The Official Eternal Champions Thread

[FlyMike]

EC was the shit. It is immortal, so the name is very fitting. Probably my first 2D fighter as well. The story was on point and so much better than a lot of the garbage out now. The main music was so epic and dynamic yet eerie at the same time. I just hated the last boss. I think I only beat him once with Rax or Jetta. I had one cousin who use to kill folks with Midnight and Shadow and his younger brother played Blade and Slash. But the ultimate champion in our small scene was this one guy who played Xavier and Trident. Dude was unbeatable. And he was the first person I witnessed that spent time in training mode for a fighting game. I never ever played the Sega CD one.

Hey, you stole my combo! I used to use that all the time.

And, I’m not afraid to admit that this game, especially the Sega CD version, scared the heck out of me when I was younger.

Dawson’s overkill was scarring. Trident’s and Xavier’s were just creepy, even on the Genesis. Especially when you discovered them by accident.

Messed with my sleep on more than one occasion. Not for the kiddies.

On the plus side, the animation and graphics were phenomenal.

Hell yeah!! I absolutely feared playing this game by myself without my cousins or friends because of the brutal fatalities that happened without warning. By me being so young, I didn’t exactly know what triggered most of them. But each and every one scared the shit out of me. I had nightmares of getting burned on stakes and drive-bys by the mob that frightened me more than the ones that went on in my own neighborhood by gangs. It still creeps me out reminiscing and if I can find the game I might be a bit spooked to pop it in my Genesis even now.

Sega of Japan did fuck up here.

I wasn’t at all good at the game, but I enjoyed EC’s story. It’s still one of the best “Tournament” premises in fighters, and I wish someone would at least pick that up.

But that stuff they were talking of adding into EC3 was craaaaaazy. That couldn’t have been possible.

Lol what were they talking of adding?

[DevilJin_01]

Funny the different contrasts in feelings between Michael and Scott over the game. Scott’s concept of what the game could or should have been is pretty comical. Beating up on dwarves? Sounds like a typical DnD loving white kid’s fantasy come true. He’s probably a regular WoW player today.

I’ll be honest…I never thought the controls of EC were awesome but they worked and overall the game felt enough like SF to keep me interested. I just liked it simply because it looked leaps and bounds better than any other fighting game on the system.

The sprites were basically the same size as they would have been in an arcade port and this is back when we used to have deal with SF ports where characters shrunk like half their arcade size. Plus the character designs were really cool and you actually cared about the storylines of the characters.

Oh and yeah…the fatalities were pretty creepy. In order to get them to work your opponent had to fall on the right part of the stage when they died. Trident’s stage fatality always freaked me out. I liked the idea of stage fatalities and the fact that you couldn’t just do them on the fly made them more interesting than MK fatalitis to me. When it happened you were like “OH SHIT”.

Watching the game on YouTube made me realize how scary Xavier’s stage and music were. Straight out of the Exorcist his theme music was. I really wish I could have played the Sega CD version cuz every fatality was basically redone to be 3 times more gory and nasty.

[axeman61]

Lol what were they talking of adding?

It was in the original interview with Mike Latham posted here.

Sega-16: Information about the Saturn Eternal Champions game is almost non existent. How far along was it when it was cancelled? Are there any demos, screen shots, or perhaps concept art floating around?

Michael Latham: I had about 20 pages of the design when I got informed of its cancellation, but as I told you, I had the basic story always worked out from the beginning. The idea was that just like the Eternal Champions, there was a second set of fighters fighting to regain their lives (called the Infernals), and this created a certain balance to the time line. The story of the Saturn version was that a third force, called Chaos, comes in and starts ripping apart the time line and the two sides have to work together fight this new threat. So you can choose the side of the Eternals or Infernals, good and evil, but not black and white as you think, and then fight to fix the damaged time-line.

What was the real cool part was that things you did affected the timeline in real-time in the game, and so it would effect the characters looks, abilities, histories, and the way the world looked. You could even effect the time flow during the fight which created all kinds of twists for the game mechanics. If you were successful, you could find a way to return everyone to their timelines and their effect on history then created a very special ending, and there were other sub-endings, 30 in all. My friend Tony Van (a very successful game producer and designer in his own right) warned me you never end any movie, TV show, or game with a “to be continued” ending like I did in the Sega CD versions; if you do you are doomed, and there will never be another one. A wise insight, from a wise guy.

[FlyMike]

Wow lol, how the fuck did they intend to accomplish all that? As awesome as it sounds, somewhere along the way they must have forgotten the fact that EC is a FIGHTING GAME. So I assume that by integrating those innovations the end result would have been a cool game with neglected and shallow gameplay.

That’s it. All this talk is making me want to dust off the Genesis, find a copy of EC on Ebay, and get it cracking once again. I really want to play the Sega CD version though. Were these games never released in classics collection or something? Because I don’t have a computer so ROMs are out of the question for me.

[Josh-TheFunkDOC]

didn’t read thread, has anyone mentioned all the infinites in the sega cd version yet? shit is COMEDY. there’s a lot more than just mr. whitefolks’ combo vid…

the owl is the best, he’s got the balance & feel of a MUGEN character

[caliagent_3]

Oh and yeah…the fatalities were pretty creepy. In order to get them to work your opponent had to fall on the right part of the stage when they died. Trident’s stage fatality always freaked me out. I liked the idea of stage fatalities and the fact that you couldn’t just do them on the fly made them more interesting than MK fatalitis to me. When it happened you were like “OH SHIT”.

The first time i saw one of the fatalities i thought the game or genesis had broke . Me and my father were playing on tridents stage. I had won the match and saw the life bars float up and disappear. I got up to go reset the game, but my brother happened to stop me just in time when he noticed something happening on the screen.

[Bombastic]

That’s how a modern Eternal Champions could look… just re-do the music themes, change Larcen’s bike for a 30’s car and we’re done

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