The Nintendo Wii was a strange beast for fighting game fans outside of Super Smash Bros. Brawl with little support given to the motion-controlled console (besides some Guilty Gear and Mortal Kombat), and what else was there… often ended up like this.
Matt McMuscles recently dropped his latest episode of The Worst Fighting Game taking a look at Tournament of Legends, which had an intriguing idea that waggled and fell straight on its face.
High Voltage Software had found a good amount of success on the Wii through the Conduit titles and the copious licensed games they made for the system, so it seems they wanted to take a stab at the fighting game genre late into the console’s life.
The game that would become the subject of today’s unfortunate spotlight made its debut in 2009 under the name Gladiator A.D. as a more brutal, gritty and bloody affair pulled straight out of 300 that would look quite different from the final product.
After the poor performance of other Mature rated ventures on the Wii, Sega apparently wanted High Voltage to tone down the violence and led to Tournament of Legends taking on a more cartoonish aesthetic (while also ditching the Mortal Kombat-like finishers).
What players ended up getting for a bargain price in 2010 was a weird experience that tried to marry the gameplay of Punch Out with arena fighters plus Wii motion controls that did not work out for anybody really.
Funnily enough, this wouldn’t be High Voltage’s last foray into fighting games either although their focus would be on bringing the titles of other studios to more platforms.
They were also behind the PC ports of Mortal Kombat 9, Mortal Kombat X and Injustice: Gods Among Us, which were not exactly well regarded versions of the NetherRealm Studios games for a myriad of reasons / issues.
We highly recommend checking out Matt McMuscles’ new episode below for the full history and breakdown of what makes Tournament of Legends bad and also see if it has what it takes to dethrone Pit-Fighter on the SNES as the worst fighting game ever.