есяęzęęęęęęę... That's drunk! The endless dream of painfully generic one-on-one fight and games continues with Power Moves. Yes, that's really the best name I could come up with... frickin' Power Moves. They changed it to that from Power Athlete in Japan, but it was originally made for Sega Genesis, where it's called Dietly Moves. That's a much more appealing title, but I can understand why it wouldn't fly with Nintendo at the time. But still, come on, Power Moves, that's an awful name. You might as well just call it moves that could potentially cause some mild discomfort, I guess. Or hell, just call it punchy-kicky. The Super Nintendo Edition was developed by Koneko, who are also known for publishing the Chester Cheetah games, so yeah, that's the kind of company this game holds. The generic nature of this game spreads far and wide, as the single-player mode of this game only allows you to play as one character named Joe. It's Y to kick, B to punch, and A to jump. Yep, that's right, another fighting game where up is not jump, and another fighting game that doesn't bother to use three of the other buttons on the controller. The other fighters you face off against are the illustrious Nick, or the effervescent Warren, who looks like he just walked in on his grandparents having sex. But to be fair, we also have creative names like Vagnad, Guauluan, Rayon, Baraki, and Buo, giving us eight total fighters, which you can choose between in versus mode, but in single-player story mode, you just get plain old Joe. Because there's only three buttons to use, each character only gets a whopping two special moves at their disposal. For our friend Joe here, you go back, forward, then punch and kick at the same time to throw a Hado- I mean, a fireball, and you pound forward, punch and kick to do a diagonal flying punch thing. Every other character's moves are just as mundane, although maybe the one highlight is Nick deciding to break dance to try and attack someone? That's, you know, something, I guess. This game tries to do the gimmick of fighting in either the foreground or the background, like the Fatal Fury games do, but the problem here is that you don't simply move from one plane to another, you just kind of shuffle around where you might be just a little off, or maybe you're a little closer to your opponent than you realize, and you take damage out of nowhere, it's terribly executed. With the Fatal Fury games, there's clear boundaries and a button you use to jump between the foreground and the background. It's concise, consistent, and it works well. The Power Moves version of this is just a complete mess. I mean, it makes you wonder if they tried making a 2.5D beat-em-up before someone changed their mind and decided to make it a fighting game instead. I don't know. Oh, but not all hope is lost with this one, just most of it, but this game does have a point system you implement as you win fights. You can put your points into five categories, speed, jump, strength, defense, and hit points. The way this was done, though, is just awful, because you can really realistically only beat one guy, because of the way your initial stats are laid out. Everyone else will have no problem kicking the crap out of you. You really don't have much of a choice but to keep fighting that first guy over and over again because your skill categories increase so slowly that it really wouldn't be until the third or fifth win until you can hang with any other fighter. Hey, the point system is a good idea, but the way it's implemented here is frickin' trash. So yeah, when it comes to the worst games on Super Nintendo, in particular the worst fighting games, most people point to Rise of the Robots or Street Combat or Pitfighter, but don't overlook how bad Power Moves is. I think the best thing I can say about this game is that it has a password system, which is kind of weird for a fighting game, but yeah, there's just nothing here. I can't get over the name Power Moves. It's like the 90s wrestling jobber of names, you know, guys like Tom Stone or Dale Wolf, guys that don't even have a finisher or any signature moves, but you know, if they did, it'd be something like Power Move or Maneuver of Slight Irritation or something like that. Hell, just give the main character Joe a beard and you can change the name to Night Moves and make it a fighter about Bob Seeger. Just about anything would be better than this game, so it's unfortunately yet another 16-bit fighting game that you gotta avoid. All right, I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.