Eternal Champions is a SF2-like 1v1 fighting game that, unlike many similar game that were ports of arcade games, was developed exclusively for Sega Genesis. It was released somewhere right between 1993 and 1994 and was made by Sega Interactive, which was third party developer Interactive Design before Sega of America acquired it. One of early games to have 24 Megabit ROM. EC was marketed heavily by Sega.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "EternalChampions_USA.SGD".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "EC_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_150ppi.pdf".
Has online (in Bedroom HUB only) and local multiplayer.
There is no movelist in-game. You have to either find original US manual scans or just search on Internet for movelist, like GameFAQs.
And yep, one of the games to use all 6-button controller. Street Fighter 2 type of controls.
Eternal Champion has summoned nine great warriors who unjustly died before being able to change the world for the better. He has power to bring back only one back few seconds before death. Let the contest begin!
I am sure that most of you are aware of over the top violence in Sega CD sequel. However original Eternal Champions is very tame: just blood dusts on near-dizzy hits and the only finisher is overkill that produce barely any blood. Just maybe skeleton with eyes popping out. Overkills are stage fatalities – do a strong final attack in certain spot in stage from certain direction. Hard to do but I like it this way. Just keep playing as usual and be happy when they happen.
The game actually has a positive vibe to it despite the gritty setting. Eternal Champion just gets dissapointed if you fail to beat him. Each ending of the character is almost sobby level of happy, albeit sadly endings are just plain text. Overkills appear to be pure accidents. All good until Dark Champion infulenced the contest in the sequel.
And it sure is gritty. Just look at this HEAVY abuse of dithering. Feels sickening. Which isn't helped by the music that is while gives nice atmosphere to each stage, sounds weak instrumentally.
The reason for this heavy dithering abuse is because at that time most common TV video cable was either composite or RF. They had artifact where two horizontal pixels will colorbleed into a mixed color, so EC looks darn good on such cable. Too bad no one told devs that it works only horizontally so there are few ugly spots. Sadly Sega's emulator doesn't have any filter to simulate that.
The devs really crammed those 24 Megabits real good as it has quite possibly the largest animated fighters in SF2 style games on 16-bit consoles! Albeit the animation is stiff at times. What cheapens it is that there is only one animation for taking hit no matter where it lands. There are voices only for taunts.
But yes. It's a SF2 clone. There are usual light, medium, strong attacks. But each version of punch or kick may actually have different attack from expected, such as rolling back. All special moves input either are charges or require press of few attack buttons at same time. This game has almost no combo chains outside certain special moves. I mean, I hate long high-damaging combos in fighting games but this is a pushover. So yea, a defensive kind of game.
And yep, got a bunch of characters. They are painfully generic 90s cliches and yet are somehow memorable. They aren't balanced though, Trident is obviously the most overpowered one. But hey, special moves with originality. Such as transforming opponent into another character.
When I first tried game years ago I hated it. Why? The main mode, contest, forces you to play against computer on maximum difficulty. And that means all of your offensive is going to get blocked. Also, you and opponent have slowly regenerating Inner Strenght that special moves waste. It balances some powerful special moves. But here is a thing: CPU ignores IS! It also means that there is no point in taunting that takes away some of opponent's IS.
Thankfully, as I kept playing the game I was slowly starting to learn how to beat the CPU. And unlike Mortal Kombat 2 where you beat CPU by doing some cheap exploit, you use proper tactics. Mostly just interrupting attacks, using various attacks, learning behavior of AI. It doesn't spam some moves all time. It was like fighting bosses in video games. Not following same rules as you yet still fair despite being hard.
And battle timer in this game goes fast so stalling the match is a valid tactic too.
Though another nasty thing is that if you lose a match then you go two steps backward in the ladder. And you have only two rounds to beat the final boss otherwise it's game over. You have to beat 5 phases of final boss in the row. At least you get some health inbetween.
Thanfully we are playing on emulator so you can fix this with save stating.
And when you look outside of main mode then you see another feature of a game: lots of options due to being console-made game. Such as char bios. Can go back in menu. Sadly, no way to leave the match or movelist. But hey, ahead of time.
It also has a training mode. A good intention but a wrong guess. Instead of having an opponent that you can set behavior of or infinite health, you either get a flying ball or aggressive AI here. And there is a minigame where you hit balls flying around.
There is Battle Room. An arena with cannons moving around. You can select up to 5 “deathly devices” which means that types of projectiles that cannons shoot around. Doesn't affect how often they shoot. Exception is the ground rolling blade. Might be fun with a friend but AI opponent doesn't react to the traps so it's too easy. Not being able to move back due to blocking isn't helpful either.
There are practise against AI and two player mode. Can change a bunch of setting. Skill setting affect damage handicap and AI skill. Less blocking! But most unique is Instant Replay. An unusual thing for a 16-bit fighter! You can watch parts of match that ended or highlights or so on. It's limited but it was cool back then.
And there are tournament modes, only for friends. Single Elimination is usual tournament tree. AI fills empty slots. In Double Elimination losers get their own tournament tree. And Round-a-Bout: Two players, 9 characters on each side, elimination!
The high difficulty in main mode make it hard to recommend it to casuals. No idea of competitive. I hated it at first but I got to like this game after few days. It tried some original things. And one of fighting games with impossible final boss. A careful recommendation.
