The History of Fighters Destiny

The N64 fighter that scored its fights like a sport.

Fighters Destiny, developed by Genki with Opus Corp and Anchor Inc for the Nintendo 64, looks at first glance like a follower: polygonal fighters in a ring, modeled on the 3D standard of its day. Its one big idea set it apart. Instead of winning rounds, fighters win points, awarded for how an opponent is beaten, and the first fighter to seven points takes the match.

Critics panned its generic characters and praised almost everything else, calling it the best fighting game on the Nintendo 64 and, in IGN's phrase, the most original fighting game in years. It sold poorly anyway. This page is its history: the system, the modes, the odd release order, and the reception that deserved a bigger audience.

THE TWO COVERS

A portrait in America, a poster in Japan

Fighters Destiny American Nintendo 64 box art, Ryuji

America · 1998

The American box is a painted close up of Ryuji, red hair and boxing glove, under a script logo, sold by Ocean.

Fighting Cup Japanese Nintendo 64 box art

Japan · 1998

In Japan, as Fighting Cup, the same Ryuji fronts an illustrated cast poster, with Meiling and the Ninja posed behind him. America shipped first; this box arrived eleven months later.

HOW IT WAS MADE

Announced as Struggle Hard

The team

Developed by Genki alongside Opus Corp and Anchor Inc. In Japan it was published by Imagineer, in North America by Ocean of America, and in Europe by Infogrames in the United Kingdom. The English announcer, who calls himself Fighting D.J., was voiced by Marc Silk.

The first title

The game was initially announced under the title Struggle Hard. By release it was Fighters Destiny in the West and Fighting Cup in Japan.

The design bet

The game closely models the 3D fighting standard of the time, three dimensional arenas, locks and throws alongside punches and kicks, then integrates its point scoring system on top of that familiar frame. The familiarity was deliberate cover for the experiment.

THE RELEASE

America first, Japan last

North America

January 26, 1998, nearly a year before its Japanese release, an unusual order for a Japanese developed game.

Europe

March 1, 1998.

Japan

December 11, 1998, as Fighting Cup, closing a release arc that ran in the opposite direction from the era's norm.

The roster holds nine regular characters, from the karate exponent Ryuji to the French clown Pierre, and five secret characters unlocked through the challenge modes: Boro, the Joker, the training robot Robert, the Master, and Ushi, a fighting cow from Hokkaido. The modes around them, versus computer, versus battle, Record Attack, Master Challenge and training, are where the game's reputation lives, and two of them have their own pages in this wing.

HOW IT WAS RECEIVED

Named scores, praise and dissent together

IGN 8/10

Peer Schneider concluded that this is, no doubt, the most original fighting game in years, and that it beats the living daylights out of every other N64 fighter ever released, while noting minor problems in presentation and player balance.

GameSpot 7.8/10

Jeff Gerstmann: the unique scoring system and variety of modes make Fighters Destiny a winner. It may not have the best characters or the best graphics, but it is a well rounded game, which is more than can be said for any other N64 fighting game.

Next Generation 4/5

The best fighter on Nintendo 64, with impressive single player depth, and the fighting game to play until the arrival of Tekken 3 for PlayStation. Edge scored it 8 out of 10; the aggregate on GameRankings stood at 77 percent across 12 reviews.

The dissent, kept

Electronic Gaming Monthly's team was more uncertain, calling the game decent but flawed. Dan Hsu criticized the two attack button layout as reducing fights to button mashing, a judgment Schneider and Next Generation directly contradicted, praising the same layout for its range of moves. Famitsu scored the Japanese version 29 out of 40.

The consistent criticisms were presentation: character designs called uninspired, low polygon counts, visible texture seams, flat non interactive backgrounds, and some slowdown. The consistent praise was the scoring system, cited as the game's best feature and the one that most sets it apart, and the ability to learn new moves in the Master Challenge and save them to a Controller Pak.

WHAT IT LEFT BEHIND

Acclaimed, discounted, and followed once

The commercial record is the sad half of the story. The game missed its initial Christmas release date and sold only 18,000 copies in its first two months in North America. Infogrames, parent of the game's international distributor Ocean, cut 20 dollars from the price, dropping it to 49.99 dollars, in an effort to lift sales.

A sequel, Fighter Destiny 2, followed in 2000, keeping the mechanics and adding a board game style Fighter's Arena mode, to a much cooler reception, 54 out of 100 on Metacritic. The original's afterlife has been kinder than its launch: it is still the answer most often given to the question of the Nintendo 64's best fighting game, a title it earned with a scoring system no major rival adopted and a cow nobody who played it has forgotten.

THE QUESTIONS

Asked of this game

The Points

How does the points system in Fighters Destiny work?

The Master

What is the Master Challenge in Fighters Destiny?

More fighting games →