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Whatever Happened to Eternal Champions?

Whatever Happened to Eternal Champions?

At the height of the 2D fighting game craze of the mid-90s, SEGA decided to make their own. The SNES may have had everything that Konami, SNK and Capcom were throwing at the genre, but first-party titles in the West were relegated to the Punch Out series. Thus was born Eternal Champions in December 1993/January 1994 for the Mega Drive.

The plot for Eternal Champions is pretty basic. There are nine characters, and whoever wins the tournament - held at the pleasure of The Eternal Champion - would get to live. Oh, yeah, each character had been plucked from the timeline, moments before they were supposed to die, I should have mentioned that.

Each of the nine were distinct in appearance and fighting style, and came from throughout history from 50,000 B.C. to 2345 A.D. There was a ninja, a cyborg, a caveman, an alchemist, an Atlantean, a vampire, a bounty hunter, an aristocrat and a cat-burglar. When you won the tournament, you got to see how they averted their own death - while assuming that everyone else died as intended.

Due to the game using six basic attack moves, you had to either keep swapping between punches and kicks by pressing Start, or you had to buy a six-button controller. You could also use the SEGA Activator, a “controller” which sat on the floor, and could detect if you waved a foot or a hand over it. If you used an Activator, it increased the damage you dealt while decreasing the damage you took, which was certainly novel.

I first heard about Eternal Champions when it was mentioned in Sonic the Comic. It was a comic magazine that printed comics based on games that were available on SEGA consoles. Starting in issue 19 (February 1994), one of the strips was Eternal Champions, written by Michael Cook, and it ran for five issues. It featured the characters as a team, called Eternal Champions, who were trying to fight evil across time. The publisher, possibly capitalising on a marketing push by SEGA, also put out an Eternal Champions Special a week later, with another story as well as some character profiles and an interview with game designer Michael Latham. Needless to say, I was quite intrigued by the game, as I read all of the issues involved. But I never owned a Mega Drive.

The game was a commercial success, though critically divisive. But money talks, so Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side came out on the Mega-CD in May 1995. Not a sequel, it was an enhanced version of the original with some changes to combos, 24 characters, a new boss, and new finishing moves that used the capabilities of the CD medium to get really brutal. The game was shipped with an 18 rating, and if you have the stomach to look them up you’ll discover why.

Starting in October 1994, Sonic The Comic issues 37-40 starred a second strip based on Eternal Champions - or so it seemed. It starred Larcen Tyler and Shadow Yamato, and took place in 1920s Chicago. There were no other Eternal Champions strips after that.

It wasn’t until fairly recently that I discovered why the strip focussed on Larcen. In 1995 a Game Gear game called Chicago Syndicate came out, featuring Larcen Tyler and, obviously, set in Chicago. The plot means that it’s an alternate reality to Eternal Champions, as Larcen didn’t die, and had a year to help the police before he would be imprisoned. Apparently that meant taking to the streets in a side scrolling beat ‘em up fashion. In a novel twist, between levels you could check out how you were doing in your hideout, choose which location to go to next, and rest to recuperate your health - though time still moved. Fun fact, one of the writers from Sonic the Comic, Mark Eyles, was a designer on the game!

But that still wasn’t the end of Eternal Champions. There was a second spin-off released, this one starring the other character from the strip: Shadow Yamoto. Cringingly called X-Perts, it was released for Mega Drive in 1996, and developed by Abalone rather than by SEGA. You played as three characters: Shadow, Taylor and Claudel. It’s a side-scrolling action game, and you can swap between the three at will. You had to swap, too, as the characters would get attacked even when you weren’t playing as them. It’s another alternate reality from the fighting game, and in this one Shadow formed a group of “X-Perts” to take on evil. It was not looked on favourably despite its detailed graphics, and the mechanic of using three characters at once.

Unfortunately, in late 1995 it transpired that there would be no third game, despite it having been shown off on the back of the SEGA Saturn’s retail box. It would have been called Eternal Champions: The Final Chapter and featured even more characters - but SEGA had other ideas. On the one hand, you had SEGA of America eager to keep making its first-party fighter - but on the other hand was SEGA of Japan. They had been working on Virtua Fighter, which had seen its first home release in Japan in late 1994, and released in the West in mid-1995. But the American sales figures of the Saturn launch title weren’t doing so well, and SEGA of Japan blamed Eternal Champions. Being the parent company, they had the authority to unceremoniously cancel all work on Eternal Champions: The Final Chapter so that SEGA of America and SEGA of Europe could concentrate on what they saw as the more important franchise.

That’s where we are in 2021 - it’s been just over 25 years since we last saw any of the Eternal Champions. You can buy the original game on Steam, and it is on the SEGA Mega Drive Mini, but other than that, tough? While Eternal Champions was released on the Wii Virtual console, X-Perts and Chicago Syndicate haven’t been re-released anywhere. You can’t even buy Eternal Champions on the Wii Virtual Console anymore, as that was shut down in 2019.

Maybe the Eternal Champion should have kept his power to resurrect this franchise, eh?

Whatever Happened To
Andrew Duncan

Andrew Duncan

Editor

Guaranteed to know more about Transformers and Deadpool than any other staff member.

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COMMENTS

James Wallis
James Wallis - 05:31pm, 13th September 2021

When I was working on the Sonic novels for Virgin Publishing (as one-third of the group pseudonym 'Martin Adams') Virgin was looking into licensing other Megadrive titles for novelisations, and I know that Sega was pushing Eternal Champions at them hard. Nothing came of it, or the Ecco the Dolphin novel I pitched, but that's another story.

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Acelister
Acelister - 07:56pm, 13th September 2021 Author

At the time I was devouring videogame-themed books. Those Sonic books, and the Adventure Gamebooks starring Sonic and Lemmings, were particular favourites. I'd definitely have gotten a kick out of Ecco and Eternal Champions!

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James Wallis
James Wallis - 10:11pm, 14th September 2021

I think the main reason it never happened was that EC was clearly a poor third in the fighting-game stakes after SFII and Mortal Kombat, the Sonic books didn't do brilliantly for Virgin, and none of us were particularly into fighting games. Glad you enjoyed all the books! For years I never ran into anyone who'd even heard of them, so this belated recognition is a reala day-brightener.

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Bruce B
Bruce B - 02:14pm, 19th November 2021

Thanks for clearing up the mystery of what happened to this fantastic fighting game. I don't know WHAT Sega was smoking at the time, to think a game that surpassed Street Fighter II in sales had little potential? Or that Virtua Fighter was beter, or could better compete with Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter? What was wrong with Sega of japan? Virtua Fighter had bland, dirivative characters. Eternal Champions had distinct, unique characters with story and personality. I had many - hundreds of hours of fun with Eternal Champions. There was a lot of potential just wasted. Im sure by now it would have been one of the big games people are waiting for the next entry to.

No wonder the Dreamcast failed. With people at the helm who have no clue what their audience wants - what chance did it have? Just like Eternal Champions, they axed it at the height of its popularity. Just sad, really.

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Acelister
Acelister - 02:25pm, 19th November 2021 Author

It had franchise potential, too! Just imagine how many spin-offs it could have had based on those 24 characters could have helmed if they'd given it time and budget. These days the only time someone talks about Virtua Fighter is when they talk about it appearing in Yakuza.

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Bruce B
Bruce B - 03:10pm, 19th November 2021

You know, I was going to add that Virtua Fighter never went anywhere - I totally forgot. Just like I forgot Virtua Fighter very soon after release. Where is it, who cares? People still ask about Eternal Champions, nobody has any sentiment, besides a faint memory, of Virtua Fighter. I just dont get Sega and how they just take apart things without giving them any chance to rise up. Virtua Fighter could have been good too, with a better artistic direction, game modes and story.  Sega must of had some board room changes because around the Dreamcast time it wasnt acting like the Sega that took Nintendo to task with the Genesis.

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Silanda
Silanda - 09:37pm, 23rd December 2021

Some time ago the producer of Eternal Champions, the late Michael Latham, did a bit of an interview with Retro Gamer magazine about the 32X version of Virtua Fighter, which he also produced. In it he revealed the likely reason Sega of Japan had Eternal Champions cancelled: a petty grudge. 

Basically, AM2 were angry that the 32X VF team had added things to the game that weren't in the Saturn version (extra colours, tournament mode, ranking mode) and demanded that they were taken out. Latham believed that these features added value for customers so stuck to his guns. The bosses at SoA agreed and lobbied Japan to release the game as is, which was granted. Shortly after Eternal Champions, Latham's game, was cancelled by SoJ. It was petty retaliation for the Virtua Fighter team having their noses pushed out of joint.

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