Yuu Yuu Hakusho Gaiden (Sega Megadrive)

I pity the individual who mistakenly bought this game when they are actually looking for Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Sunset Fighters. Unlike the fighting game that is Sunset Fighters, Yuu Yuu Hakusho Gaiden is an RPG with active time combat, and unlike Sunset Fighters, it isn’t worth the cartridge that it’s on.

Assuming that you can understand Japanese (and if you don’t, you can stop reading now because you won’t really get much out of this game) enough to wade through the dialogue, and finally get to choose characters (you can choose between all four main characters) you’ll be met with a battle screen that puts you in third person/behind the shoulders view against random demons. You have your HP and RP stats, but the battle is in real time: you can move from left to right to dodge enemy attacks, block, or launch an attack of your own. The enemy can do the same, by the way.

Yuu Yuu Hakusho Sunset Fighters (Sega Megadrive)

Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Sunset Fighters is a 2D Fighting Game for the Sega Megadrive that was based on Yoshihiro Togashi’s hit manga/anime franchise about a teenage delinquent who finds himself recruited as the spirit world’s detective, and the human world’s first and last line of defense against evil spirits from the yokai world.

Many gamers unfairly described the game when it first came out in 1994 as a Street Fighter clone. While it’s true that many 2D fighters at the time were created to cash in on Street Fighter II’s success, Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Sunset Fighters successfully added so many features to the tried and true 2D Fighting formula that it’s not an exaggeration to say that it has transcended the status of a clone, and can be considered a completely different – and maybe even better – game.

With famed developer Treasure at the driver’s seat, it won’t be a surprise to say that Sunset Fighters is a visually stunning game for its time, taking advantage of the Megadrive’s hardware capabilities. The console wasn’t capable of producing anime-like visuals, but for what it’s worth, anybody familiar with the Yuu Yuu Hakusho franchise will find the graphics in Sunset Fighters as a decent 16-bit representation of their favorite characters and setting. Even the digitized voices and songs do a great job at reproducing the sounds from the show, from the opening theme song’s distinctive synth pop to the respective characters’ trademark catchphrases.

The visuals do have a flaw, in the sense that the sprites are a little bit on the tiny side, especially when compared to other fighting games from the same generation. But this is not out of ineptitude on the developers’ part, as it actually has a logical tradeoff – the stages are expansive; the stages are very wide and come with two planes, similar to the Fatal Fury series. Coupled with the small sprites and the engine’s addition of a running/dashing mechanic, the matches can be fast and hectic without the fighters being cramped against each other – even if there are four players on the screen at once. And yes, there’s support for four-way matches, either free for alls or 2 vs 2. It’s a feature that was very rare at the time.