Ehrgeiz

The first Squaresoft arcade game is making its way to arcades soon. Ehrgeiz is a fighting game in the style of the Tobal series on the PlayStation. For the arcade, it is the only game of its type: a true 3D engine (no, War Gods does not count). This engine allows your character to have full 360-degree range of motion and adds new depth to a somewhat tired genre. In Ehrgeiz, you must make sure you're directly facing the opponent, or you won't hit them (unlike say SFII or Tekken, where you're automatically facing your enemy). It seems as if it will be difficult to learn this new type of combat.

Ehrgeiz has a total of 12 characters, including Cloud and Tifa from Final Fantasy VII and two lion-esque Bosses. Cloud and Tifa are time-release characters and will be available roughly a month after initial launch, the Bosses will come after that. One possible problem with Ehrgeiz is that the characters seem to be the same. There is one grappler-type character, but other than that, all of the fighters' basic moves use the same joystick motions. This is the same for Cloud and Tifa, who sadly appear to utilize nothing (Limit Breaks, Materia usage, etc.) from FFVII. The button layout is pretty much the same as Soul Edge: Guard, High Attack, Low Attack, Special. The Special button is a weapon-based attack which is different for each character (i.e., Godhand plants mines, Inoba has grappling attacks, etc.). There are also plenty of basic mechanics to learn such as reversals, rolling while on the ground, utilizing boxes and other objects found on the stage, and much more.

The graphics and animation are awesome. The characters are rendered beautifully and have that Tekken/VF feel. The backgrounds are excellent as well. Most are enclosed spaces such as a wrestling ring or a train car. A couple of stages even have multiple heights (in the stands of a Roman coliseum). Ehrgeiz can be summed up in one word: innovative, something needed in today's fighting games.

MANUFACTURER - Namco

THEME - Fighting

NUMBER OF PLAYERS - 1 or 2