Martial Champion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Martial Champion is a hand-to-hand combat game similar to Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. Players can choose from ten selectable characters, each with special moves and weapons. A weapon can be knocked out of a character's hand and picked up by his/her opponent. Whoever wins the best of three falls advances to the next round and the next character. The characters in Martial Champion are diverse and come from many different countries. Typically, in one-player games, the challenger faces his/her opponent in the opponent's home land. In two-player games, the arena switches at random, usually meaning that neither character is on his/her home turf. ~ Anthony Baize, All Game Guide
The ten fighting characters in Martial Champion are:
- Racheal: A blond United States trained in Ninjutsu. Her uniform is similar to that of Aska from the SNES version of TMNT: Tournament Fighters. Due to her fan following, she seems to be most popular character from the game specially among hentai aficionados. Her fighting stage is in front of The White House.
- Avu: A rotund Middle Eastern man armed with a scimitar. Billed as being from Saudi Arabia even though the displayed flag is Iraq's. He fights in front of a magnificent palace.
- Goldor: A French fighter utilizing a pair of nunchaku or manriki gusari. Is the only character able to utilize other character's weapons to their full potential, giving him the best reach.
- Zen: A Kabuki fighter from Japanese. In keeping with the theme, he fights in front of a Kabuki theater and uses a fan as a weapon.
- Mahamba: A tall, spear wielding tribesman from Africa (with the South African flag displayed). His background is a village.
- Bobby: An eyepatched soldier from the United States similar to Guile. Fights on an aircraft carrier.
- Jin: A Japanese martial artist in the vein of Ryu. Interestingly, his alternate colors have him as blond haired and blue eyed.
- Titi: A bizarre hopping corpse from Hong Kong. Utilizes a pair of metal claws and his tongue in battle.
- Chaos: An Egyptian Cleopatra-like princess.
Note: in some versions of the game, Titi and Chaos have traded names.
When all characters are defeated (including a clone of your selected Champion), the player faces the final boss, Salamander. Easily the largest character in the game (dwarfing even Mahamba), he fights using moves he's borrowed from each fighter (ala Rugal).
Martial Champion was the first hand-to-hand combat style game that allowed players to use weapons that could be dropped and picked up by characters and their opponents. Gamers can see a similar innovation in Mortal Kombat 4 which Midway released nearly five years after Martial Champion hit arcades.
