World Heroes Review

Developer(s): Alpha Denshi Co

Publisher(s): SNK Playmore

Genre: Fighter

Release Date: August 30, 2011 (NEOGEO Station)

Platform: PS3

World Heroes is a 2d fighting game released in 1992 where a large part of the cast was based on historical figures, and stages full of traps. Developed by Alpha Denshi/ADK. Published by ADK with the help of SNK it had some unique characteristics, but the overall theme of the game and its characters move sets had many fighting fans deeming it a clone to Street Fighter. I feel World Heroes is a Street Fighter clone, but there are some minor aspects that World Heroes did before SF implemented them.

The character Kim Dragon, who is a clone of Bruce Lee, can parry/counter his opponents moves which is something that wasn’t seen until Alpha series and 3rd Strike.

Julius Carn is a completely unique character at its time and SF cloned him in my opinion because he was not seen till later. You may recognize him as Hakan, but he appeared in the SF series early than SSFIV and with a similar move set. I’m not here to talk about SF rather what World Heroes has to offer, and in this generation online play has been the driving force. The variety of network features puts this old school fighter on par with many of its new school counterparts.

The online component of World Heroes consists of:

A Quick Match which operates like every other online game and throws you into the fastest available online match.

A Match Search which looks for an available online match with your game parameters: Ping, Round, Region, etc.

A Create Match setting where you can set what ping you will except as well as game region and play side. Also, the create a session feature lets you play against the CPU until a player joins your room, where as other fighters only posses this feature in a local multiplayer format.

The invite a friend portion syncs to your friends list as many other online games; however there is a small personal touch once inside the lobby. You can see your friend’s list avatar next to your name.

The check online status accesses a lobby list of all SNK games that now have an online component. There are 15 old school games from FATAL FURY, SAMURAI SHOWDOWN, and more to view if you enjoy old school gaming.

The NETWORK SETTINGS allows the user to toggle the, “MUTE VOICE CHAT, VOICE CHAT VOLUME, MUTE MIC, PLAYER INFORMATION, and RESET SETTINGS.”

SNK did wonders in bringing back this old school fighter to the new school. They included many of the elements that your new online games have, but it’s hard to believe with attention to detail they put into adding a multiplayer aspect to the game; they left out one of the main selling features, which are trophies.

My network connection isn’t the best, but a few others from the GOS staff were able to test the game and we came across a higher level of online lag than what you can be accustomed to.

That is very strange for an old school fighter that isn’t pushing any graphical boundaries, but other than the lack of trophies I highly recommend you checking out this game if you’re a fan of old school fighters.