Maximum Letdown: Battle Arena Toshinden 3 (Playstation 1)

Maximum Letdown: Battle Arena Toshinden 3 (PS1)
In the early days of the Playstation, Battle Arena Toshinden was all the rage. It provided some excellent 3D fighting action, showcased what the system was capable of, and it provided some eye candy in the form of the lovely Sofia. However, that was then. By 1998, the franchise had fast become a relic of days gone by (and this despite its sequel being published in the arcades by Capcom no less). As franchises such as Virtua Fighter and Tekken were evolving the genre into something greater, Toshinden was consistently failing to offer fighting game fans anything different, and as Tekken was soaring to new heights, Toshinden would slowly fade off into the darkness by the new millennium, and its developers decided to kill it off gracefully with this supposedly last entry (of course there was a Battle Arena Toshinden 4, but it was never released in America, and at that point, no one would care about it anyway).

Speaking of Tekken, you know what the cool thing was about the early Tekken games? Before you faced the bosses, you had to face a rival of yours in a ‘grudge match’ of sorts. While the rival didn’t have a similar moveset to you, they did have an intimate connection with your character (please keep that in mind for later in this paragraph). Each character had a different rival to face, and when you beat the game with that character (or the arcade machine logged the required amount of hours) you unlocked their rival. It would seem that developer Takara took a peak at it while working on Toshinden, because just like Tekken, each character has a rival to face before taking on the big bosses. However, instead of everyone facing some enemy from their past, you face some clown who has the EXACT SAME MOVESET THAT YOU DO! It would seem that Takara (along with certain other games that utilized this feature) forgot that what made Tekken’s rivals so cool is that each character had an connection to their rival, I.E. Paul wanting to defeat the big bear Kuma, Lei Wulong wanting to arrest the criminal Bruce Irving, and Nina facing her sister Anna. In Toshinden, since each rival has the exact same moveset and stage background as the character they are facing, it’s more like another costume for each character. One of the rivals, Ten Count, is a dead ringer for Michael Jackson! There is also a funny little mode that reduces the polygon count in the backgrounds to make the game run faster, but all it does is strip all the detail out the backgrounds and make the game look goofy with characters fighting in front of blank textures. The game does have some redeeming values. Sofia is as lovely as ever, and she is joined by several equally lovely females. Also, the prerequisite CGI rendered intro sequence does a good job of setting up the game’s premise. It’s too bad that the rest of the game, with its static flickery graphics, boxed-in arenas, and robotic predetermined combos couldn’t keep the mood going.

When the series arrived on Playstation as a launch title, Toshinden held so much promise. Now sadly it ended up being just one of many ‘me too’ 3D fighters, and this sub par effort didn’t do it any favors. It’s unknown if Sony will bother putting it on the Playstation Network. or if anyone will care when they do.

That’s it for now, and I promist Lost Classics will return next week.