Somehow, this reviewer is not too surprised that Battle Master never did make it out of Japan. This deadly mediocre brawler, developed by Invictus and published by Toshiba EMI in 1993, is yet another flawed attempt to cash in on the vastly more succesful Street Fighter II. Though we have seen way more obvious ripoffs in the past, this game succeeds in "borrowing" a huge amount of elements from its benefactor and manages to get away with it. The fact Battle Master was, by all accounts, not exactly a very popular game probably has something to do with that feat. But talk, as we say, is cheap. So let's go and play the blighter then.When we notice the start-up screen, one cannot help but think how gamers these days are spoiled with all kinds of modes and options to significantly lengthen a game's natural lifespan. There are no frills attached to this one: 1-player, 2-player and options. That's it. Since, quite understandably, my friends aren't stupid enough to come over and play this with me, I opt for the 1-player mode without changing the options just yet. Let's see how hard this game is supposed to be straight out of the factory.
Not very hard, is the answer to that. The person who sold me the game was kind enough to explain me everything about how the AI just can't seem to handle certain moves and told me to toy around with it. I did, and found an AI breaker in less than 5 minutes. Since I like to keep people guessing, because I'm a bugger that way, I'll leave the figuring out of broken moves to my readers. I can still guarantee you, it's not too hard to find at all.
Controls are quite responsive for any game that falls under the "poor man's Street Fighter II" category. Special moves only rarely ever refuse to come out, despite of some weird and unintuitive commands such as "hold punch, then press any direction and release". For reasons completely unknown to me, sometimes a move will take off a huge chunk of lifebar or barely do any damage at all (and I'm talking a difference of 40-50% with certain moves here). There is definitely some sort of system to it since the game doesn't pick damage randomly, but I've yet to figure out how it all fits in together, seeing how there's no super meter or anything similar to fill up and show you how powerful your attack will be. For now, I'll guess it has something to do with the amount of damage you take, since at times I - quite satisfyingly - pulled off a single move that turned a rather one-sided fight around completely and killed the opponent in a single 60% hit.Graphically, Battle Master manages not to disappoint. Despite a few obvious glitches and occasional slowdown, the game actually plays quite fluently. Not much to say in terms of music either: it didn't exactly blow me away, but it didn't torture my eardrums like many other fighting games of the day. All in all, the game is quite well-presented despite just being another Street Fighter II clone, albeit one that plays a lot more like an SNK fighter.
Most clones of the day would actually be a carbon copy of Street Fighter II in terms of character design or overall gameplay. Battle Master, however, can be more closely defined as an SNK game with Street Fighter gravy poured over the top.
This mostly boils down to uninspirational character design overall. Syoh, the game's protagonist character, is all too reminiscent of Ryu/Ken/Ryo/Dan or however you'd want to call him. His design is that of a disgustingly generic male ninja from some late eighties anime series, but his moves don't fool anyone. Fireballs, uppercuts, you name it. Except for the spin kick, it's pretty much all there. Watts AKA "the obligatory big powerhouse character" is quite obviously Zangief in a punk outfit, with more 360 piledrivers and air splashes than you could possibly ask for. With the weirdly named Body, they even manage to rip off two characters from the Street Fighter universe at once: wearing a copy of M. Bison's dictatorial garments, he uses his Dhalsim-like stretchy limbs to nudge the opponent away from significant distances. Thought you'd get away with all that without anyone noticing? Naughty fibbers.And there we have it, the poor man's Street Fighter II, that actually plays more like Fatal Fury. A game that definitely doesn't get a pass today, but definitely isn't too bad considering it was released in 1993, back when the Mortal Kombat series was still only starting out to capitalize on the never before seen success of Capcom's pioneering one-on-one brawler. For a Super Famicom exclusive that never made it out of the Land of the Rising Sun, Battle Master at least deserves some credit for being a game that's at least finishable and does what it says on the package. Definitely no more, but admittedly also no less.
