In the year 1998, one man by the name of Masahiro
Onoguchi was on a quest to create an ambitious fighting game. Who? All you need to know for now
is that he worked on games like Tekken and Soul Edge as a motion designer, but not just any kind
of motion. 3d motion ooh. I mean it was the '90s. Game consoles were focused on 3D as it was all
the rage back then. Your favorite game series were entering this realm, and fighting games were
no exception. So, what do you get when you combine Genki, a game developer known for its racing
games, and a guy who worked on these 3D Fighters? You get "Fighters Destiny!" Fighters Destiny is
a 3D fighting game that shines with its unique point scoring system. But it never really got
much recognition due in large part to one thing, the game was only released on the Nintendo
64. While it had a rich library of games, the family-friendly system didn't mesh all
that well with the fighting game genre. the PlayStation had gems like Tekken 3 and Marvel vs.
Capcom, but the N64's fighting game market was dominated by Super Smash Bros. And if you weren't
a fan of platform fighters, your only choices at this point were Killer Instinct, one of the many
mediocre 3D Fighters, or Mortal Kombat Trilogy, which was literally just a downgraded version of
its PS1 counterpart, right down to the crunchy audio. "Scorpion wins". What? I didn't play any
wrong notes. Yeah, see you're playing it like this "Scorpion wins" when ordinarily it goes like this
"Scorpion wins". But enough of the game's history, how is the actual game? Well, on the surface, it
doesn't look that great. Even with the upscaled graphics that I'm using, Fighter's Destiny
has an awfully amateurish look especially compared to 3D Fighters that predate it. And
you can tell that while the game is in motion, it comes off as sluggish and stiff in a lot of
areas. As far as the characters go, they're as generic as they come. Just look at poster boy
Ryuji. If identity theft was a character, this would be it. Gameplay-wise, he has an in-your-face
aggressive playstyle. Easily accessible as a quote unquote main character should be. Over on the
right, we have Leon. With his pretty boy face and generic flaming gi, you can't tell me
that this isn't supposed to be Ken Masters. And if you're still not convinced, why not check
out his taunt? "Come on!". He acts as another well balanced straightforward character. Makes
sense if you're going to be the Ken to Ryuji's Ryu. The rest of the characters follow the
same generic standards as the first two, with some of the most creative names I have
ever heard of such as Bob and Ninja. Thankfully, all of them do have their own quirks in battle,
making for a variety of play styles that makes it easy for a player to find a character that best
suits them. The starting roster is small, but we also have five secret characters that stand out
a bit more. I'm going to use this opportunity to mention the game modes at the same time as five of
them each unlocks one of the five fighters. First up is Boro, unlocked through the game's Arcade
Mode. In this, you simply fight the nine starter characters with Boro as your last opponent. Not
exactly final boss material, but you unlock a character with long and practical blockstrings.
And when you select her, you get this wicked laugh. Next up is Robert, unlocked through
the game's fastest mode. Here the objective is to fight and defeat four characters in under
a minute. Doing so gives you the training dummy that's used for the game's training mode. Robert
is undoubtedly the game's joke character. You know how 99% of characters in fighting games have a
quick jab of sort in their arsenal? well here's Robert's. Next up is Master, found in Master
Challenge. This is where most of the single player effort went into. You have a roulette, and
stopping this on any of Master's icons puts you in a fight with him. Each victory on Master
gains you a new skill, but we'll talk about that part later. Defeating all 12 opponents in
this mode gives you basically another Ryuji, but with more tools. I'm sensing a pattern
here. Next up is a character that most of you who played this could easily remember.
Ushi the cow, yes, a cow, unlocked through the game's Rodeo Mode by surviving in a battle
with Ushi for over a minute. Maybe this was the inspiration for that one Kung Pow scene?
Ushi uses an ad orthodox fighting style, with gimmicks and weird setups. Essentially a
huge knowledge check. We're down to the final character, one who I feel made the biggest
impact on all those who played the game. Joker is a force to be reckoned with. While the
AI for the cast is relatively tame depending on the difficulty, Joker's AI is jacked. He's much
harder to fight, and you'll find four of them in Master Challenge which would definitely be
a thorn on your side. Unlocking the character himself is near impossible. To do so, you must
defeat 100 opponents in the game survival mode. Back ,to back, to back. And one loss sends you
all the way back to the beginning. It's so hard that this small tournament doesn't even have him
unlocked, and I sure as heck couldn't do so. I had to cheat my way through. Joker's move list is more
than doubled that of any other character, and he has all the tools to arguably be the best in the
game. Although the game is largely unexplored, a tier list would definitely have Joker in this
spot. In my opinion, he is the game's true boss. And voila, you have the full roster! Not exactly
oozing with charisma, but they are simple and easy to identify. Very important when it comes to
the game's unique style of fighting. First up, the movement. Of course, you have your left and
right movement with very quick back and forward dashes. And like all 3D Fighters, you have side
stepping as well. It's not really useful for dodging attacks, but more so for positioning
yourself in the arena. Jumping is very brief, and interestingly enough, so is crouching. Both
options immediately return you back to neutral, and I believe the reason for this is based
on how attacks work in this game. Despite the many buttons of the N64 controller, there are
only two attack buttons which closely resembles that of Virtua Fighter. But unlike their punch
and kick layout, Fighters Destiny opts to use upper and lower attacks. The B button is relegated
to attacks that target your upper body, while the A button, as you might guess, targets your lower
body. Therefore your jump and crouch can be timed to avoid these type of attacks, but if you're not
quite confident in your timing, you can always use the guard button. There's two types of guarding,
this is high guard, this is low guard. Use them both to ensure that your defense is strong, and
if you want even more layers to your defense, you can integrate the last button, otherwise
known as hirari (nimbly, lightly). By simply holding the L button, this unique mechanic
allows you to do dodge both upper and lower attacks automatically. Now you might be thinking,
why not just hold this button to go Ultra Instinct and never let your opponent hit you? Fortunately,
the mechanic does have its drawbacks. First off, all your other buttons are locked until your L
button is no longer held. Second, some attacks in the game are classified as mid attacks, and they
completely nullify hirari. You can still crouch under mids, but it must be done manually. In the
long run, you'll gain more by timing your dodges to put yourself in a more advantageous state.
Hirari isn't supposed to be a crutch for defense, but instead used for overcommitted strings that
can leave a character wide open. The biggest weakness of hirari however, is the existence
of grabs. Grabs in this game are very weird. They have a startup of exactly one frame, and
you cannot crouch to avoid them. On the upside, if you do get grabbed, this visual aid pops
up which shows a lengthy tech window and your position changes depending on how early you tech.
You also have locks which are a different type of grab where the receiving end must mash to end it
and the grabber could actually mash back to slow down this process. Even the fastest mashing
out will still guarantee some damage. Oh, and if you hold your L button while getting
grabbed? You can't tech it. What's the big deal? People take the grabs all the time in other
fighters, why should this be any different? Well... "2 points won!" It's time we start talking about
what really makes Fighters Destiny shine. When you deplete a character of all their health, they
don't get knocked out, but instead become dizzy. This this state is officially named "Piyori".
In this condition, your movement is limited, you cannot use any of your buttons, and you
can't tech throws. This makes you a very easy target. You are however, able to manually dodge
attacks and your life bar automatically starts to recover. If you manage to avoid your opponent
long enough, your health reset to is slightly less than what you start out with. So it's not all doom
and gloom if you have little health, but the life bar is simply a formality as many of the game's
finishers disregard how much health you may have. In most fighting games, primarily 1v1 types, you
have rounds meaning that you're depleting multiple life bars. Fighters Destiny is different in that
you accumulate points with each round victory, and the way that you defeat your opponent is the
deciding factor to how many points you get. There are six different ways to win a round. Starting
from least amount of points given to most, you have judge. When a match timer ends, generally
the character who dealt the most damage is the victor. Basically the game's version of a time
over. Next is ring out. As you might have noticed, a lot of these arenas are just giant cubes like
the kind you see when you open a blender. If one stands close to the edge, they're prone to being
knocked out with an attack. Throwdown is when you successfully land a throw or deplete your
opponent's life bar with a lock, simple enough. Next up is knockdown. Some attacks are classified
as knockdown moves and are identified by a blue glow. Landing one will give you the round but
these moves are pretty slow and can be dodged quite easily. They should ideally only be used
as hard reads. Additionally, moves that normally don't knock down become so while an opponent is
dizzy and if an attack has even the slightest bit of force behind them. If you hate mashers, you're
going to love Counter. We've all had had a time where you're plus on block but they decide to mash
anyway. Counter is achieved when you counterhit an opponent with these type of moves. If they
connect with the active frames of another attack, it'll cause a bright flash indicating a successful
counter. If you're on the receiving end, you're able to tech the counter by holding A and
B to land on your feet with only a chunk of damage rather than a loss. Be careful with throwing these
out as most of them are unsafe on block. Last but certainly not least is the special. When your
opponent is dizzy you gain access to incredibly flashy moves that give you a whole four points.
Think of it as a finisher from Mortal Kombat. "Finish him!". And that is your point system.
Instead of your usual best two out of three rounds, a single game of Fighters Destiny can
theoretically be anywhere from 2 to 13 Rounds. By now you can see just how insanely different
the game is. Instead of autopiloting, you must take into consideration the many different ways
that you can win or lose and a single well-placed move could shift the momentum of a match
entirely. I haven't even began to scratch the surface of how many complex mechanics and advanced
techniques that the game has as you dig deeper, and covering every single little thing would make
this video way longer than it should be. Just know that if you do decide to give the game a try,
you'll have a lot to learn. Such is the nature of a 3D fighter. That being said, the gameplay is not
without its faults. This is more of a design flaw than anything, but if he says that you'll be dizzy
soon, why not just purposely fall out of the ring? Ring outs only give one point to your opponent,
so you have up to seven attempts by this method. But that's not as bad as the fact that you can
actually cancel out of hitstun by holding guard that means it's possible to make certain moves
unsafe on hit that would be safe otherwise. Of course, this game came out in 1998, so I got to
give some leeway to the devs when it comes to polishing. Actually, I'm more curious as to why
they thought the implementation of the "Gained Skill" was a good idea. Remember when I said that
every time you defeat Master in Master challenge, you earn a new skill? These skills are moves that
get added to a character's move list, so if you want the full move set of 10 of the characters,
you must play through the single player aspects of the game. Imagine if in Tekken, Kazuya's Electric
Wind Godfist was locked away until you earned it in a single player mode. That's how it must've
have felt playing through Master challenge. Now the idea of a person becoming stronger and
learning new moves as a fight is pretty realistic and interesting, but that's a concept that should
only be used for Story Mode purposes, and not affecting the rest of the game. Fighters Destiny
is wildly different from its fellow fighters but there is such a thing as being too different.
The game never really expanded much as a series. the Japanese version released months later, and
a sequel happened about a year later. But it was seen as a weaker game due in large part to more
than half of the original roster either being cut or replaced by lamer characters. The gameplay
was largely the same and Master Challenge return and is grindier to get Gained Skills with. If
you want a proper sequel, I'd recommend Toy Fighter. Made for Arcades, Toy Fighter shares a
lot with Fighter's Destiny thanks to being led by our already mentioned designer Masahiro Onoguchi.
The game even fixed some of the gripes I had with the original, such as this ring following the
fighters preventing intentional ring outs. If you can get past the strange premise, you'll see
the loads of depth that the game has to offer, just as it inspiration did. It's nice to see that
the game's mechanics were given a second chance, and thankfully with the wide variety of options,
you're able to practice them in various methods. If I had to describe Fighters Destiny with one
word, I'd call it experimental. Whereas the presentation lacks originality, it makes up for
this with its incredibly novel gameplay choices. In present day where fans show concern about
rushdown play styles dominating fighting games, and the fact that the more popular 3D Fighters
are either in limbo or shooting themselves in the foot, Fighter's Destiny ultimately became a
"Right Place Wrong Time" situation. Fortunately, thanks to the game's great OST, quirky
gameplay, and distinctive scoring, it managed to create a unique experience to those
who played it, including me who played it during my childhood. For my final score, I give Fighters
Destiny a 7 out of 10 points. Thanks for watching! Hey guys. if you enjoyed these type of videos,
please consider subscribing for more. And I also want to give a special shout out to IM_Amazon
for his amazing guide on Fighters Destiny, couldn't have done this video without it.
Thank you all and I'll see you next time!
