One of the worst fighting games of the 16-bit era, and it's unfortunate because it's a cool idea. A bunch of animals, each representing a different martial art, having a tournament on an island to determine what the greatest martial art is.
When I was a kid, I actually really wanted this game. It was one of those "read about it somewhere and then ask my mom to get it" games that I thankfully got ignored on, mainly because she figured it was terrible due to the villain being THE DALAI LLAMA and the game being called Brutal. In any case, time to find out why this game should have been called Brutal: Paws of ASS.
I might not have ever gotten this game, but I kept a lookout for it in rental stores (the SNES version, because I didn't have a Genesis) and never actually saw it. When I finally played it, it was the Genesis version, because I'm always looking for an excuse to play anything on Genesis. Really like the Genesis controller, 3 buttons or not, with the large buttons and MAN-SIZED grips.
The game has like 15 difficulty levels, and I'm not even kidding. There's one for every belt, and then one for every Dan once you go over Black Belt. Despite having this ridiculous amount of difficulty levels, it stops at 6th Dan, weirdly enough. Why stop there? Why not go all the way to 10th Dan? Make a game that can challenge KENSHIRO ABBE HIMSELF!
I turned the game down to the very easiest difficulty level. You'd think with this huge amount of difficulties, it would be a wide spectrum. Nope. The easiest difficulty is still really hard to finish. Yanno, I bet most of these difficulties are just the same thing as one another...I bet it's really like, 3 difficulties.
Time to meet our characters. The "main dude", your Liu Kang or Ryu type character, is Kung-Fu Bunny.
Giving top billing to Kung-Fu is no doubt going to enrage the Karate purists of the martial arts world who play Brutal: Paws of Fury.
And don't even get the Tae Kwon Do nerds STARTED.
Meanwhile, the 200 people that actually do real Jeet Kune Do are yelling "Where's OUR representation?"
Then there's Prince Leon of Kenya. Not sure what martial art this guy represents. He's a prince from Kenya. Not to be confused with Nigerian princes who want your bank account number. This guy is totally trustworthy with bank account numbers!
Then there's...a Cheetah who meditates and levitates and whatnot. He's the "cool" character, the one kids probably go for. He's also the game's resident jobber because the CPU always throws him at you first, no matter who you pick.
This rat dude is definitely the Muay Thai representative, with his taped fists and ankles. He also has really long arms and legs, making him a combination of Sagat and Dhalsim.
Kendo Coyote is the representative of Karate, and looks the closest to a real, legitimate fighting game character out of all of these buffoons. Seriously, this guy is a bad-ass and his moves look solid. What's he doing in this game?
Ivan the Bear, you'd think would be the giant of the group. However, he's actually the shortest character out of all of them, and basically has the body type of Gimli. His offense is basically just body-crashing into foes, and he does an unbalanced amount of damage. He's also slow-moving, though. Which is the opposite end of the spectrum from:
Because every fighting game in this era was contractually obligated to have one (and only one) female character, here she is. She's sexy, of course. That's her martial art. It might be the most powerful of all the martial arts IRL. Like all contractually-obligated 1990's fighting game female characters, she is faster-moving but doesn't hit as hard as most of the others.
Tai Cheetah might be the only one who is weaker on damage output than Foxy. And speaking of, he's the first opponent. ........who the hell is "Juanimator"? Whoever they are, that's the name you see above all of the CPU health bars in this game, rather than the actual name of your opponent. Why? I don't know, but it's weird. Whoever Juanimator is, they must have been a raging narcissist.
I mentioned how Kendo Coyote looks like a real fighter. Well, I'm playing as him, and his moves look pretty good. Jump kicks are the main thing the CPU has trouble with (which seemed to happen with a lot of fighting games in this era, I've noticed) so I spam those. If a flying kick gets blocked, immediately follow it with a ducking fierce kick, and 90% of the time the latter move will land. This worked really well for taking out CPU opp-
OW.
Damn...rat!
I retaliate with a straight PUNT TO THE NEUSSEN.
Rhei Rat is a tough foe because of his long reach. Ducking kicks, i.e. sweeps, are nasty in this game.
Due to the Genesis controller's limited buttons, the attacks are a bit weird. A/B/C buttons all do a kick, and the button only determines the severity of the kick. Light kicks do almost no damage, while fierce kicks do decent damage but can be blocked more easily. Then you've got the medium kicks somewhere in-between. I mostly only used fierce kicks, because the light ones were too pathetic to even be worth using outside of luring a block (like a high attack followed by a low fierce attack).
Pressing Start switches your attacks over from kicks to punches. Same deal with them on the three buttons. Punches are short-range and pretty bad in this game, and there's like no reason at all to use them over kicks. The CPU doesn't even bother with them.
Next up is the bane of my existence: Juanimator...er, Ivan. Just Ivan. Not "Judo Ivan" or anything. Representing Russia? Who knows. Maybe they'd be able to flesh out some of these details if fuckin' Juanimator didn't have to have his name onscreen at all times!
Ivan is the bane of my existence because he absolutely spams a dashing belly-thrust attack that hyperarmors through everything and does massive damage. This character is so wildly unbalanced that it's ridiculous. Weirdly enough, when I try playing as him, this isn't the case; can't spam the move and it does a lot less damage when I do it. Ehhh.
Looks like there are rolls of toilet paper hoisted on the various reeds in the foreground, which is highly-appropriate for this game.
Next up is that prince guy! Not sure what martial art he represents, but it seems to be the art of ring-outs:
Indeed, you can fall off of his stage pretty much immediately, with minimal effort. All of his moves seem designed to just push you back without doing any real damage.
...then he just sort of falls off to his death as well, so you're both dead, but it still counts as a loss. This...this game.
I mean holy shit, see for yourself.
On the rematch, I win by simply leaping out of the way of his charging attack, causing him to fly right off of the level to his demise.
Welp.
Next up, Mirror Match! This is where the fights start to get a lot tougher. Even playing on "White Belt" difficulty this takes me a few tries, which makes me question what the deal is with the other 13 difficulty levels.
Next up is the sexy character. Wonder if the creators of this game intended for it to turn into a major franchise, like Mortal Kombat. Foxy here was intended to be their Sonya Blade, and would be among the most iconic characters of the 90's fighting game era. They would have action figures and everything.
And now, the Cheetahmen.
This stage is annoying because it has blinds that you move behind during the fight, and the already-bad controls become ridiculously bad. I guess they figured blinds are sexy, and combined them with the sexy character, so when she moved behind them it would be sexy. Nevermind that it makes the level almost unplayable.
You don't start out with all of your special moves, no, you unlock them as the game goes on. Good luck actually pulling off any of them even after they're unlocked, though. The controls are so bad that I was barely able to get any moves to work. Like I tried and tried, and these moves WOULD NOT FIRE.
...also, look at that choke! This game is more violent than Mortal Kombat! Kind of shocking to see this in a game marketed to kids. Everything about this game feels weird and off.
The final opponent of the main cast is Kung-Fu Bunny, the clear leader of the squad. He's a tough opponent, definitely this game's Ryu. Doesn't help that the fight is obscured by MORE FOREGROUND OBJECTS
Alright! Another move I can't execute! This one requires a full half-circle on the pad, when I can't even get the shorter moves to fire. The game sits on these screens until you either get the move right or the one minute timer expires. There's so much wrong with all of this.
1) All the special moves shoulda just been available from the beginning
2) The special moves should actually be possible to execute, at least the majority of the time
3) They shouldn't trap you on a screen for an entire minute until you do a move that's almost impossible to do, just to train you on something that should have been available from the beginning AHHHH
Once all the other characters are defeated, something really weird happens, and it makes you fight the cheetah and the rat again. Just those two, nobody else. It's the weirdest padding, and I'm not sure why it chose those two. They were the first two I fought, that's the only reason why I guess.
Note: I suspect this has something to do with how in other versions of the game (32X, etc) there were two more characters than in the Genesis/SNES versions. So these two are where the two added characters would be, and programming-wise it was easier to just slot re-fights in rather than just have the story ladder have two fewer fights in this version.
At last, the final boss! At last...the Dalai Llama!
...he proceeds to completely obliterate me. I mean this is in the upper echelon of "ridiculous fighting game final bosses". Guy just input-reads and counters everything.
I win by spamming one particular move over and over and over, the jump kick followed by two sweep kicks, repeat. Most of my attacks didn't actually do any damage even if they landed, something I noticed sometimes in other fights as well, but it was especially bad here. Mr. Llama kept fighting for like 9 more hits once his health was depleted. So I can only conclude that as the game goes on, the CPU just randomly takes zero damage from your attacks at more and more frequent intervals.
I...don't even know
The ending shows my character's silhouette doing katas on a boat (to show anything more detailed would be too much memory/effort, and Juanimator was too expensive to keep paying)
Kendo Coyote wins the Brutal Championship, which is a big gold belt, and now will get all sorts of brand deals.
............man, am I glad I didn't convince my mom to waste $50 on this game in 1994 instead of getting me Mega Man X for Christmas.
Brutal: Paws of Ass, or Mega Man X. Can you imagine?
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