World Heroes

This article is about the World Heroes series. For the original arcade game, see World Heroes (video game).
World Heroes

The first and most commonly used logo for the World Heroes series.
Genres Fighting game
Developers Alpha Denshi/ADK (assisted by SNK)[1]
Publishers ADK, SNK
Platform of origin Neo Geo
Year of inception 1992
First release World Heroes
July 28, 1992
Latest release World Heroes Perfect
May 25, 1995

World Heroes (ワールドヒーローズ Wārudo Hīrōzu) is a series of four fighting games created originally by ADK with assistance from SNK for the Neo Geo family of arcade and home consoles. Over the years, the games have been ported to various non-SNK platforms as well including the Super NES and Sega Saturn. A fifth title World Heroes Pocket was announced for release on the Neo Geo Pocket around 1999 but later canceled.

The general premise is that a scientist, Dr. Brown, having perfected a time machine, organized a tournament for various fighters throughout all of history to combat each other. True to this plot, many of the fighters are based on actual historical figures, while some are fictional ones.

Gameplay

The series plays similar to many other fighting games, but instead of a 6-button layout, the original World Heroes uses only 3 of the standard 4 Neo-Geo buttons: one for punching, another for kicking, and the last for throwing. The former two buttons can be held down longer in order to deliver stronger attacks, similar to the first Street Fighter control scheme, with only two levels of strength and using standard buttons instead of pneumatic buttons. In the SNES version (and later games, starting with World Heroes 2 Jet), it is possible to assign the 4 basic attacks to different buttons. In World Heroes Perfect, each character had a traditional four-button attack layout, but could also achieve stronger attacks by pushing down two respective punch or kick buttons at the same time.

In World Heroes Perfect, every character has an ABC Special Move that can be activated by pressing the A, B, and C buttons at the same time. Moves vary by character, though they all require strategic use and are easy to activate, allowing for more tactical battles. For example, the character Fuuma's ABC Special allows him to fake a special move; J. Max's ABC Special allows him to catch, hold onto, and throw back projectiles; and Kim Dragon's ABC Special allows him to perform counters while blocking.

Aside from the normal tournament mode, there is also the popular "Death Match" mode (which was removed in World Heroes 2 Jet and World Heroes Perfect). In it, the arenas are filled with different kinds of traps that can change conditions in the bouts or even damage the characters (such as spiked walls, landmines, burning ropes, slick floors, etc.). The "Death Match" modes of the first two titles in the series may have been inspired by the growing popularity of deathmatch style professional wrestling in Japan at the time, mostly made famous by Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling.

List of games in the series

Japanese Title English Title System Year
ワールドヒーローズ World Heroes Neo Geo MVS
Neo Geo AES
Neo-Geo CD
Mega Drive/Genesis
SNES
PlayStation 2
Virtual Console
PSN
1992
ワールドヒーローズ2 World Heroes 2 Neo Geo MVS
Neo Geo AES
Neo-Geo CD
PC-Engine Super CD-ROM²
SNES
PlayStation 2
Virtual Console
1993
ワールド ヒーローズ2 ジェト World Heroes 2 Jet Neo Geo MVS
Neo Geo AES
Neo-Geo CD
Game Boy
PlayStation 2
1994
ワールド ヒーローズ パーフェクト World Heroes Perfect Neo Geo MVS
Neo Geo AES
Neo-Geo CD
Sega Saturn
PlayStation 2
Virtual Console
1995

Other/canceled games

Title Details

Original release date(s):
  • JP October 18, 2007
  • NA March 11, 2008
  • PAL 2008
Release years by system:
2007 – PlayStation 2
Notes:
  • Released in Japan as World Heroes Gorgeous
  • A compilation of all four World Heroes titles in the series with exclusive features.
World Heroes Pocket

Original release date(s):
Cancelled
Release years by system:
Cancelled
Notes:
  • A World Heroes game was originally planned for release on the Neo Geo Pocket,[2] but the project was discontinued. It was planned for release sometime in 2000.

Related releases

Fuuma Kotaro appeared as a playable character in the 1994 fighting game Aggressors of Dark Kombat, which was also created by ADK. However, some of his moves from the World Heroes series were removed to make him fair enough to fight. Every character from the World Heroes series, as well as some characters from other ADK games were featured in the Neo Geo CD exclusive title, ADK World.

Since World Heroes Perfect and ADK World, and during the Neo Geo Pocket era, ADK suffered enough financial difficulties to file for bankruptcy; however, all intellectual properties and copyrights to their video game and character library were bought by SNK Playmore. Due to the World Heroes series being entirely originally released for the Neo-Geo platform, some characters from the franchise returned in the fighting game NeoGeo Battle Coliseum and the card game SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters DS as a result.

Characters

This section lists the characters in the original game, and characters added or removed in subsequent releases.

World Heroes

World Heroes 2

World Heroes 2 Jet

World Heroes Perfect

References

  1. Closing credits of World Heroes, World Heroes 2, World Heroes 2 Jet and World Heroes Perfect.
  2. "ADK作品総合データ - ADK HEROES". Archived from the original on January 5, 2008. Retrieved 2011-06-08.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to World Heroes.
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