Whatever Happened to Eternal Champions?

Andrewwonders what happened to this fighting franchise

- Andrew Duncan

At the height of the 2D fighting game craze of the mid-90s, SEGA decided to make their own. The SNES may have had everything that Konami, SNK and Capcom were throwing at the genre, but first-party titles in the West were relegated to the Punch-Out series. Thus was born Eternal Champions in December 1993/January 1994 for the Mega Drive.

The plot for Eternal Champions is pretty basic. There are nine characters, and whoever wins the tournament - held at the pleasure of The Eternal Champion - would get to live. Oh, yeah, each character had been plucked from the timeline, moments before they were supposed to die, I should have mentioned that.

Each of the nine were distinct in appearance and fighting style, and came from throughout history from 50,000 B.C. to 2345 A.D. There was a ninja, a cyborg, a caveman, an alchemist, an Atlantean, a vampire, a bounty hunter, an aristocrat and a cat-burglar. When you won the tournament, you got to see how they averted their own death while assuming that everyone else died as intended.

Due to the game using six basic attack moves, you had to either keep swapping between punches and kicks by pressing Start, or you had to buy a six-button controller. You could also use the SEGA Activator, a “controller” which sat on the floor, and could detect if you waved a foot or a hand over it. If you used an Activator, it increased the damage you dealt while decreasing the damage you took, which was certainly novel.