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Welcome everyone to The Octagon, your one stop shop for fighting games of today and yesterday.

I will be your pilot for today's inaugural flight, so sit back and enjoy. This month is a retrospective review of a personal favorite and old classic, while other times I might hit on a game of the moment or a horrible bomb from the big fighting game cash-in of the 90's. Submitted for your interest, today's topic is Weapon Lord.

The title screen is the last easy part of the game, enjoy the brief victory.

The year is 1994 and I'm browsing through the latest issue of Nintendo Power. Turning the pages with anticipation I see an article featuring some very impressive fantasy art. This game featured was Weaponlord, a complicated and rewarding fighter for SNES and Genesis published by NAMCO. Hulking, Conan style characters wielding massive blades and axes were the game's focus. As a teenager and fighting enthusiast it sounded amazing. I would not play the game for many years, but once I did it would be an instant hit with me an my friends, in spite of some issues.

The unfortunately small character select screen

Once I finally scored a copy of Weaponlord I was immediately impressed by some things and disappointed by other. First of all, the art style that I thought was so innovative and original for a fighter remained and did not disappoint. All the characters looked badass, and I had never seen a game using that style of fantasy art before. Fights were smooth and there was an insane amount of depth to the system, including a parry like move, breaking weapons and deflecting blows. Crazy fatality moves were common and every character had several integrated into combos that would finish their opponent in gruesome fashion.

The game was not without it's flaws, and in fact it's depth was part of it's downfall. After only a few minutes of playing something becomes very obvious about Weaponlord: it's not a casual fighting game. It's hard to start out and get beat down by even the easiest computer setting.  I am not exaggerating when I say that I've been playing it for a decade and I suck.  After all this time I'm still playing on Easy mode.  There's a ton of special moves and combos require cracker jack timing, with many inputs that are foreign or uncommon to fighters. There is a lot of slowdown in the game and in general it runs pretty slow. Some of that can be explained away by the need to perform more complicated moves and combos, but there's pacing and then there's grueling slow down. Finally, due to release constraints or otherwise, quite a few things were left out between the planning/development and the final version of the game. Upon it's release there were only 7 playable fighters, a far smaller roster than most of it's contemporaries.

At this point it probably sounds like I'm not much of a Weaponlord fan, but to be honest all of it's issues are easy for me to overlook. I love fighters and I've played (and will write about) absolute train-wrecks compared to this. It's functional and fun in it's own way, and very rewarding to learn a few tricks and play your friends. As it's on consoles it's one of the easier "rare" games to get a copy of, I would suggest any fighting game fan who has never given it a try absolutely should. You just might find a good casual game to play in between Street Fighter matches.

It was at this point that Talazia reconsidered her career choice.

Ultimately Weaponlord, and any chance of a sequel, was undone by awful timing. It's release in 1995 coincided with both the Saturn and Playstation console releases, and with them a glut of 3-D fighters for the first time in history. Ground breaking console releases like Virtua Fighter, would prevent Weaponlord from receiving all but the most meager praise, while NAMCO would move on to the Tekken and Soul Blade franchises. I, however, would never forget Weaponlord for it's impressive art style, challenging depth, and innovative game play.

Octagon Score* 7 Pelvis Shattering Groin Kicks out of 10

(*Octagon Score is primarily based on personal preference and relevant to the hardcore fighting game enthusiast and historian.  Your mileage may vary.)