32 Bits is a series where I revisit the most popular games in the past console generations, from the launch of the original Playstation to the last days of the Xbox 360.
The time is May 1996: three months into the Playstation’s first full year. The Nintendo 64 is several months away; while Sega’s Saturn system is fading fast.
The only thing the Playstation games I play have in common: membership in Sony’s Greatest Hits line, or its European and Japanese equivalents. These games all sold at least 150,000 copies and are a guide to what everyone played then.
Some of these games are remembered fondly, some are despised and many are forgotten completely. Why were they popular then, and what can we learn from them today? Find out in 32 Bits.
The Saturn round-up I promised last week will be posted next Sunday.
Playstation #28/Saturn #23:
Battle Arena Toshinden 2 & Battle Arena Toshiden URA
(I made this gameplay video to test a program with no intent to upload it, but the ending was too great to ignore)
Developed by Tamsoft, published by Takara/Playmates Interactive
Released: Playstation – December 1995 (Japan), May 1996 (North America); Saturn – August 1996
Best-seller in: Japan (Playstation The Best)
Full overdrive meters in Battle Arena Toshinden 2.
In this series’ second week, I played a fighting game named Battle Arena Toshinden. Once so popular and omnipresent that it was sold in a box with the original Playstation, the entire game pivoted around an innovative new mechanic: the first truly 3D fighter, Toshinden allowed the player to sidestep around the arena and reposition themselves. Sadly, this was the only distinguishing feature of what was otherwise a mediocre fighter with a weak slate of characters.
Battle Arena Toshinden 2 unfortunately makes only small improvements on the original; now that its innovations are familiar, there’s no reason to give it any attention – and gamers in 1996 must have agreed, as they rejected the third Toshinden handily. The fourth and final entry could be found only in Japan and Europe, skipping North America entirely.
One new mechanic of note: an Overdrive bar. It fills up as you take damage. When it’s full, you can unleash a finishing blow on opponents. Not that tricks are necessary to win at Toshinden.
Like Virtua Fighter 2, you can win bouts by ring out. Unlike Virtua Fighter 2, ring outs usually happen without any effort on your part. AI fighters commonly roll out of the ring for no reason at all, which is goddamned hilarious every single time. Less hilarious: when actual players commit the same error.
The original Battle Arena Toshinden was ported to the Saturn – the “Remix” version added one character, tweaked the gameplay slightly and added a ridiculously terrible story mode. Battle Arena Toshinden 2 wasn’t ported to the Saturn, exactly – the Saturn version, Battle Arena Toshinden URA (Ultimate Revenge Attack) is different in many ways but has the same framework.
The newly playable Gaia, versus returning fighter Duke.
All the characters from the original return. They’re joined by three newcomers – but two newcomers are system exclusive. Both versions share Tracy, a police officer who fights with a pair of batons. The Playstation also features a character named Chaos and the first game’s final boss, Gaia, as playable characters. Gaia is distinctly less imposing when you’re playing as him.
The Saturn’s two exclusive fighters are Ronron, a scientist who looks more a archetypal schoolgirl, and Ripper, a red-suited man who fights with two arm-blades (the second character in the game to fight with blades on their hands, for the record). The Saturn version wins out here: Ronron is a wash, but Ripper is more cool than the Playstation’s Gaia or Chaos.
The Playstation version opens with a bombastic intro that mixes the character’s 3D models with shots of real live actors. Except only three characters are portrayed by actors: generic swordsman Eiji, young Ellis and whip-wielding Russian…detective Sofia. Due to this exclusion the shots of the actors are inexplicable. Why only stage a few shots in live-action, and not the whole thing? URA’s intro features an entirely different intro that confines itself to 3D models. Again, the Saturn version wins out.
Unfortunately the Saturn versions loses out everywhere else. Just like in Virtua Fighter 2, arenas that are fully 3D are changed for the Saturn so that the ring is 3D while the background remains 2D.
A stage on the Playstation, and on the more limited Saturn.
Not that it matters since the levels aren’t especially memorable. Neither were they in the first game. But it still delivered an occasional gem – Kayin’s stage, a dark cityscape where a large TV screen showed off the fight in the background, stands out. In this game, his level is…just a standard issue decayed cityscape. On the Saturn even this is transformed – you fight on an elevator; a CAUTION sign passes by occasionally.
You still can’t save, so there’s nothing to unlock permanently. Which wouldn’t matter if the fighting were any good. But you can win most fights with constant jumping and kicking. No combos necessary, and I only used the much-vaunted rolling mechanic rarely. The new characters Tracy and Ripper are well-designed but beyond that, what’s new here? Tamsoft could have transformed Battle Arena Toshinden into more than a flash-in-the-pan, but they took the easiest possible path to fleeting success. Almost nothing is changed and little is added in this hollow rehash of the first game.
The same week I review Battle Arena Toshinden I analyzed another popular game from the Playstation’s launch that failed in later years. Sony’s ESPN Extreme Games was a skateboarding-themed Road Rash knock-off. Not long after its release, Sony lost the ESPN license and redubbed the game “1Xtreme”. I’ll be playing its sequel, 2Xtreme, sometime next year.
Both series have identical trajectories. An impressive debut at the system’s launch, diminishing returns with a marginally successful sequel, and outright failure with their third installment.
And I loved that I played these games as early as I did in this series’ first season; it demonstrated perfectly what I hoped to accomplish. Here are two forgotten games that were once commercial giants. Neither is a hidden gem or even memorably bad. They’re in the expansive middle – competent enough and nothing more. By playing them I was able to discuss a game everyone played but no one remembered, and now – with their sequels – I can analyze why, exactly, their popularity faded.
I don’t want to comment on 2Xtreme yet (as I haven’t played it, though I have played parts of 3Xtreme) but with Battle Arena Toshinden 2 I can safely say that the series’ problem is a failure to evolve.
Sofia was once the Playstation’s mascot. Just a reminder.
Tamsoft invented something creative, the game’s rolling ability, and called it a day. They believed innovating once was enough. They also inexplicably believed that when a shallow game does well on system launch day, it’ll do just as well against stronger, more substantial competition. When Toshinden took off it was the only game in town; now, it was up against Tekken, Virtua Fighter and many other superior fighting games. Battle Arena Toshinden 2’s improvements over the original are minuscule, and it even introduces some new problems.
The third game, released in 1997, was a radical change that overhauled the game and introduced 17 new characters. For the first time in the series, you could actually unlock new characters and save them, not just use a cheat code and lose them when you shut down your console. Alas, it’s a case of too little, too late. Battle Arena Toshinden 3 isn’t a Greatest Hit, Platinum or the Best game, and so I will not be able to play it as part of this series. Toshinden will have no chance to redeem itself in my eyes.
And so the final word on Battle Arena Toshinden is that it was a playable enough game with some interesting ideas and bland design, developed by a company that failed to change until it was already too late. Toshinden is, ultimately, a victim of complacency.
A uninspired rehash of a game that wasn’t very good to begin with, Battle Arena Toshinden 2 was thoroughly inessential in 1996 and doubly so in 2013
notes
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Speaking of Toshinden 3 and 4, I’ve considered a “100% Completion” week where I play the unsuccessful sequels and spin-offs of the games I play in 32 Bits and consider why they failed when their siblings thrived. The only problem is, this often happened because the games weren’t great to begin with, and what’s interesting about saying “everyone realized this wasn’t very good and didn’t buy the sequel” a dozen times?
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A symbol of Toshinden’s fall: Sony published the original and showed so much faith in it that it was one of two games you could buy packed-in with the original Playstation (the other was Ridge Racer); yet they passed on the sequel. A company called Playmates Interactive picked up the franchise.
The new boss, Repli. Or as I call him, “Fashionable Raziel”.
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The Saturn port also swaps in unique bosses: Repli and Wolf.
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NEXT TIME: The Sega Saturn.
Cultural Fragments 
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