Dual Heroes

WHAT IS IT WITH FIGHTING games and the N64? We had Clayfighter last month, which was the most rancid steamer that's ever disgraced Nintendo's console, and now we've got Dual Heroes, which isn't much better!

In Dual Heroes, you've got eight Power Rangers lookalikes to choose from, many of them with embarrassing names. Because I don't know any Japanese I don't know why they're fighting, but it's probably something to do with overthrowing injustice – it usually is. If they all just teamed up instead of kicking the crap out of each other it'd make the job a lot easier, but all those blows to the head can't be good for the brain.

As challenging as arm-wrestling Steven Hawking!

The style of play is a complete rip-off of Sega's Virtua Fighter games. You've got a kick button, a punch button and a block button, and every move is done with combinations of these. It works perfectly in the Virtua Fighter games because the characters have loads of moves, and even inexperienced players can pull off a few special attacks just by button-bashing. It doesn't work in Dual Heroes, because the characters don't have enough moves. You end up just doing a series of weedy kicks and punches (the block function is so useless it might as well not be there), with the occasional unexpected spinning kick.

It doesn't really matter how bad a player you are, because it's almost impossible to lose. Just keep on crouching down and alternating between punches and kicks, and this will see you through to the final boss every time! Because of this easiness, there's practically no replay value at all.

Dual Heroes does offer one new gimmick – it has a 'virtual gamer' feature, where you can fight against one of five different pseudo-people. Although the actual enemies you come up against are the same, the fighting style is different depending on who you choose to fight against. The differences between the virtual gamers are noticeable – some are a lot more aggressive than others – but it doesn't have that much of an effect on how easy the game is. You can still take down the three boss characters – Gyn, Zorr and Gexorr – without using any continues, unless you're either unlucky or totally inept. It's as challenging as arm-wrestling Steven Hawking.

Go Go POWER RANGERS... Please!

The game can't even manage to look good. Dark Rift might have been as dull as a Saga holiday in Penge, but at least it managed some decent visual effects. Dual Heroes has eye-hurting arenas with a minimum of detail, surrounded by blurry backgrounds that look like they've been painted by a second-year art class. The only good point about the fighters is the animation, but when it's motion captured from a real person it's hard to go wrong. The textures on their bodies are another matter, as they're just as blurred as the backgrounds and don't look much cop even when the fighters are some way from the camera, never mind in close-up! The ultimate visual insult appears at the top and bottom of the screen – the game has borders. Huge, PAL Pilotwings-size borders. God knows why – it's not as if there's a lot of detail to slow things down. The three year old Toshinden on the PlayStation completely humiliates Dual Heroes!

Even the sound's lousy. Combat noises are limited to clanks, thuds and the odd grunt, and the music is blippy-bloppy Japanese stuff that could have come from a SNES. It's not quite bad enough to be annoying, but nobody's going to be walking down the street humming Gai's victory theme, put it that way.

Dual Heroes is a complete waste of space. The combination of enclosed arenas (with electrified, power-draining walls) and open arenas (with ring-outs) usually means that you don't beat the other guy with clever moves, but by pushing them towards the edge and waiting for them to fry or fall off. They even sometimes do this themselves without you having to lift a finger! Because it's supposedly based on a Japanese TV show or something, Hudson Soft must be hoping that fans will buy Dual Heroes without waiting to see any reviews. Let's face it, it's the only way anyone would buy it.

Although the array of futuristic fighters may look like some of the Power Rangers, the title is all action. The characters are a perfect blend of originality and variety, combining a range of unique stages such as the floating zone, lava and electrical stages. Sounds pretty standard, until players find out how each of the characters have a new style of artificial intelligence where the computer plays different roles based on the character you fight as well as the mystery Al factor. It's like fighting a slew of human players each with his/her own personalities and traits. This "Virtual Gamer" is like combining two AL’s in every character for an experience no true fighting game fanatic should miss.

Even the N64's staunchest supporter will admit that in the field of fighting games it comes absolutely bottom of the world, and Dual Heroes just rubs it in with sandpaper. Any beat-'em-up that requires absolutely no skill whatsoever to defeat is not going to hold the interest, and the colour scheme the game uses is like being stabbed in the eye.

Get your scrapers ready, because here's the barrel! Eye-pokingly bad beat-'em-up that requires no skill whatsoever to defeat.

Stashed full of innovative features, like the ability to train the computer to fight in your style. Sadly it's ruined by some terrible Al.

Hudson is promising true 3D fighting-game action with Dual Heroes, including the ability to fly into the screens with punches and kicks. Other cool features are fighters with different levels of A.I.. so no match will ever be predictable, and a Medal Match where you can win a medal, save it to your Controller Pak. then take the Pak to a friend's house where they can try to win the medal from you. These early screens show a game that looks very polished, and we hope the gameplay will match the graphics.