It’s actually pretty rare to see a truly bad fighting game release in this day and age, especially when compared to the ’90s when the genre was still in its infancy experimenting with what could work (or get away with) following Street Fighter 2’s world-changing success.
Rise of the Robots showcased a lot of what you shouldn’t do to make a fighting game all the way back in 1994, but the title somehow earned itself a overlooked sequel that is also up there in terms of the worst the genre has to offer and somehow set an even lower bar than its predecessor.
Matt McMuscles recently dropped the latest entry in his series in search of “The Worst Fighting Game” where Rise 2: Resurrection was placed under the microscope to see where things went wrong (and right in some cases).
Released in 1996 by Mirage and Acclaim on the PlayStation, Sega Saturn and PC, the Rise of the Robots sequel offering to go bigger and bolder with the new game’s characters, moves and graphics.
It’s never usually a great sign when a sequel has to change up its title to likely distance itself from their predecessor, and that doesn’t guarantee its fate is going to be any better.
Mirage apparently only had around 15 months between the releases to actually develop Rise 2 across three systems, which led to the console versions again suffering even more than just the main PC game.
One of the few positives of the first game was the PC version actually featuring fairly impressive and detailed character models for the time, but McMuscles points out how they mostly managed to get worse in the sequel by making them smaller — and some really weird positioning that make the fighters look like they’re standing on different planes.
That’s not something you really ever see.
The rest of the presentation mostly dropped in quality and content as well with the rendered 3D cutscenes and even unique character endings being left out of Rise 2.
But you know what they did include? Some ridiculously long loading times.
And as for the gameplay, that’s arguably even worse than the first game too somehow.
Matt does an excellent job going over the character roster, mechanics, animations and overall game feel in quite a bit of detail, so you can see and hear how strange and messed up everything managed to be.
Check out the latest episode of The Worst Fighting Game below to see if Rise 2 has what it takes to dethrone the Super Nintendo’s Pit-Fighter at the absolute bottom of the barrel.