Fighting Champions

Fighting Champions is a 2D fighting game developed and published by ACS. Released in 1992 for Arcades (ACS Supra System), Sharp X68000, FM Towns, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, PC-Engine CD, Game Boy and Game Gear. It is ACS’ second fighting game following Kumite (1986).

Fighting Champions was published by ACS as the company's answer to Capcom's Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, which was hugely popular in arcades at the time of the game's release.

Gameplay
Compared to other fighting games at the time, which feature separate buttons for punches and kicks, Fighting Champions uses a three-button system consisting of Light, Medium and Heavy attacks. Throws are done by moving to the direction towards the opponent and then pressing the Heavy Attack button, while back throws are done by moving to the direction away from the opponent and then pressing the Heavy Attack buton.

The game mostly plays similar to Street Fighter II and its contemporaries, including its emphasis on special moves and combos. Each player has a set of special moves that can be performed by performing specific button combinations. The gameplay of Fighting Champions is noted to be slightly faster than its contemporaries. Fighting Champions is also one of the first fighting games to feature “air special moves” which are special moves that can only be performed while in mid-air during a jump.

Each game of Fighting Champions is composed of 11 stages. 8 fights against the regular fighters (save for the player's character), 2 fights against sub-bosses Basham and Lucio, and the final fight against Kabuto. After every four fights, the player could enter one of two Bonus Stages which would either have the player destroying a large boulder, or fighting a bunch of wooden training dummies.

Story
The World of Fighting tournament. The biggest fighting tournament in the world. Every year, many fighters from all over the world, each with their own reasons for participating, gather around in order to prove who is the strongest fighter of them all.

Hosted by the Yakuza, this year, the winner of the World of Fighting tournament will be given a sum of $1,000,000 as the main prize, provided that they are able to defeat the current champion, the fearsome masked fighter known as "Kabuto", first.

This year, nine fighters will enter the World of Fighting tournament, each seeking to prove their own strength against one another and become the strongest fighter in the universe. However, the question remains: Who will come out victorious?

Playables

 * Ryuga

Birthplace: 🇯🇵 Japan

A cocky, loudmouthed karateka from Japan. He joins the World of Fighting tournament to prove that he is the strongest fighter of them all.


 * Kevin Chrysler

Birthplace: 🇺🇸 USA

A rowdy street brawler from the USA. He joins the World of Fighting tournament to obtain his dreams of fame, fortune and dating pretty women.


 * Ling Fang-Ming

Birthplace: 🇨🇳 China

A waitress and kung-fu apprentice from China. She joins the World of Fighting tournament to free her grandfather from the Yakuza's imprisonment.


 * Baron von Braun

Birthplace: 🇩🇪 Germany

A big, burly professional wrestler from Germany. He joins the World of Fighting tournament for the thrill of fighting and breaking his opponent's bones.


 * Zuba

Birthplace:  Congo

A valiant warrior prince coming from an indigenous tribe from Congo. He joins the World of Fighting tournament to protect their homeland.


 * Andrei Maximov

Birthplace:  Russia

A cybernetically-enhanced military general from Soviet Russia. He joins the World of Fighting Tournament to test his newfound cyborg abilities.


 * Chongrak Sintawichai

Birthplace: 🇹🇭 Thailand

A Muay Thai kicboxer from Thailand. He joins the World of Fighting tournament to avenge his father's death at the hands of Kabuto and the Yakuza.


 * Sasuke

Birthplace: 🇯🇵 Japan

A descendant coming from a clan of ninja assassins from Japan. He joins the World of Fighting tournament to assassinate Kabuto under clan orders.


 * Chin-Tao

Birthplace: 🇨🇳 China

A stout tai-chi master and restaurant owner from China. He joins the World of Fighting Tournament to win the prize money and expand his business.

Bosses

 * Rick Basham

Birthplace: 🇦🇺 Australia

A disgraced boxer from Australia. He was banned from the proffesional boxing circuit after killing his opponent, and now serves for the Yakuza.


 * Lucio Coltello

Birthplace: 🇮🇹 Italy

A depraved assassin from Italy. He has an obsession with knives and the pain of his opponents, and now serves for the Yakuza.


 * Kabuto

Birthplace:  Unknown

A notorious and powerful fighter whose face is hidden by a large helmet. He is the current champion of the World of Fighting tournament.

Sequel
A sequel to the game, Fighting Champions II, was released in 1993 for Arcades (ACS Supra System), Sharp X68000, FM Towns, PC-Engine CD, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Sega CD and 3DO. It featured new characters as well as new gameplay mechanics and stages.

Trivia

 * The SNES version of Fighting Champions was heavily censored in accordance to Nintendo's strict censorship policies around the time of the game's release. Some of these changes include:
 * Certain attacks in the game, such as Lucio's knife attacks, no longer draw blood upon hit.
 * The character's defeat portraits are edited to remove the blood and cuts on their faces.
 * Winquotes that included references to blood, death and murder have also been altered.
 * The PC-Engine CD port of Fighting Champions (which is only released exclusively in Japan) features a CD-quality arranged soundtrack.
 * This is the first ACS fighting game to feature the 3-button Light-Medium-Heavy system, which would eventually become a staple of nearly all of ACS' 2D fighting games moving forward.
 * The original North American arcade release of the game was notoriously plagued with various translation errors and typos. These errors would be fixed in both the SNES and Genesis ports.
 * Buried within the arcade version's sprite data is an unused title screen for the game that bore the title "Deathly Blows", a provisional title for the game early on during its development.