What Is It? While a lot of people remember Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury, it's World Heroes that proves to be the best game released this week. Keep in mind, when I say it's the "best game" I mean that only because the other two are total garbage. World Heroes is in no way a stellar game, but when put up against two fighters that control so poorly that they are practically unplayable it starts to look better. Unlike the other two SNK fighters released this week, World Heroes doesn't take itself too seriously. The gimmick of World Heroes is that you play characters loosely based on historical characters, such as Janne D'Arc (loosely based on Joan of Arc), Rasputin, Julius Carn (loosely based on Genghis Khan) and Kim Dragon (who is a dead ringer for Bruce Lee). The other big innovation is that the levels fight back. In some levels you will find large spikes on the sides that you can get stuck on if you get too close, or in another level you will get burned if you get too close to the flaming rings on either side. These additions alone don't make for a great game, but it is interesting to see this kind of innovation long before 3D fighting games (like Mortal Kombat Dead Alliance) started to do the same thing. The odd thing about this game is that it's all very entertaining in a completely cheesy sort of way. Sure, it doesn't hold up when compared to Street Fighter II and other popular fighting games of the era, but it's perfectly enjoyable in the same way that watching a B-rate horror movie is fun.

Does It Still Hold Up? The problem I've had with all of the SNK fighting games so far is that none of them have had very good controls. Both Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting are sluggish and hard to control, which is definitely not the combination you want when buying a fighting game. The good news is that World Heroes is pretty easy to control, it's never sluggish and it always moves at a pretty fast speed. The only real problem I have with the controls is that the characters feel a bit floaty and a lot of the moves are terribly unbalanced. The game does hold up, but just barely.

Is It Worth The Money? This week you would be better service by buying one of those Super NES Street Fighter II ports for one dollar cheaper. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that Nintendo has added the Neo Geo to the Virtual Console. But is it too much to ask for one game worth buying in the debut week? If you really must buy a Neo Geo game this week then World Heroes is the best of the bunch, but that's only because the other two are practically unplayable.