Battle Heat

Added 2.24.98 | Review by Nick Rox from GameFan Magazine

The PC-Engine is my favorite video game system ever. Why? I'm an RPG kinda guy and for RPGs that was your system - great music, the storage power of CD, plenty o' speech, awsome animated cinemas. And the fact that it was relatively unpolluted by American and Brit paingames was a major favoritism factor for me as well. The 32-Bit big brother of this true joysystem, the PC-FX, was released in Japan on Dec. 23rd and the first two games have made me a very happy guy. Both represent tried- and-true genres, but both break an immense amount of new ground. For Team Innocent, the ground broken is practically the entire game; in Japan is's labeled digital comic (The category games like Snatcher fall into), but its 3-D environs and action elements are like no digital comic I've ever seen. For Battle Heat, it's the game's unbelievable presentation.

Battle Heat plays (In concept, at least) like any other fighting game. What's different here is that every attack, every counter is rendered in beautiful, 30-frames-per-second movie-quality animation. Yeah, it's FMV. But don't think for a second it's conventional FMV during which you have two choices every 30 seconds or so... you have complete control at all times. Each fighter has high and low fierce and light attacks, a myriad of special moves, throws, and counters, jumping attacks, variations on all of these while near and far, and a taunt... basiclly the same as a regular fighter, but on a much grander scale. "Great," you may think, "I get to wait for a few seconds while it loads the next FMV sequence." Ain't gonna happen! No matter which of your fighter's moves you perform, it comes out INSTANTLY - absolutely no waiting whatsoever, at any time! This makes for a phenomenally original and addictive fighter, especially in the two-player mode. One of the most interesting traits of Battle Heat is it's unique
countering system - every move can be countered with one of your own, you simply have to discover which it is.

Battle Heat's animation is fantastically Japanese - insane camera angles, impossibly contorted physiques with a generally hyperkinetic, explosive feel. In fact, much of the animation blatantly copies Hokuto no Ken - (Fist of the North Star) Kai is obviously based on Kenshiro, Alamis on Shin... even their moves are the same. But hey... that's fine by me! Hokuto no Ken is one of the best action anime ever made. In fact, there's such a volume of animation in Battle Heat that Hudson Soft enlisted the aid of over eight animation studios... each character features over 25,000 frames of animation in his or her repertoire!

This CD's only downfall is the music... the opening track, complete with excellent vocals, is so great that you expect that type of quality throughout the game when in fact most of the music is poorly-executed, yet well-composed PCM. This seems to be the fault of the programmers rather than the hardware, as Team Innocent's PCM is quite good.

Battle Heat is an excellent and a completely, even disorientingly original first game for the PC-FX, not to mention extremely addictive. With eight utterly different characters, all with entirely different attributes, you should be kept busy for a while... but will this and Team Innocent keep you busy until the next batch of FX games are released in March/April? Let's hope so. -Nick Rox

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