Finish Him Part Six: Cosmic Carnage, Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls, Eternal Champions

Posted on by vgj2008

Cosmic Carnage/Cyber Brawl

Originally, I thought that this game only had a couple of characters and fatalities, but then I (gasp) did a little more digging and discovered that the truth was quite different. Depending on how you finish the antagonist, their head, arms, or legs will be destroyed, and quite bloodily, at that. This game is thirsty for bloody violence in a way that clearly conveys the suffering of the enemy. Yeah, Blood Warrior and Survival Arts were from Japanese companies too, but CC feels the most bloodthirsty of them all.

Interestingly, for the US version, all of the human characters were changed to aliens. This allowed the game to squeak by with a Teen 13+ ESRB rating. But the sneaky bastards put a cheat code in that allows you to switch to the Japanese version! I did wonder why that was supposed to be a big deal. Now I know. And knowing is half the battle.

HEADED FOR TROUBLE: Three

THEY (HAD) LEGS: One

CHARMS TO DISARM: Three

Side notes: There’s a character named Naruto, who’s a ninja, and the game’s visuals have a lot of potential. The animations are pretty smooth. Sadly, the developer, Almanic, closed shop in 1997.

Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls

Billy somehow skeletonizes the foe with his sword; Jawbreaker knocks out all of the loser’s teeth in a humorous touch; Bones makes the antagonist collapse in a pile; Sickle spins his enemy like a top, driving them into the ground, or impales them with their own weapon; Blade kicks his foe, making them melt into a puddle (what?)’ Trigger Happy makes the loser turn into ashes; Countdown reduces the antagonist to a skeleton; Sekka vaporizes her enemy, leaving only their clothes behind; Dominque… turns her foe into a pile of worms (?); and the Shadow Lord also reduces the loser to ash.

A quirky little ragtag bunch of fatalities. Too bad the game’s kinda ugly.

Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side

I had high praise for the fatalities in this game in an article on scary moments in non-horror retro games. Besides the regular fatals, there are also stage-exclusive fatalities called Overkills, and “Cine-Kills”, which have the titular Champion kill the enemy in ironic ways shown in highly compressed prerendered cutscenes.

Blade shoots the antagonist with a laser; Dawson shoots the foe’s head, but in a lot gorier and nastier fashion than your usual fatal.

HEADED FOR TROUBLE: Four

Jetta uses psychic powers to make the opponent explode; Lawson stabs the foe an excessive number of times; vampire scientist Midknight reduces the loser to ashes; Ramses III turns into a giant scarab, but it’s glitchy. Where’s Rick from The Mummy when you need him?

Voodoo priestess Raven throws a potion onto the loser which ages them rapidly. Their head also explodes. Overkill much?

HEADED FOR TROUBLE: Five

Note that none of her fatals involve Voodoo dolls.

Rax disintegrates his enemy; female pirate Riptide has a strange, kiss-themed fatal. The big pair of lips freezes the loser solid, and then their heart explodes.

KISS ME DEADLY: One

ICE SORE: Three

Assassin Shadow has a very weak fatal where she cuts the antagonist a couple times; caveman Slash messily clubs the enemy’s head down into the stump.

HEADED FOR TROUBLE: Six

Atlantean fish-man Trident uses his wrist-mounted… trident to turn his antagonist into a blood tornado; sorcerer Xavier shrinks his foe, steps on them, and smiles; soldier Blast throws a bunch of dynamite at the loser, which blows them up into three pieces; acupuncturist Chin Lo uses acupuncture needles to make the opponent explode; the Senator turns into a mailman who goes postal by shooting the loser off of the screen. It feels like they could’ve done more with this concept, especially considering how sick some of these fatalities are.

There is a character who is a palette swap of Xavier, called Thanatos. He only has one fatal where he gorily decapitates the loser with his scythe.

DECAP ATTACK: Three

Overkills

Blade’s future stage with a fan has you kicking the foe into it, with messy results; the second one is even when toxic goop melts the loser and their guts spill out; Dawson’s railroad stage with the train has a fatal where the loser is horribly impaled, or has a boulder bloodily crush them; Jetta’s circus stage has a clown car shot out of a cannon land on the antagonist, with a horn full of blood for a darkly comedic touch, or a lion in a cage messily eats the enemy; Lawson’s theater stage has the woman running the ticket booth dismember the loser with gunfire, or has gangsters committing a drive-by; Midknight’s lab stage has one of the most disturbing fatalities I’ve ever seen. A chamber messes with the opponent’s body, seemingly layer by layer, before exploding (though there is a dark comedy moment where the bones make a bunch of rattling noises). The second Overkill has the antagonist dropped down a shaft with all sorts of nasty blades that reduce them almost to nothingness.

Ramses III turns one of the jackal statues into a real one that basically skins the enemy alive (yikes), or he summons an evil ghost that tears the foe apart.

Raven’s Overkill has her opponent thrown into a giant, skull-shaped furnace until they messily blow up.

PANTS ON FIRE: Seven

Second Overkill: The antagonist is thrown into a cauldron that melts their flesh.

Rax’s caged arena state has his foe impaled on a statue, or killed – and then swept up – by little robots; Riptide throws the loser overboard, and their blood attracts a shark, or a hook lowers and impales the opponent; Shadow’s stage fatalities have a lot more flair than her regular fatal, as the antagonist explodes when thrown into a neon sign, or gets stepped on by Not-Godzilla; on Slash’s volcano stage, a big dinosaur makes a meal out of the foe, or a pterodactyl drops them into the volcano, and they are jettisoned out of it; Trident’s home of Atlantis has the enemy killed by bloodthirsty vines, or attacked by bloodthirsty fish; the Salem pyre in Xavier’s stage is used with predictable results.

PANTS ON FIRE: Eight

Second Overkill: Less predictable is the one where a lightning bolt BISECTS the foe.

HATE TO SPLIT: 26

IT’S ELECTRIC: Four

Blast’s stage has a helicopter blow the loser up with a missile, or another soldier rips them apart with gunfire.

Chin Lo’s temple stage has the monkeys hanging around eat the antagonist, or the dragons wrapped around the pillars rip the enemy in half.

HATE TO SPLIT: 27

The Senator’s Washington stage has a large missile launched onto the enemy, or the foe is launched and impaled… on the Washington Monument. A little offensive, but not as offensive as the continued career of Joe Manchin.

Cine-Kills

Blade is shrunk down and squished between the Eternal Champion’s fingers; the EC pantomimes shooting Dawson, but with actual gunshots; Jetta is… killed by the ribbons wrapped around her body?

The EC transports a bomb strapped onto Lawson’s body. The game cuts away before it explodes.

Midknight is reduced to ashes himself when the EC… opens a window; Ramses III is turned into… water; Raven’s snake tattoo is made very real; The EC uses telekinesis to rip out Rax’s cyborg implants. That’s probably the nastiest of the Cine-Kills.

Riptide is quelled by thorny vines; Shadow is ended with her own shuriken; Slash is turned into a statue; Trident is turned into a goldfish and stepped on; and Xavier is merely made to vanish. None of the other characters have Cine-Kills.

This is incredible. The game has some truly creative and disgusting fatalities (look at the sheer lack of decapitations and bisections). Some may go too far. Y’all were some sick little puppies making this game. Like, are you people ok?

Sadly, their efforts were largely unrewarded, not just by gamers, but by Sega’s infamously poor management. Someone on the Hardcore Gaming 101 Top 47K Games of All Time podcast said that Sega was their own worst enemy, and the more I learn about Sega’s history, the more receipts that statement gained. I think it was the Kid Chameleon episode.

Sega intentionally buried EC because they thought it would compete with Virtua Fighter… only to then go on and make more fighting games, like Last Bronx. Jealousy? But Sega Japan specialized in making 3D fighters, whereas EC never “graduated” to 3D.

Even if EC had continued, where would it have ended up? It just would’ve sent out to die on the Sega Saturn or Dreamcast. Maybe it could’ve eked out a game on the original Xbox.

If there is anything I could criticize about EC, the Cine-Kills are so awfully compressed that its hard to tell what’s going on and Rax’s fatalities are the most vanilla of the lot… except for his brutal Cine-Kill, ironically.

EC had better fatalities with animals in Overkills than the Animalities in Mortal Kombat 3.

Power Rankings

1. EC: CftDS… 2. Mortal Kombat 3… 3. Mortal Kombat II… 4. Mortal Kombat (Arcade)… 5. Mortal Kombat (Game Gear)… 6. Survival Arts… 7. CC… 8. DDV: TSF… 9. BloodStorm… 10. Mortal Kombat (Super NES)… 11. ClayFighter 631/3… 12. Blood Warrior… 13. Mortal Kombat (Game Boy)… 14. Time Killers

Trope Counts

DECAP ATTACK: Three

IT’S ELECTRIC: Five

PANTS ON FIRE: Nine

ICE SORE: Three

HEADED FOR TROUBLE: Six

IRRITABLE BOWELS: Three

THEY (HAD) LEGS: Zero

FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS: Zero

KISS ME DEADLY: One

BOOBS OF DOOM: Zero

HEARTBREAKERS: Zero

SHATTERHAND (AND EVERYTHING ELSE): Zero

HATE TO SPLIT: 27

CHARMS TO DISARM: Three