 When it came to fighting games in the 90s, every franchise needed its own signature thing to stand out. For example, Mortal Kombat provided finishing moves that were beyond belief at the time to go along with a really cool fantasy horror type setting. While games like Fatal Fury had foreground and background planes you could fight on, or you could just straight up throw one fighter from one side to the other, King of Fighters had a gigantic roster of playable characters, Killer Instinct had you rely on quicker reflexes to hit complex combinations, and so on and so forth. So when it comes to a game like Yu-Yu Hakusho, Makuto Tetsu-sen, or Battle to Reunite the Demon Plane, developed by Treasure, what does this game do to stand out? Well, how about freaking four player battle royals and tag team matches, does that work for ya? Yes, that's right, there's eleven different characters from the manga you can choose from to fight as in eight different settings, and you can play one on one versus the computer or another player, one on four, two on two, or just a three or four character brawl, and the game supports up to four players. Now, you might think that with four sprites fighting on the same screen at the same time, the game might run into some major lag or slowdown. I mean, just look at what peacekeepers tried to do on Super Nintendo with their four player melee mode. Yeah, it's kinda neat, but it's ultimately kinda boring because the action is so slow. Yu-Yu Hakusho on the other hand, there is barely any slowdown to speak of. I'm telling you, Treasure are the masters of creating tons of mayhem on screen and making it all run together smoothly without it falling apart into a giant mess. They've earned their reputation, and this game is proof of that. What they managed to do in this game is take the multiplayer fighting layout from Fatal Fury while simplifying the fighting inputs a little bit, and the result is an absolutely chaotic pick-up-and-play fighting game that absolutely anyone can get into. The fighting controls here work pretty well regardless of which controller you use, and of course, ideally, you'd want to use the 6 button, which lends itself much better to fighting games so you can use the X, Y, and Z buttons to dash or backdash depending on what direction you're facing, as well as jump from the foreground to the background and vice versa. But if Worst comes to worst, the three-button controller actually isn't too bad. Where A is one attack, B is another, and C is block, while up and C together allows you to jump between planes, and B and C together allows you to dash, or you can just tap forward and back twice to dash as well. You'll want to get used to dashing a lot because the action here is fast and chaotic. There's a one-player story mode that has you go through the rest of the fighters, a one-through-four multiplayer mode, and a one-through-four multiplayer tournament mode. There is an English patch available on romhacking.net if you want to follow the dialogue, but I want to stress that you don't need to know the Yu-Yu Hakusho manga or anime at all if you want to get into this game. Of course, if you do dig Yu-Yu Hakusho, then you'll just enjoy this game that much more, but it's not really a requirement to play through this one. So where the heck did this game come from? What's the deal? Well, like I said, it was developed by Treasure, and the game only received a release outside of Japan in one other country, that being Brazil, where this game went by the title Yu-Yu Hakusho Sunset Fighters, and they didn't even bother changing the Japanese text. So if you do happen to have a cartridge or ROM of this one, I'll just tell you how to access the right mode so you can start playing. If you pick the one-through-four player mode, you'll see a list of five options with the last being an exit. First is a battle royal, which is just a four-player free-for-all, and it's freaking awesome. Second is a two-on-two fight. Third is a training mode, and the fourth option listed shows records and high scores and all that for your current session. So yeah, if you're playing this one without a patch and you just want to get right to it, pick the second option down, then one of the first two options listed, and just start fighting. This game isn't all pure spectacle, though. I mean, sure, the craziness of the multiplayer battle royals is awesome and all, but it definitely helps that the game looks and sounds awesome. The music is great, the character sprites are all fantastic, and the combat here is very solid. Bear in mind, though, the controls are fitted for defense just as much as they are offense, especially if you're using the six-button controller. It's crucial to dodge just as often as you attack, but either way, the special moves here are reasonably easy to execute. You can hold down either attack button to charge your key bar for special attacks, and those are done by the usual D-pad, quarter circles, and half circles while holding the button down or tapping it twice or whatever, you get the idea. While there's nothing too crazy like something you'd see in Killer Instinct, your offense here is always simple and satisfying to execute. So yeah, as you can clearly see, Yu-Yu Hakusho is one of the very best fighting games of the 16-bit era, just for the technical achievement of being able to have a four-player simultaneous fight without any kind of lag or slowdown. This game is so freaking fast, I love it. I mean, geez, this is the closest thing you could get to a 16-bit version of Super Smash Bros. Now, if you want to play this game on your Flash cartridge, or if you want to take out a second mortgage on your house and pay for the original cart, you'll have to track down a Genesis Teamplayer multiplayer adapter if you want to get that four-player couch co-op. Those aren't too hard to find, but they can be a bit pricey. But yeah, this is one of those games where I can't stress enough that you're going to want to play this one any way you can, because it's one of the very best 16-bit fighting games ever. All right, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.