Top Fighter 2000 MKVII review

TOP FIGHTER 2000 MKVII

Developer: possibly Gamtec
Platform: Sega MegaDrive
Year of release: unknown

Everyone tells that most of the "M.U.G.E.N. full games" are crap... well, even being a M.U.G.E.N. fighter myself, I'll tell you that that's true. I've seen loads of amateurs' "full games" which are actually stupid mishmashes of various Capcom, SNK and anime chars that have been put ONLINE as completely new games... But the victim of our today's review is a complete pile of crap. Even more rusty than M.U.G.E.N. "1000000-in-1" collabs. This is Top Fighter 2000 MKVII.

Okay. Why MK? It definetly has nothing to do with Mortal Kombat at all... and, if we have MKVII as well as MK5, where's MK6 then? Well, whatever. Let's get deeper into the game.To be honest, out of Gamtec's MD fighting games, Top Fighter 2000 has the sweetest amount of gameplay elements, but still sucks.

Wanna know why?

- Super moves (one per character) and three-tiered gauge for them;
- Faster speed of walking compared to Tekken games;
- Two original characters, which were drawn very nicely, by the way;
BUT
- Really bad hit detection;
- The same jumping physics a-la Street Fighter One (whoo!);
- Lack of proper endings (Oh well. Struggle for 5 hours to get a stupid CONGRATULATION screen that flashes for five seconds. Worthless.);
- Cheap, really cheap AI that pulls out all the specials and supers with ease... while you struggle to pull them out on your part because of the...
- Crappy controlling.
- And, as a matter of fact, the lack of feeling that YOU HIT and IT HITS THE OPPONENT. But that's the crappy engine; could you expect anything else from it?

The roster consists of more or less known celebrities of fighting game industry... as well as sports. Seriously! You throught that the availability of Bobby Ologun in Power Instinct Matrimelee-2 was too drastic for the series? Try MKVII's Muhhamad Ali version then! Think that putting Shaq O'Neill into a fighting game is just too weird? Pick Michael JODEN and see what's even more weird. Thankfully, they're all drawn as great as Rock, Terry and Kim brothers in GBC version of Garou, so they already have a potential of hitting a King of Fighters dream match game if they have more fluid animations... but hey, their moves are just weird. No, not THEIR actually, but HIS. That Michael JODEN thing. I guess that Gamtec have played Chaos in Windy City before, because JODEN has a special where he launches a basketball... and an MK3-inspired move where a flaming ball flies up from the ground (do you remember Shang Tsung having a similar move?).

Ali is just damn good. Nuff said. Seriously, did you ever had an idea to mix Balrog [boxer] and Sagat?

The rest of the chars has been cheaply ripped from other games. Cyclops and Ryu - MvC series, Ryo, Kyo and Geese - King of Fighters and Fatal Fury games, Goku (in his... Shin form) - Dragon Ball Z. All crappily animated. No need to say more I guess. And - OH - the intro. Please, don't watch it if you don't want to LOL your lungs off, okay?

Now, lemmie tell you how does your regular MKVII match look like. You pick a character and ROUND 1 title shows on the screen. Opponent makes the first attack and you desperatedly try to launch a fireball or something just to knock him down. Finally, you do a special, but: 1) it doesn't hit your enemy; 2) he does a counter attack on you. With success, lemmie tell you. And, to make a final blow on your nerves, he performs a SUPER MOVE, while you don't have at least one tier of the gauge full and... you dunno how to do that. His attempt to crush you becomes successful... as usual. Result? Owned. Even at the easiest difficulty. Now tell me, is there any need to play this when you already know that you'll be dissappointed?

And, as required, the remaining things of this game.

Controls. Like any NES or NGPC fighting game, this game exploits 2 BUTTONS ONLY... while your usual MD pad has 3 or even 6. Need any comments? If you need, well... THAT'S CHEAP. How lazy of you, Gamtec.
Music. I heard those blimps and drums somewhere... Seriously. Just a bunch of random MIDIs reconverted to MD format. Nuff said.
Sounds. Same situation as music.
Replayability. Guess if it's here. If you can't, read the article from the beginning, don't just stare at the very end of it.

BOTTOM LINE:
Basically, having two awesomely drawn original characters for the pirated game is cool. But it's the only reason you have to play this. If you want something more promising, refer to GameBoy Color pirate based on Garou: Mark of the Wolves (and again, possibly made by Gamtec as well). Yeah, it has flaws too, but not as much as Top Fighter 2000 does. Honestly.

Written by Crash Nicker