Armored Warriors Sprites

Saturn LE BoxA quasi-sequel to Armored Warriors, Cyberbots: FullMetal Madness was released in 1995. However, while Warriors was a side-scrolling mecha-based beat-em-up, Cyberbots is a mecha-based one-on-one fighting game. It was released by Capcom, one of the masters of the genre, who were coming off the success of Super Street Fighter II: Turbo, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge, and X-Men: Children of the Atom.

It saw release in Japan, with only an extremely limited run elsewhere, since becoming a cult classic.Near the end of the 21 st Century, Earth suffers an over-population problem and many people flock to space colonies. However, the army of Earth has begun to conduct experiments, and it’s up to you to decide the fate of our planet. Picking one of six pilots, you then select one of four different types of mech body, known as VAs (Valiant/Variant Armors). They range from the all-round Blodia, to the high-flying Reptos, the speedy Fordy, and the powerhouse Guldin, and you may recognize all four machine varieties from Armored Warriors. Each playable pilot has their own campaign story with solid 90s action game writing, offering a good deal of replayablility.Jin SaotomePreviously known as Rash in the international version of Armored Warriors, Jin wants to become the best VA pilot after his father died in an accident a year previous. He is friends with Gawaine Murdock.Mary MiyabiThe only female captain of Earth Force, Mary is trying to catch an escaped prisoner. She was trained by Gawaine Murdock.Santana LaurenceA scavenger and mercenary, Santana was the former leader of the Mars Revolution who now only cares about himself.

This page was last edited on 29 February 2020, at 03:46. Content is available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted. Game content and materials are trademarks and copyrights of their respective publisher and its licensors.

He knows both Gawaine and SHADE.Gawaine MurdockGawaine used to be a captain of Earth Force before leaving for a life of seclusion after some of his men were killed in a training accident. He’s now back and ready to rumble after Earth Force starts causing trouble. He was Mary’s captain while she was a lieutenant, is friends with the Saotome family, and used to be friendly with SHADE before he became a cyborg.Bao and MaoBao and his younger sister, Mao, have escaped from Earth Force and found a VA which they’re piloting through sheer luck in a bid to make a getaway.ArietaAlso looking to make her escape, Arieta was another child that was kidnapped and saw her friends die in the labs.SHADEA brainwashed super soldier who was lured to the dark side with the promise of perfection. He pilots the UVA-02 Helion, a helicopter mech seen during stage five of Armored Warriors.Chiyomaru Kagura and Tessan HagureKagura, alongside his guardian, Hagure, is the head of the resistance fleet, who are trying to stop Earth Force’s doomsday weapon. P-10033 Gaits, their mech, was a standard grunt in Armored Warriors, but is more formidable here.Princess Devilotte de Deathsatan IXTravelling with her two flunkies (Dave the scientist and Xavier the wizard), Devilotte is the daughter of a famous pirate, with no interest in the conflict.

Rather, she seeks out VAs to capture and add to her collection. Her mech, the S-008 Super-8, is a robot octopus that was the boss at the end of stage two of Armored Warriors.Visually, Cyberbots continues Capcom’s streak of excellent fighting game graphics, with large, characterful, chunky sprites that make it easy to distinguish what is happening at all times. The backgrounds are awesome too, with many being animated; buildings crumble as you clash, crashed ships burn, and outer space flickers behind you.

Even the more static backdrops are full of detail and some wonderful pixel art.Gameplay will be familiar to fans of the Street Fighter series – best of three timed rounds, energy bars that reset in between rounds, and a special bar that builds through attacking and blocking, allowing you to launch a super attack when full. Unlike that series, there are just four buttons – low attack, high attack, a cannon (that can differ wildly in range and speed between mechas), and a boost the allows you to either bum rush your opponent or launch yourself into the air if you find yourself in a tight spot. Special moves can be unleashed using the usual quarter-circle and charge movements that are typical of the genre.

If you’re hit too many times, it’s possible to lose part of your mecha, limiting your offensive options until you pick it back up again.Combat is a little slower than the typical Capcom fighter, and favors getting up close and personal over long range attacks. Landing blows feels crunchy and satisfying, with plenty of visual and aural feedback, but after the first couple of matches the appeal of the game quickly wanes.

The big problem is that with so many variant mechas, many of whom are not anthropomorphic, it can be hard to distinguish if blows are coming in high or low, how to best defend against incoming attacks, and sometimes even what is happening at all. Cut the string of life. Trying to strike from the air is pretty much a bust – you jump too slowly, and your attack range can be limited. The solution to this is to learn the unique attacks of every mecha in the game, as you’re unlikely to be able to cheese your way through after the first few fights, even on the lower difficulties. While a solid game, it’s probably for fighting game aficionados only.The music varies from electronic tracks to synthy hard rock, which perfectly captures the mood. It was composed by Anachey Takapon, alongside Akari Kaida, Masato Kouda, and Naoaki Iwami. Takapon had previously done the Vampire: The Night Warriors soundtrack, and would later put together the tunes for X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, and Street Fighter Zero 3, among others.

The sound effects are great, with cool sci-fi sounds for the attacks, and crunchy blows and explosions.Cyberbots was ported to the Sega Saturn and PlayStation in 1997, though only released in Japan. Both add Chiyomaru Kagura and Tessan Hagure, Princess Devilotte de Deathsatan IX, and SHADE as playable characters with their own campaign stories and custom mechas (which cannot be changed), as well as having full Japanese voiceovers. The Saturn version utilizes the 1 MB RAM expansion cartridge, allowing for animation that’s almost identical to the arcade version, though it still needs to load between matches. The PlayStation version is comparatively cut down, with slightly longer loads, but still plays just fine. The PlayStation version was also released internationally, untranslated, on the PlayStation Network, for play on the PlayStation 3, PSP, and Vita.Several character have made cameo appearances, including Devilotte being included in Super Puzzle Fighter Turbo, Jin being a selectable character in Marvel vs. Capcom Clash of the Superheroes and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (with Devilotte available as an assist character in the former), and the Blodia suit featured as a mech for Sylphie in Namco X Capcom.

Jin is also selectable in Tech Romancer, a 3D spiritual sequel released in 1998.

For a brief period in the early 90s, the beat 'em up genre was a force to be reckoned with in arcades and on home consoles. Titles like Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and Golden Axe devoured quarters and kept gamers up way past their bedtimes when they eventually made their way to NES, SNES, or Genesis.As time passed the genre fractured and faded, and player tastes changed. While we can see remnants of what made beat 'em ups great in modern 3rd person action games, fighting games, and titles aimed at younger gamers like the LEGO series, we're a long way from the golden age of walking from left to right and punching everything that got in your way.

A fascinating collection from Capcom. Enter the Capcom Beat 'em Up Bundle, a new collection bringing together an eclectic mix of brawlers from 1989's Final Fight to the obscure, arcade-only Battle Circuit from 1997. The bundle takes the arcade builds of the games and adds modern conveniences like difficulty adjustment and online play, and is currently available for PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, with a PC release coming soon.If you're a fan of the genre at all, this collection is worth your cash. While some have complained that the Bundle is missing a number of big hits of the genre (licensing issues can be a real pain), the collection stands as an entertaining and informative look back over the rise and fall of beat 'em ups. Playing through the titles feels like a gaming history lesson, and the fact that you can enjoy classic arcade design touches like attract screens, bonus stages, and drop-in co-op multiplayer in a convenient, portable package on the Switch makes that version of the game especially compelling.In case you need more information about what you're getting with the Beat 'em Up Bundle, here are the seven featured games ranked from worst to best. #7 Knights of the Round. Knights of the Round was released in 1991, a very popular year for beat 'em ups.

It shares a few elements with other games in the Bundle, including weapon-based combat and the chance to ride on horses during some levels, but it feels lacking in entertainment value and visual flair compared to the other games in the collection.The best parts of Knights of the Round are its level-up mechanics, which see characters getting upgraded armor and weapons over the course of the game, and the fact that the game stars classic characters from the legends of King Arthur. #6 Warriors of Fate. Final Fight is one of the most important games ever released in the beat 'em up genre.

It's also the oldest game on the Bundle, and as such it comes across as mechanically limited compared to many of the later games. It wins points for its incredibly stylish visual design, though, and for introducing Mike Haggar, the world's toughest mayor.As a Genesis kid, I had a lot more familiarity with Streets of Rage than Final Fight going into this collection, and it was fun to see how much overlap exists between the two brawlers, right down to some suspiciously similar enemy designs.

Though the Streets of Rage series would go on to greater success, it's clear that fans of that franchise own a huge debt to Final Fight for laying the groundwork and helping to popularize the genre with its console port. #4 Battle Circuit. Battle Circuit is an absolutely bizarre game, from start to finish. It was originally released in 1997 for arcades in Japan and Europe, and marks the chronological end of Capcom's arcade beat 'em up releases. It takes place in a wildly creative sci-fi setting in which your playable character choices include an alien plant monster and an intelligent pink ostrich, and it just gets stranger from there.Battle Circuit features layers of complexity most of the other beat 'em ups don't, including special abilities that boost the stats of your co-op partners. Arcades were on the decline in 97, and the gaming world was dominated by the Nintendo 64 and the original PlayStation, so Battle Circuit feels like an artifact from a parallel universe where brawlers grew stranger and more advanced without ever making the leap to polygons. #3 Captain Commando.

Captain Commando takes the basic Final Fight formula and adds dashing movement and attacks, ridable robots, and much more impressive fire and explosion effects, all of which feel like significant steps forward for the genre. It also adds weapons like handguns and rocket launchers to the collection of items that can be picked up and wielded by the players, and the whole experience is more energetic and chaotic than the games that came before it.The roster of Captain Commando is especially noteworthy, since it features a knife-wielding mummy, a ninja, and a baby in a mech suit. Captain Commando himself is also the star of the weird and compelling launch trailer for the Beat 'em Up Bundle, which is absolutely worth your time. #2 The King of Dragons. Alien shooter 2 conscription unlock code.

The King of Dragons takes place in a Dungeons and Dragons-style fantasy world, and puts players in control of one of a mechanically diverse roster of characters, including an axe-wielding dwarf, an elven archer, and a spell-slinging wizard. Characters level up in a similar fashion to Knights of the Round, expanding their life bars and upgrading the range of their attacks.The King of Dragons is one of the best games in the Bundle because of the significant difference in gameplay between the playable characters (with varying range of attacks and only certain characters having the ability to parry) and because of the awesome fantasy enemies you'll fight across its 16 levels. The King of Dragons features fights against minotaurs, wyverns, and dragons that are all significantly larger than the player characters, lending the game a sense of scale that most other beat 'em ups just can't match.

#1 Armored Warriors. Armored Warriors is an obscure arcade-only mech brawler that has never been officially playable on a home console before, but it's a star on the Beat 'em Up Bundle thanks to its huge sprites, ever-changing gameplay, and non-stop explosions.In Armored Warriors you upgrade your chosen mech by taking the arms, secondary weapons, and legs off of your fallen foes. Each base mech has its own stats and abilities, and as you augment your character with giant laser swords, flamethrowers, or spiked tank treads you'll have different attacks at your disposal, which are in turn effective against different enemy types.Since it comes from 1994, Armored Warriors was a late entry in the beat 'em up genre, and it's the title from the collection that feels the most modern in its mechanics and design. Ultimately, the enjoyment you'll get from the Capcom Beat 'em Up Bundle will be shallow, and the action grows repetitive thanks to simplistic gameplay and unlimited continues.None of the individual games will take you more than 90 minutes of playtime to beat, since they were all designed with arcade experiences in mind. But for $19.99 as a digital download on your console of choice (or on PC, sooner or later), this is a great addition to your party-game collection, to play on the go on the Switch, or just as a retro gaming history lesson.