest…though…they stole Hisako from me…that was my idea!)
Anyways, Eternal Champions is the ONLY time EVER in a fighting game where I have genuinely cared about each fighter & was curious to see how their stories all played out! The backstory of why the characters are fighting each other & all of the characters biographies (that music) are second to none!
Oh! Another thing I absolutely loved was the music…I mean…just listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsCxYLGiRXw
Is that not THE GREATEST MAIN THEME IN FIGHTING GAME HISTORY!? The only other one that comes close or ties it is again (IMO) Killer Instinct! Also, I know most prefer the soundtrack of Challenge From The Dark Side because it was CD quality, but I preferred the soundtrack of the original. The new themes for the new fighters were cool, but the new tracks for the original cast were a step down with the exception of maybe Jetta Maxx. It just didn’t capture the essence of the characters the way I felt the original soundtrack did. Those melodies are engraved in my head man!
Ok, despite me loving all that stuff, the one thing that always bugged me about the original Eternal Champions was that I was never any good at the game. The mechanics just never clicked with me. I mean, I did beat the game, but it always felt like it was by luck! However, I revisited the game recently and now I feel that I was just never playing the game the way it was meant to be played. I was always trying to play it like Street Fighter, but I think learning each characters normals are crucial to having success in Eternal Champions. Especially when you consider the fact that each fighters style is based on an actual martial art. Anyways, long-story-short, I can now say I appreciate Eternal Champions distinctive fighting mechanics!
Last thing, I know a lot of people probably hated it, but I think the final showdown against the Eternal Champion (EC1) is the greatest, most epic final boss fight of all time! 5 different forms & that music!..WOW!
Anyways, thank you Michael Latham & everybody else on the team who contributed to the franchise! I just wish there were something you could do, or that we could do in order for you guys to get the license from Sega. Oh God…does that mean you can’t use the main theme either? :bawling: I will support regardless, but here’s hoping something can be worked out.