The History of Ehrgeiz

A Square fighting game that started in Namco's arcades and came home carrying Final Fantasy VII.

Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring is a 1998 3D fighting game developed by DreamFactory and published by Namco for arcades, then ported to the PlayStation and published by Square. It is the strangest corporate handshake of its era: the Tobal team, working under Square, building a game for the arcade board of Namco, the company behind Tekken.

The arcade game was already unusual, a wrestling influenced fighter with free 3D movement and multitiered arenas. The PlayStation version is the one history kept, because Square loaded it with extras the arcade never had: six playable Final Fantasy VII characters, four minigames, and a complete dungeon crawling RPG mode called Brand New Quest: The Forsaken Dungeon.

HOW IT WAS MADE

A Square game on Namco's board

THE LICENSING DEAL

Ehrgeiz was announced as the first project to come out of a licensing agreement that let Square develop games for Namco's System 12 arcade board. It was a joint venture between Square and Namco, developed by DreamFactory, and exhibited at Namco's booth at the February 1998 AOU Show.

THE TEAM

Seiichi Ishii directed and designed it, bringing the same pedigree as Tobal: Virtua Fighter at Sega, the first two Tekken games at Namco. The characters, original and Final Fantasy VII alike, were designed by Tetsuya Nomura.

THE FIGHTING SYSTEM

Where Tobal grew out of other 3D fighters, Ehrgeiz borrows from wrestling games. Fighters move with full 360 degree freedom and do not have to face each other, in arenas with changes of elevation and interactive objects: crates can be climbed on, or picked up and used as weapons. Four buttons cover guard, high attack, low attack and a character specific special attack.

THE PRIZE

The story is a tournament with an artifact at the end of it. The legendary sword Ehrgeiz sits sealed behind a door that only the Ehrgeiz stone can open, and the stone is the tournament's prize. Ehrgeiz is German for ambition, which is also a fair description of the project.

THE RELEASE

Arcade first, then a bigger box

Ehrgeiz launched in Japanese arcades in March 1998, and Game Machine magazine listed it as the sixth most successful arcade game of the month in its April 15, 1998 issue. The PlayStation port followed in Japan on December 17, 1998, then North America in 1999 and Europe on February 8, 2000, with an unusual publishing split: Square released it internationally while Sony Computer Entertainment published it in Japan, the reverse of the companies' usual arrangement.

Square promoted the home version hard in the United States, sponsoring the Ehrgeiz Championship Tour from July 10, 1999, with contests at Electronics Boutique and Babbage's stores. The port was more than the arcade game: it added Final Fantasy VII characters, four minigames and a full RPG mode. Japan got a Square Millennium Collection re-release on September 28, 2000 with a collectible digital clock and character diorama, and the game joined Japan's PlayStation Network on July 9, 2008.

THE TWO COVERS

Same game, two shelves

North America

Cloud Strife stands at the center of the North American cover, Buster Sword on his shoulder, above Godhand, Yoko and Lee Shuwen. The Final Fantasy VII guest is the face of the box.

Japan

Japan's cover shows no fighters at all: the Ehrgeiz sword and a gun arm in red over black, with the God Bless the Ring title. Squaresoft, 1998.

HOW IT WAS RECEIVED

Loved in Japan, argued over elsewhere

FAMITSU, 32 OUT OF 40

Famitsu scored Ehrgeiz 32 out of 40, one point higher than it had given Tobal No. 1, and later placed it at number 73 in its top 100 PlayStation games of all time.

IGN, 7.5 OUT OF 10

IGN rated it Good at 7.5, praising the beautiful graphics and presentation while noting the generally simplistic gameplay and the difficulty of executing its combination moves.

GAMESPOT, 5.8 OUT OF 10

GameSpot was the dissenting voice: it called the blocking controls unintuitive, judged the minigames disappointing, and concluded that those problems outweighed the beautiful graphics and full motion video. Its aggregate on GameRankings settled at 76 percent across 21 outlets.

NEXT GENERATION, 3 OUT OF 5

Next Generation called it technologically impressive with balance problems, especially the one button play of the single player game, but welcomed developers straying from the accepted fighting game formula.

THE SALES

In Japan, Ehrgeiz sold over 222,000 copies by the end of 1998 and reached 340,937 copies by December 2004. Respectable, and a long way below the demo boosted numbers of its older brother.

WHAT IT LEFT BEHIND

The Final Fantasy fighting game

History filed Ehrgeiz under a name its makers never gave it. Hardcore Gaming 101 records that it became known as the Final Fantasy fighting game, even though the Final Fantasy VII characters were additions to an original cast, added, in its assessment, to lure RPG fans in. The original fighters, Godhand, Han, Jo, Doza and the rest, were overshadowed by their own guests.

There was no Ehrgeiz 2. What survived is the template the game proved out: a Square fighter built on free 3D movement, carrying a second, full RPG inside the same box. The Forsaken Dungeon outlived the tournament for many of the people who played it, and it is the reason this game still gets written about.