Shadow War of Succession

What a great cover for some Noir Mortal Kombat for the 3DO!

"Yes, it was created by a bunch of guys who knew nothing about making video games and they laughed all the way to the bank after selling it. They were actually one of the very few game developers that made a profit that year!"
"That's exactly what it was. We didn't know what the hell we were doing and did not get much support from 3DO either. Yeah, the game stank, but we didn't fail. It made money."

—TheMadViper's comments, a coder for this game.

Describe Shadow War of Succession here.

Shadow War of Succession was one of the many fighting games that tried to copy Mortal Kombat.

No no, wait, let's try this again....

At first glance, Shadow War of Succession looks like a game that tried to piggy-ride in the success of Mortal Kombat, in the same fashion games like Way of the Warrior, Tattoo Assassins and Kasumi Ninja had done before. Remember that there was a huge market for said games, particularly on a console with such an small arrays of games as the 3DO, so there's nothing bad about that.

But once you look beyond the cover, and actually get to play the "game", everything changes. Shadow War of Succession might be one of the most poorly programmed games ever released commercially, up to the point of making it virtually unplayable. Just to give something to compare with, the infamous MortalKombat Advance actually plays better.

Why was this game even created in first place? There are two simple yet convincing explanations. First is the theory that this game was produced by amateurs who received no technical support from the 3DO headquarters, and released a very incomplete demo. Second, it might have been an scam on the players who were unable to know how the game was before buying it (Remember we are talking about 1994, so there was no internet back then [1]). If the comments by the self-proclaimed coder "TheMadViper" above are to be believed, this game was actually a little bit of both.

Since this trope-page is getting too wordy, let's just pin-point the most noticeable stuff:

  • The game was virtually unplayable with unresponsive controls and impossible to understand mechanics.
    • There were lots of bugs which makes the previous point stronger.
    • The IA was very cheap.
    • There is a moment to "finish" your enemy, but they didn't actually program any Fatality. [2]
  • The audio quality was low and ear-piercing.
  • The graphics were no good either and the frame-rate was awful.
    • The actors that played the characters clearly know no martial-arts whatsoever.
  • The introduction of the game includes an 3D opening sequence of an helicopter blowing up a building. [3]
  • The story, while silly, is not bad for a fighting game. The mob boss had died. You wanted to be the next mob boss. You had to kill the other candidates. [4]
  • The idea of the characters speaking phrases before every match was actually good.
  • The cover looks incredibly AWESOME. (most likely to sell the game)

With all that being said, with youtube available, this game has recently became more known as a way of Bile Fascination. Just seeing the quality of the game and knowing it was published and sold makes the player/watcher feel weird.

Here you have some Game-play footage.

Tropes used in Shadow War of Succession include:

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  1. ↑ Chatting with friends was the only way to really know how good a game was, and since very few had a 3DO, it was impossible to know about these games
  2. ↑ They probably programmed that moment to pretend you could do fatalities
  3. ↑ Shamefully it adds nothing to the actual game.
  4. ↑ until you get to the final boss, which is a giant ball of goo
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