[Glisp]

Hey guys. First off I want to apologize for reviving this topic. Second, I have beat the game on the highest difficulty setting without cheating for once. I can agree that the controls are shitty yes but it really depends upon the controller you're using the game is designed for a six button controller. Second, I agree the controls are a bitch. Apparently, I think they were designed that way. However, the difficulty of using certain combination varies from character to character. Quarter circle forward attacks seem to vary in difficulty to perform in some characters.

Example: the Eternal Champion's transform needs a light but fast quarter circle forward followed directly by a press of a button. It is very nit-picky when it comes to that. Raven's Quarter Circle forward Z attack is actually activated the same way though it is a bit easier to do. The controls take some getting used to which is why many of you were turned off by it. It's fine, I totally see your complaints have merit now but at the same time I see your lack of patience.

http://www.sega-16.com/feature_page.php?id...ichael%20Latham
Apparently they DID study a Street Fighter 2 machine for the development of the original game:


There's actually a bit more strategy involved with this game than most. Especially since the AI is broken and more intellegent. It can also so moves humanly impossible by a human player. (such as the secret characters Blast, Senator, and Chin Wo being able to perform their vendettas from the left side of the of the screen as opposed to just the right side of it.

This is what a pro can do on the highest difficulty setting against the final opponent:

Broken Character? Yes, but so is the opponent. Really, it's an even match if you think about it. The player just has the upper hand in this case. However, the Dark Champion is no picnic. Even on Normal he's a pain especially since you have to fight him with whatever character you selected.

I'm not forcing you to play the game but please know that the series was awesome back in the day. It was popular enough to have a Fleetway comic book strip, a plan for a Cartoon that never came to be, and some people are still giving it good reviews, even today. If there's one thing that would need to be fixed, I'd have to agree with the controls. The game is perfect other than that IMO. There are ton of interesting characters and there's an ending for all of them except the Eternals.

This post has been edited by Glisp: 16 October 2010 - 04:29 PM

[Tiberious]

Bweheheh... Eternal one-button infinite FTW.

Jetta's another one with an infinite, except it requires pianoing Thrust and Wheel alternatin (crouching Thrust infinite). Apparently, you can chain Thrust to Wheel and cancel the Wheel's startup into Thrust. Frame advantage on hit makes it combo to dizzy.

[Glisp]

Tbh, all the characters have an infinite power combo of some kind.



Infinite Inner Strength FTW

[Krigo]

Seth and the SF3 boss both seem infinitely easier than the Dark Eternal Champion. =P

[Glisp]

Compared to his big brother, the Eternal Champion, when played with by the CPU in the final battle, he favors going more all out than the Eternal, hence why he has a tendency not to block. It also mentions him doing this in his character biography in the access info option. He prefers to unleash all of his strength all at once. His attacks are huge and devastating, using the power of natural disasters at his disposal. When forced into close combat, he has a very high physical strength. Though, this also leaves him open for attack as previously mentioned, he prefers to use all of his power at once.

I can actually also beat the Dark Eternal Champion on Warrior difficulty as Blast so he's a cupcake on both difficulties if you have a good grasp of his attacks and how he uses them as the CPU. He doesn't appear in Neophyte mode.

In the cancelled third Eternal Champions game, The Final Chapter, there was to be a Chaos Eternal Champion. I talked to the game's creator Mike Latham lately (nice guy.)

Justin,

1st no need to call me Mr. Latham, that would be my Dad. Michael is fine.

Sorry for the delay, have been very busy helping on a Facebook game launch.

First check out: [link]

This is an interview I did and it talks about the EC 3 design here.

Ok, let me try and answer your current question. Would be glad to answer more if you have them after checking out the interview.

1. What were his powers planned to be other than the ones stolen from Thanatos?

Chaos is a creature of time mixed with entropy. Meaning while time is fluid and Chaos and the characters can move through it even he can't fight the force of entropy. So instead he embraces what is his greatest weakness and this is what makes him so dangerous.

So his powers are a mix of time attacks. In addition he can control the destructive entropy of the core elements, such as air, fire, metal, water, and earth. Most of these concepts are rooted in Chinese mythology.

Each player has an element of power and weakness as well. So you have to play in very strategic order to drop both his attack lines of time and entropy.

As for what he looks like, I'm sorry I don't have any of the art work, it was left as property of Sega. What I can tell you is he looked like the Eternal, but his body was made of the core elements mentioned above and would shift per his best need of attack and his clothing was made of energy like their bodies of the Eternal and would constantly flux showing various warrior outfits from many time lines.

Hopefully this brings some rest to your mind and thanks for being so interested in the first place.

This post has been edited by Glisp: 29 October 2010 - 01:08 PM

[Krigo]

Actually sounds like a pretty cool concept for a game, just a shame that it couldn't be made in this day and age, considering they'd be able to fix the problems with the game being cheap, and the sudden reboots of a lot of old fighting franchises, it'd be nice to see something like it come out in this day and age, as you don't really even have that many story-oriented fighting games these days.

(Tekken does not count, Tekken has the same amount of story diversity between titles as a Legend Of Zelda game has).

[Glisp]

His Sega-16 interview, which I posted earlier in the thread I think, reveals a lot about the third game. Not about specific characters but certain gameplay aspects. He also talks about how Sega Of Japan were the ones responsible. Not surprising as they have had a bad habit of this.

Quoted from the 2005 Sega-16 interview:

Sega-16: Many gamers were eagerly anticipating the final installment of the series on the Saturn. That console's packaging went as far as to include a photo and lableled it as "coming soon," yet the game was cancelled. Rumors abound that Sega of Japan were responsible, as they didn't want competition for Virtua Fighter. Is this true? Exactly what happened?

Michael Latham: Well, your sources are correct. Sega of Japan felt that Eternal Champions was keeping Virtua Fighter from being more successful in the US and that it would be better if the company focused on only one franchise...and as Sega is a Japanese company, the Japan side won. It was a crushing blow, and was the only time in working nearly a decade at Sega I considered quitting. I mainly stayed with the hope to change that decision, but sadly never could. Even when we did the NetFighter project for Heat.net, we weren't able to use the Eternal characters as a hidden bonus. From Japan's view the game never existed, in spite of its stellar sales and even offers to do comic books and a cartoon around it.

Sega-16: Information about the Saturn Eternal Champions game is almost non existent. How far along was it when it was cancelled? Are there any demos, screen shots, or perhaps concept art floating around?

Michael Latham: I had about 20 pages of the design when I got informed of its cancellation, but as I told you, I had the basic story always worked out from the beginning. The idea was that just like the Eternal Champions, there was a second set of fighters fighting to regain their lives (called the Infernals), and this created a certain balance to the time line. The story of the Saturn version was that a third force, called Chaos, comes in and starts ripping apart the time line and the two sides have to work together fight this new threat. So you can choose the side of the Eternals or Infernals, good and evil, but not black and white as you think, and then fight to fix the damaged time-line.

What was the real cool part was that things you did affected the timeline in real-time in the game, and so it would effect the characters looks, abilities, histories, and the way the world looked. You could even effect the time flow during the fight which created all kinds of twists for the game mechanics. If you were successful, you could find a way to return everyone to their timelines and their effect on history then created a very special ending, and there were other sub-endings, 30 in all. My friend Tony Van (a very successful game producer and designer in his own right) warned me you never end any movie, TV show, or game with a "to be continued" ending like I did in the Sega CD versions; if you do you are doomed, and there will never be another one. A wise insight, from a wise guy.

Poor Michael.
I also talked to him and he said he's always thought about coming back to Sega but with Sega of Japan still acting the way it was back when he was working at Sega he said he couldn't. So, this is one of the reasons why Sega of Japan makes me so angry. The other reason is that they just seem to personally attack the US branch of Sega as if they seemingly hate it. Even today that's the case.

[Krigo]

Yeah, I read the SEGA-16 interview and it was really interesting and made me appreciate what the man has done, it's just a shame that he doesn't own the right to the characters, and then he could end up calling it under another name, of course he could use different designs but keep them similar to the characters, kind of like how BlazBlue is pretty much just a sequel to Guilty Gear, with the two main characters playing incredibly similar to the Guilty Gear ones.

This post has been edited by Krigo: 29 October 2010 - 01:44 PM

[Tiberious]

Tbh, all the characters have an infinite power combo of some kind.

[Combo Video]

Infinite Inner Strength FTW

Umm, not all of those are true infinites. They are TODs (Touches of Death, where damage is high enough and leads to a stun, allowing the same combo repeated to kill), but not actually infinites. Ones that I saw that were true infinites were by Larcen, Chin Wo, Rax, Shadow, Xavier, Midknight, Ramses, Raven, Blast and Crispy. Thanatos's looks like one, but if you notice, the opponent is being pushed back with each repetition, and would soon be too far away for the hits to connect.

The way to determine a true infinite:

1) Will this work without stun?

2) Is the opponent unable to stop the combo once it starts?

3) Would this work even when the opponent would normally be completely dead?

If all answers are yes, then you have a true infinite. KI, for example, has situational infinites, but nothing that's guaranteed until an ender is landed (Eyedol and Cinder in the arcade version are the most known). TvC has its infinites nerfed so long as an opponent has two levels to perform a Mega Crash. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 tried to do away with infinites by having the opponent be 'stunned' and thrown out of a combo loop, but ways around the restriction were found, so it has several infinites. Street Fighter 4 even has one, with Fei Long against Seth and Abel.

A game's infinite count can be a judge of its competitive viability, but not always the only one used.

[Glisp]

Man, Hooter the Owl is by far the cheapest character in the game.

You don't believe me? Well, watch this:

That's on Champion mode too, the highest difficulty. Hooter the Owl makes mince meat out of Dawson. And yes, this is me playing, but still, holy fuck. His victory pose is badass too. =P

[Tiberious]

Nicely done on activating the Cinekill on Larcen.

Notice how you only had to stun him at low health while infinite power was active?

That's why I posted that information earlier in the thread. The guides you find claim it's even harder to do than it already is.

[Glisp]

Yeah. I actually did a whole Champion mode playthrough.

Slash is a troll.... In this part, I score an Overkill on him and two Cinekills in a row during the fights with Raven and Blade after that.


Oh and fun facts: Dawson, Chin Wo, and Blast were originally planned for the first Eternal Champions game. There was also a Clown character concept with attacks similar to those of the Senator (Mike Latham told me this info.) This clown concept was eventually turned into Jetta Maxx. Dawson, Chin Wo, and Blast were scrapped from the first EC because of ROM limitations.

This post has been edited by Glisp: 26 January 2011 - 09:05 PM

[Skeledroid]

I need to get one of these, so I can play games like this properly. PS2 controllers are not very good for fighting games... at all.

[Glisp]

Yes, I agree. Same with any PS console controller. I tried playing a fighting game on the PS1 once that involved rolling the D-pad and it didn't have analog support due to its age and I tore the skin right off my finger!

I'm actually thinking about purchasing a six button Genesis Arcade stick. I'm really interested in seeing if the game functions any better with one.

[Meat Miracle]

I need to get one of these, so I can play games like this properly. PS2 controllers are not very good for fighting games... at all.

I like how they have the dpad and abcxyz buttons reversed.

Also, ebay a saturn usb pad instead. Same price, one extra button, better quality. Just make sure you get an original one, not a bootleg.