Nintendo 64 owners were treated like second rate citizens when it came to the fighting genre. While Sega Saturn players had Virtua Fighter, and those with a PlayStation Tekken the apex of one-on-one brawlers on the sixty four bit system was, for the longest time, Mortal Kombat. That’s just sad considering that franchise was already past its prime, and also widely available on both competing platforms. Third party developers sprinkled the release calendar with a release here and there, but these were often uninspired low effort clones of existing titles. Deadly Arts is one of these such games. Released by Konami in 1998 this one was pretty infamous, and it’s not hard to see why.
Deadly Arts (known as G.A.S.P. Fighters NEXTream in Europe and Japan) is a very typical 3D fighting game of its era. The story here centers around a tournament, a forgotten champion, and a bunch of fighters who recieve invitations to join. Yeah, if you were expecting something special or out of the ordinary then you’re out of luck. You battle against an opponent and the best out of three matches wins it all. If it’s you then you’ll move on to the next foe, but if not you must use a continue and try again. Victory is won by draining your opponents life bar with a series of punches, kicks, and special moves. It’s the same old song and dance, and usually it works, but unfortunately it just doesn’t here.
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| I think the graphics are actually kind of decent. |
I’m going to switch things up and start with what I like about this game. First of all there’s a pretty decent sized roster, and while the characters are generic and look/play like the tropes they follow I thought some of the designs were pretty decent. The game is entirely anime style and I think the character models (especially the faces) aren’t bad. Stages are a little boring and generic but they feature a level of interactivity that was uncommon for this era. Your characters can break the bamboo in one of the outdoor stages for example, and crates that can block your movement. Last but not least the game has a character creator. It offers a pretty decent amount of customization as you can choose the gender and select from a myriad of options including hair, face, body type, outfit, colors, etc. You teach them special moves as you defeat foes and choose which ones you want. It’s a decent idea with fair execution. The character creator is more fully featured than I would ever have expected a Nintendo 64 fighting game to be.
Now for the bad, and believe you me, it’s a long list. Deadly Arts is terribly generic. Konami didn’t even bother to come up with much of a backstory for any of the fighters. It’s not a big deal but goes to show how much effort they put into this one. The fighting engine is dreadfully boring. Each character has a punch, kick, and block. Holding different directions on the d-pad results in a myriad of different strikes, but I honestly couldn’t tell much of a difference from the normal attacks. The special moves themselves are what I refer to as ‘realistic style’ meaning you’ll see body slams and holds but not projectiles and flying characters. Unfortunately these are really boring and are barely different than the normal strikes. The special moves are hardly worth the extra inputs they require to perform.
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| You just don’t expect features like this in a Nintendo 64 game. |
What stands out like a sore thumb however is how poor the physics engine is. Every time you’re knocked down your character falls like a sack of rocks. This makes things like juggling impossible, and the recovery time is extremely long. This makes it feel like you’re forced to spend a significant amount of time each match ‘waiting’ for either your character or the opponent to get up. It manages to make a boring game even less interesting. There are a few things that add to the frustration. Each match is extremely short at thirty seconds. Because every attack chisels so little life off of your opponent you need to work fast in order to beat the clock, and the recovery time between falling and getting back up does Deadly Arts no favors. To make matters worse when time runs out you would think the winner would automatically be the fighter with more life remaining, right? Wrong! Instead the game rates you on a number of categories like health, style, etc. And this is what determines the winner. I’ve had some matches where the fights are completely one side only for the opponent to squeak by in points and claim victory. This system is stupid and unnecessary.
A lot of critics really harped on Deadly Arts for its graphics but that seems to me to be the least of its problems. This certainly is no Tekken 3, but the character models at least are pretty decent and a step above most fighters on the platform. The backgrounds are pretty drab and could be interchanged in just about every other generic fighter, but they have a few decent effects here and there. The interactivity is also pretty nice. The only area in which Deadly Arts fails visually is the framerate. It’s a near constant stutter and the action never feels completely smooth. In a fighting game where accuracy is key this is no bueno. The soundtrack on the other hand, which heavily leans to electronic and techno, is astonishingly good. I really liked each high energy track and found the music to be disproportionately excellent when compared to the rest of the game. The only thing that throws me off is the lack of any type of voice work which was commonplace in this era, but it’s certainly not a big deal considering how cheesy this generally can be.
The hunt for a good fighting game on the Nintendo 64 certainly isn’t an easy one, and Deadly Arts definitely doesn’t fit the bill. It’s odd to me that such a reputable developer as Konami could release such a stinker like this. It’s pretty obvious that they were trying to cash in on the lack of genre representation on the platform, and they just churned this one out as fast as possible. It’s not the worst fighting game I’ve ever played, but I’ll be darned if it isn’t one of the most forgettable.
