The PC-FX was an alluring system full of promise and had a lot of potential to become the next step as a PC-Engine successor. Unfortunately due to PC-Engine’s popularity the PC-FX experienced delay after delay and eventually released in a market already selling advanced systems like the Saturn and the Playstation. The Nintendo 64 (or the Ultra 64 as it was called at the time) was already on the far horizon. Everything seemed to be set against the system that almost could. Whether the system was popular or not, sold well or not, had the most advanced CPU and the most powerful GPU, 15 programmable mathematical units, a bluray, wi-fi, do not say anything about the quality of its games.

Battle Heat was, at least at first, a powerful example of what the PC-FX can do and it was an excellent game to appeal to the fans of the older PC-Engine. It is a fully animated one on one fighting game and it is probably the first in its genre. Yeah there are more games in this genre and perhaps at some later opportunity I’ll talk about those but if you can’t wait there is the Tengai Makyo animated fighting game also for the PC-FX and at least two Yu-Yu Hakusho games for the Super Famicom, not that that’s out of the way let’s get back to business.

The game begins with a long, 3 minute intro animation showing all the characters throwing punches and showing off their superpowers. The animation is not quite perfect and at times you’ll notice small details missing but overall it is silky smooth and even looks as if it’s running at 60fps. That’s a technique that even most Playstation games never did, and there’s nothing to even speak about the Saturn since that system’s videos were really grainy and at times pretty horrible looking (there were very few games that did good and smooth videos on the Saturn but it was very rare. The Saturn did have an MPEG card but were very few games that supported that, mainly the first Lunar and Sakura Taisen fan discs). The opening is also accompanied by a much subtler and subdued song that what would be expected from such a sequence but it works pleasantly well and even has some great beats.

The opening will give you a great idea about the setting and the characters. Mostly that it is almost entirely inspired by Fist of the North Star. From the post apocalyptic world full of sand and destroyed structures buried in the ground to the hot blooded manly characters themselves it is obvious where the inspirations are coming from. For the unfamiliar it must look like a Fist of the North Star licensed game. Hokuto no Ken was such a wide influence over people it’s not suprising to see others copying that exact style. It’s not coming from banking on something popular, instead it probably comes from a strong love and admiration towards something people care so much for.

The opening ends and you’re treated to a title screen with some 16-bit rendition of the opening song and a of a pretty low quality at that, your heart sinks after seeing such a great opening and high quality music. You won’t be blamed if you were expecting to hear something at least good on at the title screen. Alright you start the game and once again like a punch to the gut it breaks your bones to see that even the next screen so low quality and lacks any thing that would remotely try to impress you. Ok, ok, when we get to the actual game things will get better right? Well, yes and no.

This is where the game completely and catastrophically breaks down. It’s not like you should expect an amazing story or superbly innovative gameplay but what you should, probably, expect , is at least a well done presentation because after all presentation is the selling point. It’s a shame to admit that the presentation doesn’t reach the goals it set for itself. First of all there is almost no story, or actually no story at all. You can get the basic premise from the opening and the ending is just some text scroll to give you a conclusion to the plot. There are no story scenes throughout the rest of the game. Why be so picky you might as, this is just a fighting game and since when do fighting games need a story? If this is a cinematic fighter wouldn’t it be natural to expect at least some kind of story?

The music is also pretty awful 90% of the time. At times it sounds like random noise and not the good kind of noise, not something that you’d expect from a PC-FX but more like from an NES, even this comparison is a disservice to the old Nintendo system. Sometimes there isn’t even ANY music at all. The entire atmosphere is lost at every single moment and section of the game it just hurts the ears and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

All that could be forgiven if at least the graphics did their job. At the most basic aspect they do their job admirable, you see animation sequences for every move you have from punches to kicks, jumps, defense and special moves, and even when your character is punched or kicked or hurt some other way. But not of these animated sequences connect from one sequence to the next. Rarely you’ll see two characters on the same screen, almost the entire time each attack is animated separately from whoever you attack. You make some sort of attack your chosen character performs that attack (hitting the air) then scene cuts and shows how your enemy is either hit or avoids the said attack. Once again, simple enough they were not going to animate how each and every type of attack from every character on every other character, it’s not a multi-million budget game so of course we shouldn’t expect that from the developers on a shoe string budget. But the problem is that every single move anyone does is cut much too soon from an offense scene to a reaction scene, the animation and the sound are cut at such critical moments it absolutely ruins the impact of the attack. It’s like you watch a Jackie Chan fight scene but just before a punch or a kick lands, just before the critical moment of impact somebody cuts the scene and shows the reaction which leaves you baffled as to what exactly happened. Now imagine that it happens with every single attack from either Jackie Chan or his rivals and you get an idea how annoying it really is and just how ridiculous and annoying things get.

The controls aren’t that great either. At first you’ll be struggling to know what each button on the controller does or whether they even do anything. It takes a long time to experiment with news because the game plays more or less like a random rock-paper-scissors game. For every attack there is another attack that can counter it. This means it’s less about skills and more about luck and luck is not always on your side. This leaves you only one thing to do, either randomly try things and hope to memorize every enemy’s attack and hope to be able to counter them as many of those as possible.

I really wanted to like Battle Heat. It’s got a wonderful art, great idea behind it, well designed characters, and so so much potential. But it just isn’t worth the price of admission. Unless you want to satisfy your morbid curiosity I guess you could try it if only because there aren’t many games like it but don’t expect something great and you might, just might have some fun.