Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side

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Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side (also known as Eternal Champions 2) is a fighting video game for the Sega CD. It was published in 1995 during the waning days of the Sega CD's lifespan and was revered as one of the system's most technically impressive releases. The game was a semi-sequel to the Sega Genesis game Eternal Champions and was part two of a proposed trilogy of games by Sega that would have cumuluated in a third and final game on the Sega Saturn. Both games were developed by an internal team at Sega named Deep Water, and both were designed by Michael Lantham, a developer with Sega of America from their early days.

The game earned an M (for Mature) rating from the Entertainment Software Ratings Board for its graphic violence and gore.

[edit] Story

As was the case with the first game, Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side followed the story of the Eternal Champion, who had felt the balance of the universe and time be disturbed by the deaths of key individuals who were meant to change the world for the greater good, and so to restore the balance, he held a great contest in which the winner would be granted the gift of life back to them, allowing them to fulfill their rightful destiny.

But in this second chapter, it is revealed that the Eternal Champion has an evil counterpart: the Dark Champion. The Dark Champion appears and declares that he also will enter the contest, and that he has hidden four more warriors, preventing the contest from truly being fulfilled. Now the contestants must not only face the Eternal Champion, but the Dark Champion as well, if they want their lives back.

[edit] Changes from Eternal Champions

Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side improves upon many factors of the first game's presentation. Some of the changes include:

• Larger character lineup: As well as including the 9 original fighters (plus a non-playable boss) from the first game, there are also 13 new playable characters introduced, plus two bosses and several hidden fighters, making for a grand total of 25 characters.

• New soundtrack: A brand new soundtrack was written for this game, which takes advantage of Q-Sound technology.

• Better sound effects: Taking advantage of the CD format, the developers improved upon all of the sounds from the first game, making the voices sound cleaner and providing smoother, more realistic fighting sounds.

• Tighter gameplay: The special moves from the first game were rebalanced and take up less energy than before, thus making them easier to use. Also, new moves called "Cinekills" were added, which rewarded a player that could perform one with a short FMV of their opponent's often greusome demise at the hands of the Dark Champion.

• Improved graphics: Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side is one of the few Sega CD games to use creative programming tricks in order to make it look as if the game is displaying 256 colors on screen at once.

[edit] Criticism

The game generated plenty of early excitement based on its impressive computer generated cut scenes, and a wide range of diverse playable characters and secret Easter eggs that seemed to test the power of the system. However, by 1994 many consumers had already lost faith in the Sega CD and were frustrated with Sega of America for releasing a CD-ROM system that was not a true hardware upgrade. The fact that Sega had already announced its plans for the Sega Saturn and Sega 32X further dampended the response to the game as it was seen as too little, too late.