Before Super Smash Bros started pitting all of Nintendo’s franchise players against each other, Sega a created Fighters Megamix which was a fighting game that featured a mash up roster of characters from other Sega games. The game primarily featured characters from the Virtua Fighter and Fighting Vipers games, but also had characters from the Sonic the Fighters game based on Sonic the Hedgehog, Virtua Fighter Kids, the Virtua Cop light gun game and the Daytona USA racing game.
It was a great idea, but criminally, it never got a sequel. But what it did get is a version on Tiger’s handheld wonder, the Tiger Game.com.
Tiger released the Game.com as their biggest attempt to enter the handheld console market, and having been known for their range of LCD handheld games, they had good relations with a bunch of developers and publishers to get an impressive line up of big name franchises on the console.
Perhaps the most amazing part of the Game.com’s line up is that it had Sega games which came out whilst Sega were still making the Game Gear. The Game Gear didn’t receive versions of Somic Jam or Fighters Megamix, but the Game.com did.
Of course, this version doesn’t live up to the home console version. In fact, like all the Game.com games that had direct home console versions, this is a somewhat poor representation of the main game it attempts to recreate.
But that isn’t to say that Fighters Megamix on the Game.com isn’t impressive in ways. It really is. Whilst Nintendo Game Boy games based on home console games would usually be 2D, or top down experiences that took the characters and themes of console games and put them into an original version, Tiger usually tried to recreate the home console version as closely as possible. This meant that Resident Evil 2 still used fixed camera angles and gave the illusion of 3D movement and Duke Nukem 3D was still something of a first person shooter.
Fighters Megamix does a great job to create the illusion of it being a 3D fighting game. You can move out of your opponents way and see the arena shift to give the impression of it being a 3D level.
The controls are decent, if a little basic. You can jump, kick, punch just as you’d expect to. For the most part I just played as Akira because I could use the combo of a jumping high kick and a low kick to defeat any opponent. Yeah, I get this isn’t the best way to play a fighting game, but after a little while of experimentation I realised the game didn’t have a whole lot to offer and if I started to lose I took the easy route to win. So sue me. But jokes aside, this is a problem in a lot of fighting games that always needs addressing with smart enough enemy AI to prevent you using this tactic.
The main game sees you choose a path of six fights. You can choose path A, B, C or D and when you complete one you unlock a new fighter. The game has around twelve fighters in it, unless there are additional secret characters that aren’t hinted at with a blank question mark on the character select screen. The characters include Akira, Pai, Lion, Jacky, Bahn, Candy, Sanman and Mahler which gives you a mix of Virtua Fighter and Fighting Vipers characters. You can then unlock Kids Sarah which is a big head version of Sarah from the game Virtua Fighter Kids, Janet from Virtua Cop, Hornet, which is the car from Daytona USA and Siba who was a character that was cut from the original Virtua Fighter game, but included in Fighters Megamix. This is a tiny selection when you consider that the Sega Saturn version has thirty-four playable characters. It’s just a shame we don’t seem to have anyone included from Sonic the Fighters such as Bean the Dynamite and Bark the Polar Bear.
I found Akira had the best reach with his kicks, and others felt a disadvantage to play as due to short reach. Best example was that when I unlocked the Virtua Fighter Kids version of Sarah, she has a big head and short legs and it wasn’t easy to reach an opponent with a leg sweep.
My favourite character to unlock is the car from Daytona USA and this is so fun and crazy to play as.
The graphics are detailed and if you’re playing on original hardware I’d suggest playing with the contrast wheel as the more detail you have the harder it is to follow the action because of the Game.com’s significant ghosting effect when the screen scrolls or characters move.
As well as the main game mode there is also survival mode where you get one energy bar and one chance to defeat as many opponents as possible. This gives a high score like challenge to take on, and adds replay value to the game.
The game competes with Mortal Kombat Trilogy on the Game.com to be the best fighting game on the system, and it is perhaps an easier and more fun experience to jump into. For collectors of the system, it’s one of the best games on the system, but isn’t as rich as an experience as the Sega Saturn game.
You can get loads more Gaming articles in the Gaming section of the site, and don’t forget to check out all our gaming videos on the Geek Battle Gaming YouTube Channel and the Geek Battle comedy panel show on the Extreme Improv XStreamed YouTube Channel
