War Gods

Developer: Midway (Arcade Original), Eurocom (Port) Publisher: Midway

Released: May 20, 1997 Rated: M 3/10

On some level, you have to appreciate a willingness to not send your flagship franchise out to die by not releasing a 3D iteration without a test run first. A practice later enacted by Ubisoft with Tonic Trouble releasing ahead of Rayman 2, War Gods entered arcades in 1996 with an early build of the 3D fighting engine intended for Mortal Kombat 4. This is essentially the only positive thing I will have to say about War Gods, a sacrificial lamb of a fighting game that resembles the worst of early Mortal Kombat clones hastily slapped together with bad, cheesy characters to capitalize on the trend.

Talking about some of the worst stereotypical character designs of the decade, the titular pantheon includes fighters based on various cultures’ gods or warriors. Very similar to the options from Mace: The Dark Age, with characters like a valkyrie, kabuki warrior, and cyborg, but with an exceptionally cheap look to all of it. Like a lot of things in War Gods, a lot of this cheapness comes from poor, of-the-time choices that have aged poorly and, thankfully, weren’t long for the industry anyway. Midway simply put far too much effort into a technology that wasn’t worth it, trying to replicate the digitized sprite look from Mortal Kombat in 3D, with a technology they called “digital skin.” As offputting to look at as its name sounds, the flat look of photographs laid over the moving skeleton looks and moves in a far more uncanny way than proper textures that don’t stand out against those on the arenas. Overall, it’s a bit like looking at a fake video game on a TV show where a character is green screened onto the rest of the game moving behind them, and given that the costuming looks rather cheap itself, it makes everything just look like schlock.

Seriously, every part of this game looks like bad photoshop, it’s almost impressive for 1996-7.

A few things definitely get the test run and would go on to slightly better implementation in MK4, and while that isn’t everybody’s favorite release in the Mortal Kombat saga, it’s not too extreme to think that if we had gotten this game with the Mortal Kombat skin over it, we wouldn’t still have the storied franchise we have today. The 3D button isn’t the best implementation of allowing your character to move in 3D space, though it works okay to dodge attacks given the space, and is one of the handful of places you could definitely see something functional and ripe for reuse. And whether or not the idea germinated here, the weapons each character pulls seemingly right from their asses (I know they’re gods and probably conjuring them but the animations don’t beat the allegations) made some headway for MK4’s weapon mechanics, which are probably one of the better features introduced in that game. Not acceptable, meanwhile, are each character’s take on the Sub-Zero freeze attack which, while not difficult to avoid, is one of the lamer parts of the fighting engine, with a lot of fights, even against the AI, boiling down to spamming these cheap-feeling moves or dodging them repeatedly to avoid being locked out of the fight for three seconds.

Before even Avenged Sevenfold, this crappy Papa Shango ripoff was copying the Overkill logo, putting this game even further down my list.

War Gods was never good, in arcades or at home, and the barebones bundle of bad gameplay, hideous graphics, and awkward animation doesn’t even have the decency to add in typical home console accoutrements like a practice or survival mode. Whether or not you’d bother to spend more than a few basic matches in this realm, the idea that you’re locked into exactly the same repeated ladder you’d get from popping in a quarter or two with not a single other option is especially shameful, tying up this package without even so much as a shiny bow to imitate the idea of value for collectors or console owners at the time shelling out for a fighting game to enter the 3D realm with any sense of coordination.

Continuing Legacy

At the risk of being redundant, and whether or not Midway would cop to it, War Gods legacy is quite literally “that game they made to work out the kinks of Mortal Kombat 4.” It joins several other 1997 N64 releases and Mortal Kombat clones as one of the worst fighting games ever made and has been featured on the aptly named “The Worst Fighting Game” series by YouTuber Matt McMuscles, a noted fighting game historian.