SNES Review: World Heroes 2

Pirates vs. Ninjas was a popular internet meme several years back. Before this meme came into existence, it was possible to actually fight this battle, thanks to World Heroes 2 for the SNES.

Shown here: Pirate vs. Ninja

When I first saw the original World Heroes, I dismissed it as another clone of Street Fighter II, one of many that were churned out in the early to mid '90s, albeit one with some interesting characters. World Heroes 2 came along and added six new characters, including a viking, a future member of the Japanese House of Councillors, and four others. Had I thought more about these games, I would have realized that most of these characters were based on actual people.  The new characters introduced in World Heroes 2 caught my attention, and I wanted to get a copy of this game. The closest I ever came was getting the Game Boy version of World Heroes 2 Jet (which will be a future review) until I took up retro gaming as a hobby and bought a copy of this game last month.

 If you ever wanted to see anime Joan of Arc fight hulk Bruce Lee, here's your chance

The graphics are bright and colorful with nice backgrounds which contain some animations, but not as much as some other fighters of the era. The sound and music are decent, with a variety of voices and music, but nothing to write home about. The control is sloppy, with special moves being difficult to execute. Throws, however, are very easy to execute, and do a lot of damage, which makes this game a bit easy on the default difficulty setting (“4”), but there are four higher difficulty settings (as well as three easier ones). There are also three different speed settings. Matches can be fought either Normal or Survival Match, the latter of which has various hazards in each stage and an interesting seesaw life meter.

 A Witch Doctor fights Joe Montana in a sewer...only in World Heroes 2

This seesaw life meter is also available as an option in the Normal mode. There is also an option to mask life meters until the match is over.

The one player mode has you fight most of the playable characters in the game, and then you fight the two bosses. The first one is a new version of the final boss from the original World Heroes, and then you fight the real final boss. (Both bosses can be played in two player mode and in the one player mode via a code...look it up.)

When fighting the final boss, remember these six things and you will do just fine: don't talk to strangers, don't write in starlight, don't hide in doorways, don't go to heaven, don't smell the flowers, and don't dream of women.

World Heroes 2 is a decent game. The creativity in character design and the variety of play modes are nice, but the sloppy control when trying to execute special moves really holds this game back. If you enjoy adding quirky titles to your retro library or want to add another 2D fighter to your collection, it is definitely worth a look. It's currently listed for $3.05 on Price Charting.
Overall Grade: C-