 There are three things you should never do in life. You don't spit into the wind, you don't tug on Superman's cape, and you don't ever underestimate the number of generic one-on-one fighting games that were directly inspired by Street Fighter II. I'm telling you, that game was so massive, seemingly every single dev team either thought they'd try their hand at one, or some poor, under-equipped and under-qualified dev team was tasked by a publisher to push out some piece of crap, hoping that parents would get confused enough to be like, What was that game that little Timmy was talking about again? Well, this cover looks like something he would like, right? Seriously, look at this guy on the right. What is wrong with this dude? His legs look like they're pregnant with a family of hila monsters. But then, check out the Japanese cover. You got that guy cutting off the head of a demon. Yeah, meanwhile Shakira is there hanging out with some knives, and I can't decide if that's Jan Michael Vincent or Dermot Mulroney back there. Sadly, you could put the best cover ever conceived on this game, and it wouldn't matter, because it sucks. And that's actually a bit of a surprise, since this one was developed by ICOM, who made some really good NES games, like Vice Project Doom, and some decidedly average NES games like Astyanax, Totally Rad, and The Muffat Conspiracy, the sequel to the super ambitious game Golgo 13. So, you start this one up and... Okay, they evidently put Danny Trejo's face on Arnold Schwarzenegger's body, not sure if that's a promising start or not. There's two game modes here, Hero Mode, where you progress through the story as one guy, which is your typical Avenger father and win a tournament to defeat some demon to become the king of whatever. And there's Battle Mode, which is one-on-one versus with six playable characters, including some guy that looks like Baraka, some altered beast-looking thing, the guy from Blackthorn, the woman from the video from Michael Sambello's Automatic Man, and Sebastian from Stardew Valley if he dated Abigail and dyed his hair purple. What's funny here is that before you fight in this mode, you get a guy that yells at you about cheating. I don't think I've seen a game do that so overtly before. Wow, Baraka needs to lay off the hamdingers and mix in a salad or something. He is slow as hell. Let's try the regular dude. Okay, he's pretty quick. In fact, this game does cut a pretty quick pace. It's not a floaty sluggish piece of crap like Fighting Masters for Sega Genesis, so at least it has that going for it. Well, kind of. This game has some inexplicable slowdown that pops up here and there. But the real problem comes with the controls, or lack thereof. It's beat a jump and Y to attack, and that's it. X, A, L, and R do not do anything. That's right, it's a fighting game that plays like a beat-em-up, and it's a fighting game where up is not jump. Despite that, each character is capable of at least four special moves, like the main guy here. Jump and press down and Y, and you can hit your opponent on the way down. Press up and Y while in midair, and you do a spin kick. Press forward twice, and you'll do a dash attack. And if you manage to get right next to your opponent, just press against them and press Y, which does a stronger attack. That's as nuanced as it gets here, folks. No secondary power meters, no desperation attacks, no unlockable characters, no customizable stats, no combos, no nothing. But whoa, this guy throws a projectile with his sword. And since there isn't anything extra in this game, as far as the combat goes, this one just ends up being a total button masher. If a fighting game could be store brand instant mashed potatoes, it would be Battle Blaze. Any time a publisher tries to sell a total dud as something interesting, it's always fun to look at the back of the box, like here, where it says, Warriors of a chaotic land await to challenge brave opponents, only one woody contender will be the master of the realm, and then skip down a bit, where it says courageously roam the countryside. What? You don't roam anywhere? That's when I realized that the italics here weren't meant for emphasis, they're meant for air quotes. You know, roam the countryside to find a worthy contender. So yeah, there's stories about how this game was delayed by various circumstances, which put off its U.S. release a couple years, but even if this thing came out in 1992 when it was supposed to, then so what? This game is still just a big bag of blah regardless of its time and place, and that includes then, and it includes now, to the point that if you ever end up playing this game for whatever reason today, you really gotta use your imagination to have fun. Like here, we've got John Redcorn on the right, getting the crap kicked out of him by Olivia Newton-John. If you're into that, then hey, this game is for you. If you're not, then avoid this game. All right, I wanna thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.