Battle Monsters (Saturn) Playthrough

A playthrough of Acclaim's 1996 fighting game for the Sega Saturn, Battle Monsters.

This video shows four runs through the game on the normal difficulty level:

1:55 as Headless Harn
16:46 as Chili and Pepper
30:39 as Deathmask
45:37 as Dreathdok

Battle Monsters was the third game developed by Scarab, a Japanese company primarily known for arcade and arcade-style games (including Sammy's Survival Arts and the Dreamcast version of Fighting Vipers 2) before they were folded into Cavia in 2001 and renamed Feelplus in 2005.

It is a 1v1 fighting game that follows in the grand 90s arcade tradition of pitting digitized images of actors and sculpted miniatures against one another and showering them in a torrent of cartoon blood.

Twelve monster-themed combatants have come together to fight for control of the "dark domain" that lies "beyond the threshold of reality." The colorful cast of "Battle Monsters" include the likes of Deathmask (Frankenstein's monster wearing a Michael Myers mask), Naga (a gorgon), LaPa (an animated ballerina doll), Chili & Pepper (a freaky pair of hopping ladies in Peg Bundy wigs), and Dreathdok (Goro, but brown and with two arms), amongst others, and most look like they just stepped straight out of Walmart's Halloween aisle. They're corny, ridiculous, and they lend the game just the right amount of low budget, B-movie anti-polish to make the whole thing quite endearing.

At first glance, it'd be easy to peg Battle Monsters as a rip-off, but it doesn’t play like Mortal Kombat. It focuses far more on fast-paced spectacle than it does on sheer violence, and it feels more like a descendant of Way of the Warrior or Shadow: War of Succession, though it looks and plays far better than either of those 3DO "gems."

Characters have diverse line-ups of super attacks as well as a wide range of standards hits and command specials that make everyone feel different to play. Though the controls are stiff and a little ropey, the gameplay is fast and flows reasonably well, the moves are easy to learn thanks to the simple control layout, and the multi-tiered stage layouts introduce a fun new wrinkle for strategy. It's not the sort of thing you'd find in a fighting game competition, but it is a lot of fun to pop in for a couple of hours with a buddy.

The graphics are my favorite part of Battle Monsters. The character sprites are huge, their animations are hilarious, the Samurai Shodown-style zoom effect is smooth, and there is a ridiculous amount of parallax scrolling packed into each background. The game does slow down when things get crazy, and the scaling effects suffer from nasty dithering and pixelization artifacts, but it does make a fair show of the Saturn's ability to toss around 2D sprites.

Battle Monsters is a flashy, gaudy game that's not deep enough to keep you playing for months on end, but it's the perfect seasonal novelty. If the theme appeals to you, give it a shot!

Too bad the sequel, Killing Zone (   • Killing Zone (PS1) Playthrough - Nint...  ), was such a disappointment.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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