Fighting Champions III

Fighting Champions III is a 2D fighting game developed and published by ACS. It is the sequel to Fighting Champions II and the third part of the Fighting Champions series. Released in 1995 for Arcades (ACS Supra³² System) and Sega Saturn.

The game later recieved an update in 1996 in the form of Fighting Champions III Revenge, which added new characters and stages. Released for Arcade (ACS Supra³² System), and PlayStation.

Gameplay
Gameplay remains the same from the first game, with a few new gameplay mechanics.

New features include the Power meter, a special meter that fills up upon each successful attack. Filling up the Power meter to its maximum level will activate “Power Mode”, a special mode that allows players to perform a “Super Power” attack, a powerful move that deals a huge amount of damage toward the opponent. Each character has one Super Power attack, with the Revenge update adding a second one for each character.

Unlike other fighting games with similar mechanics, the Power meter slowly drains whenever Power Mode is active. Thus, players have to use their Super Power before Power Mode runs out, adding a further layer of challenge and strategy to the fighting.

The Revenge update introduces “Guard Revenge”, which allows players to retaliate from a blocked attack from the opponent with an attack of their own. Guard Revenge can be performed by pressing either LP+LK (for a force push) or HP+HK (for a strong blowback attack) upon blocking an attack, and consumes half of the Power meter (no cost when in Power Mode).

Each game of Fighting Champions III is conposed of 10 stages. 8 fights against the regular fighters, 1 fight against a “rival”, and the final battle with Yami. The game marks the return of the “bonus stages” that were ommited in Fighting Champions II Maximum.

Story
The secret scrolls of Shinken-ryu tell of a certain forbidden method to unlock a fighter’s hidden spirit and grant them overwhelming power, albeit at the cost of his or her sanity.

The method, known as “Yami” (闇; “darkness"), involves channelling one’s spiritual energy, or “ki” in a way that the equilibrium of yin and yang within the fighter’s spirit will be broken, allowing the dark, monstrous energy of the former to overtake the natural and pure strength of the latter.

This grants the user power above any human being, but when this power is abused, the dark energy would fully consume the fighter’s spirit, turning him or her into an unstoppable monster who only lives to fight and kill.

For years, the Yami method has been hidden amongst practicioners of the Shinken-ryu style. Not even the closest family members are told about it, and it was thought that the Yami method has been all but forgotten.

Until now…

During the climax of the second tournament, Ryuga once again reaches the final round of the tournament where he would face his brother Kabuto for the second time.

The two fought a hard battle, exchanging blows one after another, and pulling off all of their absolute techniques. The battle ended with with both Ryuga and Kabuto within an inch of each other’s lives, with only one last blow seperating them from victory.

However, just as Ryuga was about to unleash the final blow, Kabuto, in a last-ditch effort, taps on the power of Yami, and in one fell swoop, proceeded to turn the tables and brutally beat down Ryuga, only stopping once Overwhelmed by Kabuto’s newfound immense power, Ryuga was forced to succumb to his injuries.

Taking his loss against Kabuto in stride, Ryuga strived to train harder and harder in order to finally defeat the power of Yami without succumbing to the dark power himself. Around that time, Kabuto and the Irakawa syndicate announced the third World of Fighting tournament, with a doubled prize pot from the previous tournament to attract even more of the worlds' strongest fighters.

However, to win the prize money is not Ryuga's aim. Instead, he joins the tournament to settle the score with his brother one last time.

Returning

 * Ryuga

Birthplace: 🇯🇵 Japan

Voice Actor: Akira Kamiya


 * Kevin Rage

Birthplace: 🇺🇸 USA

Voice Actor: Ryotaro Okiayu


 * Ling Fang-Ming

Birthplace: 🇨🇳 China

Voice Actress: Yuri Amano


 * Baron von Braun

Birthplace: 🇩🇪 Germany

Voice Actor: Banjo Ginga


 * Zuba

Birthplace:  Congo

Voice Actor: Wataru Takagi


 * Andrei Maximov

Birthplace: 🇷🇺 Russia

Voice Actor: Kenji Utsumi


 * Chongrak Sintawichai

Birthplace: 🇹🇭 Thailand

Voice Actor: Nobuo Tobita


 * Sasuke

Birthplace: 🇯🇵 Japan

Voice Actor: Toshihiko Seki


 * Chin-Tao

Birthplace: 🇨🇳 China

Voice Actor: Ryusei Nakao


 * Bash Dillinger

Birthplace: 🇦🇺 Australia

Voice Actor: Takashi Nagasako


 * Lucio Coltello

Birthplace: 🇮🇹 Italy

Voice Actor: Keiichi Nanba


 * Kabuto

Birthplace: 🇯🇵 Japan

Voice Actor: Hirotaka Suzuoki

Birthplace: 🇲🇽 Mexico
 * Leon Fernandez

Voice Actor: Jin Yamanoi

Birthplace: 🇪🇬 Egypt
 * Mysti

Voice Actress: Maria Kawamura


 * White Wolf

Birthplace: 🇺🇸 USA

Voice Actor: Koji Totani


 * Yu Taeyon

Birthplace: 🇰🇷 Korea

Voice Actress: Yukana Nogami

New

 * Mustafa Ab-dul

Birthplace: 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates

Voice Actor: Shigeru Chiba

An oil sheik from the United Arab Emirates. He joins the World of Fighting tournament to seek global investors for his burgeoning oil rig business.


 * Paula Perez

Birthplace: 🇧🇷 Brazil

Voice Actress: Mika Kanai

A young and cheerful capoeirista from Brazil. She joins the World of Fighting tournament to win the prize money and save her family from poverty.


 * Yami

Birthplace: 🇯🇵 Japan

Voice Actor: Hirotaka Suzuoki

Kabuto completely consumed by the dark power of Yami. He is the final opponent that the players must face before attaining victory.

Revenge additions

 * Claude LaRue

Birthplace: 🇫🇷 France

Voice Actor: Kaneto Shiozawa

An aristocratic kickboxer from France. He joins the World of Fighting tournament simply to showcase his elegant fighting.


 * "Shining Star" Shiina Honda

Birthplace: 🇯🇵 Japan

Voice Actress: Chiharu Tezuka

A joshi professional wrestler from Japan. She joins joins the World of Fighting tournament for the sake of her many fans all over the country.

Trivia

 * The final boss Yami can be unlocked by entering a secret code on the character select screen. When entered correctly, a pair of arrows will appear on opposite sides of the screen, and the player is now able to select Yami by moving the character cursor offscreen.
 * As a playable character, Yami retains some of his exclusive moves that seperate him from his base form Kabuto, such as double Fuuenkens, an SP variant Koryuzan that hits five times, and a teleport move, but will also lose the triple damage and speed boost that boss Yami has, in an effort to make him more balanced for competitive play.
 * This is the first ACS game to feature a voice cast consisting of proffessional Japanese voice actors, replacing the previous game’s voice cast, which was composed primarily of uncredited ACS staff members.
 * Just like in the previous game, the Saturn and PlayStation ports of Fighting Champions III and Revenge, respectively, include the option to switch between original and arranged soundtracks.
 * Similar to other fighting games around the time, like Street Fighter Alpha and World Heroes Perfect, the in-game graphics in Fighting Champions III adopt a brand new artstyle reminiscent of anime around the time of its release. The old sprites from the first two Fighting Champions games have been redrawn from scratch to reflect this change.
 * Hacking the original Fighting Champions III’s ROM reveals several unused sprites for some of the new secondary Super Power attacks that were introduced in Revenge, indicating that they might have been planned to be incuded as far back as the original version, but were left unfinished due to time constraints.