This is James Goddard, some of you know me from my work on Street Fighter II Series and the Upcoming Shred Nebula XBLA game. I also did a hardcore fighting game post Capcom called WeaponLord while at Namco for the SNES and Genesis. I did a demo a few years back at Cigar Bob’s house during a huge AZ Fighting game tournament & surprised a few people who did not know the game had so much depth in it. To be honest, the game, while awesome, was too hard at the beginner/medium levels, and a bit cryptic on controls because I was trying to do something new and respect Street Fighter at the same time (vs just ripping it off).
But, all these years later, when I get to play it and get into the groove, it still does things no other game has even touched and it was the first fighter to do so many concepts that 12 years later are still trickling into our favorite genre. Such as:
[LIST]
[]Thrust Blocks (Parries, later in the SE/SC series by Namco). Note: Standing High/Mid/Low, Crouching-High & Air!
[] Multiple Thrust Block (Parry) Special Attacks with multiple hits in them!
[]Guard Drop (Guard Break/Crush)
[]Dedicated Weapon to Weapon gameplay (none, a few clashes in SC do not count)
[]Command Weapon Breaks on enemy weapons
[]Mid-Deflects (Naturally Deflecting moves that know aside incoming attacks)
[]Power Deflects (special deflect that blasts incoming attacks aside giving plenty of time to do something big)
[]Hair/garment insult cutoffs. :lovin:
[]Knee-Staggers (hit enemy in critical weak point to make them stumble forward)
[]1st to say ‘play it on xband’ (was xband for bot SNES & Genesis)
[]Damage protections system: 2 health bars, many features to allow big combos that reward yet are not totally unfair, including Blow-outs (protection against looping via the blow-out system)
[]special takedown system that does a move that allows you to follow up while they are down (vs all the time)
[]Death Strikes & Multiple Fatality System: The first game to let you manually turn specials into killing blows via comboing the dead body & you could string them together. This was very hard because you had to purposely make sure they were out of HP & combo into the killing blow (although we left a few ground strikes that always kill in there for easy ones)
[/LIST]
Anyway, I am sure this sounds too proud - but I wanted to share with this community the work my WL team did WAY back that started in Oct 1993 & shipped Oct 1995. It was a true work of passion and dedication to making a hardcore, skill based fighting game for the hardcore fighting player. Dave Winstead (of SFII ST) and I were hardcore back then, and if you ever play the AI on warlord, that is pretty much modeled after us and a few other hardcore SF players that we hired to test way back then like Jason Cole, Mateo and Ben Cureton!
Check out my personal portfolio website for WeaponLord to see videos (low res still) and other cool art: here: http://weaponlord.crunchtimegames.com/
Update: I also found these GREAT Deathstrike videos on youtube:
[LIST]
[][media=youtube]lYx3X3vwmSA[/media]
[][media=youtube]xC6mh0suSks[/media]
And this fun Jen-Tai combo (Glad to see people found this KI’ish BS I put in, links to double over to links to blow out)
[*][media=youtube]pNrCe4Du0wk[/media]
[/LIST]
Thanks for reading this and let me know what you think!
-DJAMES
Nice you finally brought the site back, it was down for a while.
3 things i really liked about the game was guard breaking, weapon breaking, and how the fatalities worked. You could string some really crazy stuff with the fatalities. I used to love ending them with Korr’s §U,U,D move. The combos system was dope also. The only thing i had a problem with was the negative edge system. It took a long time to get used to stringing attacks together, but after a while i got used to it. I know i always say this, but you have to get the rights back from Namco and try to rerelease this.
The negative edge (hold down to do your move stuff) is a tough one. It was rough in Primal Rage too. But it is one of those things that I struggle with on whether I would keep it or not if I do another game like this (or WL2). I have ideas on how to greatly improve this though…
Thanks for those youtube links, James…but like someone mentioned, we’re still waiting for those 10th degree vids…
Oh yeah, I always wanted to know, what were some of the character ideas what were cut from the original game? I think I remember hearing about a Gargoyle character, but I could be thinking about another title.
Hey James, I uploaded that unreleased commercial from your site at YouTube to get more people to view your site.
I hope you don’t get angry for that. =D
EDIT: Here it is:
[media=youtube]RNOf8VwvE7U[/media]
I’ve been trying to remember what this game was. I used to play weaponlord all the time, but then I stop because the woman characters were giving me a hard on.
No problem, it was from the video tape sent to EB customers, so no sweat- thanks!
Good stuff! I have wanted to put up crazy combo’s for awhile (other then the old stuff I have on my site). Hey, what do you use to record your SNES stuff?
This game had some scary ass music, and I probably had a few nightmares because of it. Sadly I only rented it, so I never got the chance to get good at it.
Count me in for another sequel as well. I’d love a sequel as well as a HD remix version of the original. Want an actual sequel to continue to the story, as it left on one hell of a cliffhanger, regardless of who won(Though Zorn and Korr was pretty GGPO).
I liked the game, you could tell there was depth to it.
Please, please, please do something about those controls, though, if you get to do something new with the concept. I know what you were trying to do, since all fighting games basically used the SF commands for special moves or variants thereof, but man. I would have gotten into the game twice as much without the control barrier.
