Karnov's Revenge

Karnov's Revenge is now up in the SNK site.

OK, I have seen an actual (and first) Fighter's History arcade in my childhood mid-1990s, the first names that I saw on the demo are Feilin and Jean and that gave me the idea of that game. My first reaction with Feilin was "Hey, that's like FH's Chun-Li!" and it even blew me when I read the news that Data East really got sued by Capcom for resembling SF2.

When I then played Karnov's Revenge, it's true that it's like Super Fighter's History Champion Edition, with 2 new characters, bosses playable, and even hidden moves that don't require any power to use. Still, there are a lot of resemblances between characters, and I realized that Capcom retaliated with their own set of possible character references.

Ray & Mizoguchi
Basically the Ken and Ryu of FH, they actually deviate from the usual fighting norm of 2 balanced characters with identical moves, and also, Ray doesn't have a potent dragon-punch move, not if you will count his wheel kick. Mizoguchi is extremely punishing in the hands of an expert. His portrait does remind me of a younger Sonny Chiba (and his loud karate screams).

Feilin
Of course, the main girl of FH attributed to Chun-Li. Her falling armor also reminds me of Honey/Candy in Fighting Vipers which came out way later. Her Mantis Punch will be extremely familiar for players of a certain Capcom game...

Matlok & Jean
Both attributed to Guile, as both have mainly charge-based moves, with Jean even resembling Vega.

Marstorius & Ryoko
FH's Zangief, along with his extremely huge grab range. Can be quite cheap in higher levels. In my opinion, SF 3's Makoto is Capcom's reply to FH's and even World Heroes' Ryoko.

Samchay
Sagat's projectiles and knee kicks along with Adon's frail-looking physique.

Clown & Karnov
Clown resembles Blanka's rolling moves as well as Bison's stomp, and Karnov behave much like Honda and Dhalsim for the fire breaths and belly flops.

Yungmie
It's like a threesome offspring between Kim Kaphwan, Mai Shiranui and Chun-Li. Yungmie has Mai's head (check out the hair ornament), Chun-Li's thighs, pose (even the leggings) and Kim's Taekwondo prowess.

Lee
The most extremely interesting character for me, aside from the silliness that his pants' knees are his weak point (like in Bruce Lee films where his clothes get torn). It is possible that Capcom's Dan can also be attributed to the similarity in facial features. Not only that, there's the Lee twins in SF3: Yun and Yang. FH's Lee's moves are distributed to both twins: Yun has the Zesshou Hou and Senkyuu Tai, while Yang has the Tetsuzan Kou and Feilin's Torou Zan (in Fei Long form).

Despite these similarities, Karnov's Revenge is still a fairly good game though not as good as other games of its time, say SSF2, DarkStalkers, X-Men COTA, KoF'94, etc.

I may have Breakers up next, so stay tuned. :)