September 1, 1995

Platforms

Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Companies

Namco Hometek Ocean Software Tec Toy Visual Concepts

Genres

Fighting Sport

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The game was originally being developed for a 24-megabit cartridge--roughly the size of a modern MP3 file--which made compressing a serious challenge. Additonally, the game's producer James Goddard wanted huge character sprites that dwarfed the genre's standard of the time, which only compounded the size issue. The team considered upgrading to a 32-bit cartridge but it was considered too expensive.

This also meant that the game's roster was cut short to seven characters, so the team decided to compensate this by giving each character an extensive moveset.

"People always wondered why the characters were so big," Goddard said. "That's because we wanted larger-sized characters to help put the focus on weapon-to-weapon clashing." In order to see the weapons clash onscreen, they needed to be big, which meant they needed to be wielded by even bigger warriors. "It was a technical feat to jump from 90 pixels tall to 120 pixels tall--and still run at 60 frames per second! Later on we realized at 24 megabits we were maxed out on space; we just couldn't add any more characters. That's why our dudes have a ton of moves, to make up for the fact there are only seven characters."

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