Hi y'all, even though this site will punish me for it, I decided to re-do and re-upload this video because I don't believe I did a good job at explaining just how cool and ahead of its time World Heroes Perfect is. I make every video with the goal of selling any random person on why an old overlooked game is worth their time, and I don't think the last version of the video did that. I have redone the entire World Heroes Perfect section so it goes more in depth with all of its crazy mechanics.

Feel free to re-comment all of your thoughts and World Heroes memories again, i'd love for this video to be an archive on why this series is so important.

Thanks for the support.

Fiiting for a video about an arcade fighter to get another revision with more content.

2:45 Many early Neo Geo games purposefully avoid the D button (or made its entirely optional) because the official JAMMA standard set in 1987 only advocated three action buttons and many arcade cabinets at the turn of the 90s could only feature/ cable up to three buttons. SNK was initially very cautious not to scare away arcade operators until the MVS became a much more widespread standard and SNK's own cabinets sold well enough.

4:05 Ryoko is actually a direct reference to real life Ryoko Tamura, a teenage judoka who became exceptionally famous in Japan in the Summer of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics after reaching the Silver medal (i.e. second place) as a plucky sixteen years old. She would eventually retire two decades later as the most successful female judoka ever.

The manga Yawara, briefly shown in the video, is coincidentally about a young judoka named Ryoko and contemporary of her real life performance; the manga was already popular before her run but greatly benefited from this quite extraordinary coincidence.

The homonymous young female judoka character Ryoko from Data East's Fighter's History, which released the same year as World Heroes 2 (1993), is also coincidentally paying homage to Ryoko Tamura's real life antics at the Barcelona Olympics.

Funnily enough, Ryoko is the most broken character in World Heroes 2. (Sadly, I play her doppelgänger in Fighter's History Dynamite instead, and that Ryoko is pretty low tier.)

Finally, GWQ has caught up to CAPCOM and is now doing revisions of videos. I can't wait for Buriki One The New Challengers, and then Buriki One Hyper Fighting. Eventually we'll bully SNK into Buriki Two, or at least porting the damn thing.

Since everyone is pointing out the anime references in this game I thought I should contribute by pointing out that Jeanne d'Arc's whip sword is itself a reference to the 1984 fantasy mecha anime series Panzer World Galient.  Such weapons in Japanese pop culture are referred to as "Galient Swords" and there's even an entire page on the Japanese side of Wikipedia that's dedicated solely to the weapon.   According to the page, the sword was inspired by Indiana Jones' whip and bicycle chains, which were a popular weapon amongst delinquents in the hometown of series director Ryōsuke Takahashi when he was growing up.

The Wikipedia page actually mentions Jeanne d'Arc, who based on the page appears to be the first instance of a video game character using a "Galient Sword". Countless other games also pay homage to it such as Ivy from Soul Calibur whose sword was actually named "Galient Sword" in the concept art from when the game was in development.  Other examples include Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow where its called the "Garian Sword" and Xenoblade Chronicles X where it appears as the G2-Buster with the original Japanese name of the weapon's Art being ガリアンズエッジ / Garianzu Ejji or "Galient's Edge".

Dr. Brown facilitating the holy grail war before Fate even existed.

I have a little story about this game: I never played it back then, but my uncle, who was huge into arcades and the one who introduced me to gaming and fighting games, did. However, now, decades later, he had completely forgotten the name and during a family barbecue he was telling me about it and asking if I knew what this game was called. After some research going on the vague info he could remember I found it. I fired up an emulator and we got to playing it. As soon as he saw the game he started crying, remembering all his arcade friends and the good times they had. I don't have my own memories of World Heroes, but this is a story I will carry with me forever.

So, this is like the Champion Edition of the previous one. Time to watch it again!

“The Street Fighter Clone that became an Anime Fighter - World Heroes” PERFECT” edition

you missed the one interesting thing WH1 did, which is de-nazi-ing Brocken in the european SNES port of the game, which is probably one of the first ever fighting game to do so in order to avoid controversy(a more well known example would be "Arthur" replacing Mitsurugi in Korean releases of Soul Calibur games)

The little dialogue lines under the lifebars are saying cliche anime fight dialogue, and they are responding to the context of the match. When Rasputin throws his fireball he says "Burn!", and the guy that blocks it says "Naive!" It looks like an attempt at what games do today with voice lines, but working within the technological limitations of the time.

God-tier visual humor at 11:43

I wouldn't mind seeing a new World Heroes in the art style of COTW. I saw Twinkle Star Sprites!

My favorite character from World Heroes is Jeanne D'Arc!

4:15 Mudman is a pretty direct reference to the Asaro Mudmen and the 1975 manga Mud Men by Daijiro Morohoshi.

Man there was a grocery store right across the street from my elementary school as a kid and it had a Neo Geo arcade machine with World Heroes 2, Fatal Fury Special, Street Hoop, and Windjammers. I used to always just starve all day and use my lunch money to go over and play World Heroes 2 and Fatal Fury Special after school with some friends lol. That had to be around 3rd grade or so. Ahh I miss the 90’s man. Simple times. But yea that was my introduction to the series, WH2 holds a special place in my heart because of those memories, but I do think World Heroes Perfect is objectively the best game in the series. I really wish SNK would start incorporating the characters into the KOF series since they now own the rights to ADK’s games. As for Ninja Masters’ man it’s probably one of the most overlooked fighting games of all time. I’ve always described it as SamSho meets Killer Instinct, with SamSho’s aesthetics and KI’s combo system. It’s actually a great game.

World Heroes hit a softspot in the nostalgia. When a local video store was closing, they let us cop 1 game for free. We got World Heroes 2 having only owned the first. What an upgrade. You didn't mention it, but you could Tech throws finally, and when you did, you could retech again. So it became this comical back and forth of grabbing eachother before finally someone got grabbed.

Also Hanzo's flying saucer voice line is forever engrained in my mind: ETHO-WOODAH-CUTTA. Great game all around.

NTR as a super is WILD

I like how Brocken is a Dhalsim clone with M Bison moves, is possibly based on Stroheim from Jojo, and is named after Brocken from Kinnikuman. Man just copied everyone's homework and thought he was slick.

1:22 A Dr. Brown who builds a time machine? Seems a bit suspect...