Uploaded January 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Playthrough with the alternate version of Reika. This arcade port was only released in Japan, the version I'm playing is the PSN version.
This is a mid '90s fighter, so you know what that means: horrible AI. I swear I could feel some of my brain cells being destroyed as I played this game. Screechy anime girls flying around the screen at 100 miles per hour, oh what fun. The CPU tends to be constantly in your face from around stage 4 and onwards, and abuses the guard cancel system a lot. The main problem is just how fast the CPU moves most of the time, they start zooming around so rapidly and constantly it gets difficult to even tell what's going on. You cannot escape your opponent, the moment you try to get some distance they'll rush right back to where you are.
This game also has an odd feature for a fighting game: reverse damage scaling. In your average fighting game, the more hits in your current combo, the less damage it does, but in this game the opposite happens. Another issue are the controls, which are too stiff and have trouble accepting basic quarter circle inputs at times. This also leads to stuff like getting dragon punch motions when you're inputting fireball motions. It's frustrating.
Reika is a pretty good character to get a one credit clear with. She has an amazing strategy: light kick. Her light kick can be really good at just getting opponents as they dash in, keep spamming it and you should be ok. The boss of this game, Angel, is an SNK style boss, but even she's no match for the power of the light kick. Reika's super move, the eternal flame, is also really good against the CPU. If they block it they still take a ton of chip damage at point blank, and a lot of the time they'll try and guard cancel through it, but always fail, taking more damage in the process. The only drawback with her super is that it doesn't travel the full length of the screen. One thing to watch out for is that Reika is capable of setting herself on fire from some of her own moves!
This game mixes pixel art with pre-rendered graphics, making it look a mess. The pixel art characters look far better than the pre-rendered ones. Some of the pre-rendered characters don't even look finished, like they haven't been cleaned up yet. Angel's sprite in particular clearly still needs touching up.
But the PlayStation port does attempt to fix some of these graphical issues. It has unlockable alternate versions of characters, including giving the pre-rendered ones pixel art sprites. You can unlock these by either beating arcade mode or story mode, the latter of which is another new addition to this port. Story mode has cutscenes before and after each fight, and they all have voice acting. Unfortunately beating story mode with each character is quite challenging, as the difficulty is just as high as in the arcade mode. The alternate Reika I'm using can be unlocked by beating Reika's story mode, to play as her in arcade mode, highlight Reika and hold up. You can see Reika's original sprite at 3:06.
The PlayStation port also has other extras, including a training mode, remixed music and an art gallery. It seems like a pretty good port as far as 2D PS1 fighters go, the load times aren't too bad and from what I've seen of the arcade version, it doesn't appear to have had too many animation frames cut out. You can actually disable the win screen animations (which are turned off by default) but as the alternate Reika doesn't have a win screen animation anyway it makes no difference for her.
This game came to be due to Tecmo being in a financial crisis in the mid '90s. The company planned to release Ninja Gaiden II for the Neo Geo, but it was cancelled. Tecmo instead decided to make three new fighting games: a ninja themed one, a fairy tale themed one and one where fighters would ride on horses. None of these would be released, but the ninja themed one would be retooled into this game: Touki Denshou Angel Eyes. The game still had to be rushed, which led to one character being cut from the game. I recommend reading this article for more information:
sudden-desu.net/entry/touki-denshou
Playthrough with the alternate version of Reika. This arcade port was only released in Japan, the version I'm playing is the PSN version.
This is a mid '90s fighter, so you know what that means: horrible AI. I swear I could feel some of my brain cells being destroyed as I played this game. Screechy anime girls flying around the screen at 100 miles per hour, oh what fun. The CPU tends to be constantly in your face from around stage 4 and onwards, and abuses the guard cancel system a lot. The main problem is just how fast the CPU moves most of the time, they start zooming around so rapidly and constantly it gets difficult to even tell what's going on. You cannot escape your opponent, the moment you try to get some distance they'll rush right back to where you are.
This game also has an odd feature for a fighting game: reverse damage scaling. In your average fighting game, the more hits in your current combo, the less damage it does, but in this game the opposite happens. Another issue are the controls, which are too stiff and have trouble accepting basic quarter circle inputs at times. This also leads to stuff like getting dragon punch motions when you're inputting fireball motions. It's frustrating.
Reika is a pretty good character to get a one credit clear with. She has an amazing strategy: light kick. Her light kick can be really good at just getting opponents as they dash in, keep spamming it and you should be ok. The boss of this game, Angel, is an SNK style boss, but even she's no match for the power of the light kick. Reika's super move, the eternal flame, is also really good against the CPU. If they block it they still take a ton of chip damage at point blank, and a lot of the time they'll try and guard cancel through it, but always fail, taking more damage in the process. The only drawback with her super is that it doesn't travel the full length of the screen. One thing to watch out for is that Reika is capable of setting herself on fire from some of her own moves!
This game mixes pixel art with pre-rendered graphics, making it look a mess. The pixel art characters look far better than the pre-rendered ones. Some of the pre-rendered characters don't even look finished, like they haven't been cleaned up yet. Angel's sprite in particular clearly still needs touching up.
But the PlayStation port does attempt to fix some of these graphical issues. It has unlockable alternate versions of characters, including giving the pre-rendered ones pixel art sprites. You can unlock these by either beating arcade mode or story mode, the latter of which is another new addition to this port. Story mode has cutscenes before and after each fight, and they all have voice acting. Unfortunately beating story mode with each character is quite challenging, as the difficulty is just as high as in the arcade mode. The alternate Reika I'm using can be unlocked by beating Reika's story mode, to play as her in arcade mode, highlight Reika and hold up. You can see Reika's original sprite at 3:06.
The PlayStation port also has other extras, including a training mode, remixed music and an art gallery. It seems like a pretty good port as far as 2D PS1 fighters go, the load times aren't too bad and from what I've seen of the arcade version, it doesn't appear to have had too many animation frames cut out. You can actually disable the win screen animations (which are turned off by default) but as the alternate Reika doesn't have a win screen animation anyway it makes no difference for her.
This game came to be due to Tecmo being in a financial crisis in the mid '90s. The company planned to release Ninja Gaiden II for the Neo Geo, but it was cancelled. Tecmo instead decided to make three new fighting games: a ninja themed one, a fairy tale themed one and one where fighters would ride on horses. None of these would be released, but the ninja themed one would be retooled into this game: Touki Denshou Angel Eyes. The game still had to be rushed, which led to one character being cut from the game. I recommend reading this article for more information:
sudden-desu.net/entry/touki-denshou
