Way of the Warrior - The Worst Fighting Game 

The one Naughty Dog game no publisher has the balls to re-release

I'm gonna be honest buying your costumes from a Chinatown costume shop is a grind ya gotta respect.

I honestly find it super impressive they were able to create something serviceable enough at the time to incite a publisher bidding war, especially considering all their limitations and budgetary constraints.

I didn't know these guys would go on to become Naughty Dog so that "Their next game, Crash Bandicoot" hit me like a punch right to the head

Having a skull with a bloody Ying Yang sign talking in a dark satanic voice is the most 90's thing ever lol

You know, it's a bad game, but I'm oddly heart-warmed by how it ended up changing these guys' lives.

I'm not gonna pretend this game was good, but there's still a certain impressiveness that two guys did basically glued this thing together with a shoestring budget, no priori experience in even a related style of game, and absolutely none of the things that Ed Boon et al used to make it work (trained professionals for the acting, real money spent on sound design, and the like). It's very "In a cave with a box of scraps" energy, and that's commendable.

Fun fact: At a very early point in Crash Bandicoot’s development, the game was originally going to have a bonus level called, (“Way of the Wombat”,) back when the game was called Willy the Wombat.

Okay Matt, I haven't watched yet, but I'm gonna bet I've got a bit a trivia about this game most don't know. Back in 93-ish I was at CES in Vegas and saw this game on the show floor. We were trying to make a 1v1 fighter internally at EA and I suggested that we contact the developer about taking their engine, implementing our art (for the cancelled "Savage Heroes"... but that's another story) and then tune it, since it played like ass. I reached out to the then-unknown developer, Naughty Dog and they heard, "EA" and almost hung up on me. My boss, Scott "Chakan" Berfield found out that they had formerly worked for EA and EA had a first-rights clause on their games. So.... Naughty Dog was forced to send us (me) a build. I wrote up the proposal on how we'd take the game and make it into our own Primal Rage-esq fighter, but EA didn't want to pony up for a 6 month dev cycle and wanted me to focus on other things (like the cancelled, then not-ish Future Strike/Cop, but that's another story...) So, Naughty Dog off the hook, no 1v1 fighter from EA except That-Which-Will-Not-Be-Named-Fu, Future Strike in limbo, etc... etc...

The research, the editing, the script. This show is peek entertainment for me. I hope he never finds the worst fighting game. I want this series to last forever. Thanks to Mr. Muscles and his team! P.S: that panel "HAHAHA YES!" was my face exactly when i saw the upload on my feed. Cheers

I never thought I'd be hyped to see terrible games, but man, this series really managed to get me excited for _Way of the Warrior._ A grand achievement, all things considered.

Still nominating the incredibly abysmal PC fighting game called Catfight. I will not give up!

There's a minor inaccuracy here, Matt. Galub Jamun is not a real boss, but a secret boss akin to Mortal Kombat 1 Reptile. Fighting Galub requires going through a secret alternate path where you fight pallette swaps of some characters (this time referencing MK2) and this path unlocks by a set of obtuse and complicated conditions. And I don't think those conditions are recorded anywhere, beyond an issue of Tips & Tricks magazine or its predecessor, Video Games magazine. Ironically it's easier to play as Galub by entering a cheat code. Still wondering if anyone will be masochistic enough to do the full secret path for Way of the Warrior and post it on youtube.

As someone who had no idea who Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin were, the first six and a half minutes of this video were an absolute rollercoaster ride

GULAB JAMUN??! bruh that is literally just a milk solid sweet made in India... that's like calling Kintaro something like PopTart

Gulab Jamun is an Indian dessert and I HIGHLY recommend trying it if you haven’t

Man, I swear the production value gets better with every year.

"Crash n' burn". What a perfectly fitting and prophetic launch title for the 3DO

Man, I love hearing stories where developers make a bad game and then immediately make a great game

>characters are friends and family in Chinatown halloween costumes >soundtrack is just a Rob Zombie CD >features an edgy talking 3D Skull that says "yeah" This game is a gift

So this is the game that brought Naughty Dog to make Crash Bandicoot for Universal, huh. Never knew it's devs kept on their own way to get things done and survived the 3DO. Heck of a story.

Imagine having your friends and family as characters for your fighting game. That would be pretty funny, actually. If I were a braver man, I would love to have a sign-up in my college for any students willing to mokap a fighting game.

I´d have a recommendation for this series actually, it´s a game called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft for the Playstation 1, it is one of the weirdest 3d fighting games I´ve ever seen in my life. Granted I don´t know if it would be as bad as some of the games featured in this series so far, at the same time it kinda reminds me of Killing Zone in a way. But it´s up for you to decide if you wanna take a look at it. Great video as always.

Fun bug in this game: if you do a back throw as Ninja while you're at low health, because he technically enters knockdown during his animation, he'll get up in the "ready to be fatalitied" dizzy state. You'll lose the round and give your opponent a bunch of skull points for landing a throw

I actually really like the idea of having varied verticality on stages in an otherwise-traditional 2d fighter.

The fact that this is the same company that go on to win hundreds of game of the year awards from a zombie game is a win to me.

The only good thing about this game is the White Zombie music.

utterly shocked how it was never mentioned that the Fox character looks like KoF's Seth five years before Seth was introduced

Minor detail I really like is the individual logos for each character - makes them feel like iconic 90s wrestlers.

"You should remake Way of the Warrior!". Naughty Dog: We don't know what that is... Also why? "Cause it be cool! It was one your early games too!" Naughty Dog: Not it wasn't.

In defence of Tan coloured chroma key screens, they're making a comeback as they were used extensively during the production of Denis Villeneuve's Dune to help better integrate the action into the sandy environments without having to deal with weird blue or green fringing.

This game looks like something from sitcoms shows where the character desperately wants this game, but steals it or get a allowance, or a job. Then learn morals from these characters...

Ultima really putting in Pikamee whenever he edits 😆

Naughty Dog's humble beginnings. I like this! They got better afterwards.

Its interesting to think that this game is what gave us Crash and Naughty Dog as we know them. Yeah the game isn't great, but it was impressive enough to give them a contact with future games.

Ok but that Naughty Dog reveal was amazing.

(finds out this was created by the team who would go on to create Crash Bandicoot) Well... everyone has to start somewhere.

Have you heard of Battle of the Eras? It's a dos fighting game that apparently sold 0 copies. It was made by 14 year olds and they did the mortal kombat/kasumi ninja thing with real actors as sprites, except it's kids with no budget trying to be space robots and evil wizards and whatnot. Also they tried to make at least one character in claymation and it's confusing. It's the worst fighting game I've ever seen across all categories, obviously looks bad, plays worse, not fun to play, horribly imbalanced, but it makes for good kuso tbh, as long as you aren't the one playing it and just watching lol.

The background: A mountaintop temple. The music: THUNDER KISS'N FIVE FIVE FIVE YEAH! YEAH!

It's actually quite impressive that they made this game with no budget in the mid 90s.

The Botchamania reference had me rolling. Font and all.

Okay, since now you're covering 3DO games you should definitely take on the legendary game known as "Shadow: War of Succession" It's so bad it might actually beat Criticom off its throne (or maybe the closest to do so).

Everyone gotta starts somewhere, even if its in your apartment in the 90s. 😁

I had a 3DO with this game when I was a kid and I absolutely loved it, so much so that I made my own Book Of The Warrior and used to do katas towards it.

I have a feeling that the White Zombie music was there because the devs used it merely as temp tracks during development, but since no one was willing to compose music that could replace them, they chose to let their publisher Universal license the temp tracks out to use in the retail game, which could also double as a back-of-the-box marketing thing to drive interest.

Wow! That's probably the cheapest possible way to make a digitized fighting game. No wonder the 3DO and it's library of games were doomed from the start!

Imagine being the studio that developed this mess, then, more than 20 years later you release the remake of one of the most beloved games ever made and all internet is talking about you and most of those people doesn't even know your very humble begginings.

OK so it’s bad but without this game we may never had crash bandicoot

"Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin felt their creativity was held back by far too much micro-management from EA"..... EA?! Micro-managing things way too much?! Surely you jest!

WOTW was one of my favorite bad games of my youth, we were all well aware of how shit it was but we loved it all the same. I will always remember how surprised I was that Naughty Dog not only wound up making another game after that, but that game turned out to be Crash Bandicoot. My two favorite things about the game were that you could 1) do fatalities on the first round, after which round 2 would proceed as if nothing happened, and 2) also do this to the bosses, which could result in you ripping the heart out of a skeleton man who has no heart. 100% disagree with you about the soundtrack though, it introduced me and several of my friends to White Zombie and did an absurd amount of heavy lifting for this terrible, terrible game.

After watching a previous video and hearing about a fighting game Naughty Dog made that never caught on, I immediately knew it would appear here. Talk about a Crash in an era.

Best part is getting away playing Rob Zombie music without paying a cent to him.

Honestly this whole series so far has been a blast never realized it’s this easy to make a trash fighting game but here we are the way you script and present them I enjoy keep up the good work

I don't really play that much fighting games, but you are making this series so fun to watch that I can't wait for new episodes. Much love Bro!

Way of the Warrior looked AMAZING to me at the time. Remember, in 1994, the only way we previewed games was through screenshots. Trust me, a lot of 3DO (as well as jaguar games) looked pretty darn impressive when all you had to go on was a motionless, 2-inch square. I still have a soft spot for Way of the Warrior’s visuals.

Shrek: Fairy Tale Freakdown and Shadow: War of Succession deserve to be on here.

I have to appreciate their guerrilla approach to this game. I'm sure their friends and family loved to see themselves in a real published game.

Cyborg Justice on Sega Genesis. Half side scroller, half fighter. Fun but shoddily implemented feature let you tear off an opponent's arm and use it to replace your own

I was not expecting this to be a Naughty Dog game, that's hilarious

Actually owned this game in 95. The only redeemable quality was the soundtrack. Only good 3DO games were Return Fire and Gex Also owned a 32x. Glad I didn't wait for the "M2". Those were dark days... until the PS1 came out.

Having the fighters come from an evil book is an interesting and unique concept. One way to have it matter would be for them to be evil warlords who were sealed away long ago. Now they're free to wreck havoc and the humanity has to send their best warrior to fight them (chosen by a tournament. Maybe the warlords threatened to nuke the planet if they weren't fighting 1-v-1.

Hey now, the 3DO sold like 3 million units. That's not quite the colossal failure some other notable consoles like the Jaguar were 😅 I mean, even the Genesis/Mega Drive only sold around 3 million... in Japan... while the Saturn only sold 1.75 million... in North America... 😁

The Botchamania joke killed me XD

I'm kind of sad that this style of games died (with digitized humans). Now that indie gaming is booming i wish someone makes something like the OG MK.

When I think back to all of these early fighting games that used motion capture to create "realistic" avatars, I can't think of one that didn't suck.

You should review Kabuki Warriors and Tao Feng for the OG Xbox.

When I saw the title, I got this confused with Insomniac Games first game Disruptor. This game was also based on a popular genre at the time (first-person shooters a la Doom), meant to be released on the 3DO (which they were smart enough to realise was a lost cause) and they were desperate for publisher when Universal Interactive swooped in and saved them from forever obscurity. These two developers were truly meant for each other back in the day!

I remember playing a really terrible Ranma 1/2 fighting game on the SNES, I never figured out how it even worked

Do X-Men on the Hyperscan. You know you wanna

I'm the one man in the venn diagram that owned both a 3DO and an Atari Jaguar. This game and Road Rash were about as good as it got on the 3DO.

In a strange way, "Way of the Warrior" had to walk so Crash Bandicoot could run.

WELCOME TO THE FIGHT PALACE

I remember when this trash ass game came out back in 1994. The reason it didn't sell big and wasn't critically acclaim is because of two reasons. 1. It was a Mortal Kombat rip-off 2. It was on Panasonic 3D0 which at the time was $700. Not many people had the 3D0 at that price back then. None of my friends and middle school classmates had it I know that. The worst fighting game of all time. And they had the nerve to put it on an expensive ass console like the 3D0.

Would like to see one of the Micronet Sega CD games get covered: Heavy Nova Black Hole Assault or Revengers of Vengeance (Battle Fantasy)

11 year old Mortal Kombat & White Zombie fanatic me wanted a 3DO for this game so bad... still think Kull the Despoiler is badass!

13:14 - Best fatality ever.

If you want the worst fighting game ever made, look no further than Micronet's Heavy Nova for Sega Genesis. It's a fighting game where, due to a programming issue, characters become completely invincible whenever they jump. That should tell you all you need to know about this game.

I was flummoxed to hear this was a Naughty Dog game. Good for them--this is actually inspiring somehow.

It's amusing to see how often one of these stinkers features some bizarre fighter that I know has been imported into MUGEN, having seen them on saltybet or spriteclub for years, but never having known where they originated. Thanks for all the hard work, Matt!

Just came across your channel a few days ago. Criticom came to mind for some reason one day and I decided to look it up (haven’t played it since like ‘97. Played it once lol). I’m loving the “worst fighting games” videos. You’re absolutely hilarious and I enjoy the history you provide for each one. Interesting and funny. Subbed! 😁

Thats is some dedication. Having no studio and friends and family in cheap costumes

Gulab Jamun is a really delicious Indian dessert. Highly recommended if you can find it at a restaurant.

There's a game called Legend of the Dragon on the Wii that absolutely deserves to be covered for this show. It has some of the worst motion control jank I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. (Why would you use motion to do specials in a fighting game? WHY!?)

Great Stuff! 90’s cheese was at it’s peak with the arcade shooter Revolution-X. It was a genuinely _pure heart,_ soaked in blood. You position that between the Sega 3D Star Wars and Gunblade NY cabinets at a busy arcade (or the Playland which now the Olive Garden at the foot of Times Square) and you have yourself, _a good summer._

I'm impressed of how well this video series format has evolved. Very informative and surprisingly crazy stuff in this corner of video games world. The Worst Fighting Game series is great, awesome work!

OKAY. The Crash Bandicoot plot twist legitimately shocked me

The funniest thing about this one is the story of the making of the game- the most "do it yourself" thing ever, getting their friends to play the characters. "Major Gaines" had such hardcore Small Man Syndrome that he wanted his character to be way taller than all the other fighters (hence his "Growing" move) and wouldn't shave his soul patch because it took so long to grow in, so it shows up on his character portrait.

Really now, a “Cosplay Fighter” featuring your family and friends should at the very least be an idea “So bad it’s awesome!”

I get so excited for these! Matt I love seeing these deep dives through the Worst Fighting Games! Been waiting for some of the terrible 3D0 and Saturn ones, so glad to see this one. I'm waiting for Battle Monsters eventually haha

This game should be included as pre-order bounds dlc for up coming the last of us remake.

Man, getting the video on Masters Fighter on recommended was the best thing ever, I've been binging this series all day long

I did like the Lava stage where you could easily knock the opponent into the lava and their skeleton would hit the screen.

That Nagito Yuki clip sent me back to my college years holy shit what an oldie

I have a suggestion for the Burn Book: "Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls" I was a decent enough fighting-games guy back in the day, but this game...just fight Sekka, to get what I mean. The AI is sssooo difficult, and the fighting mechanics are too basic to let you overcome the sheer cheese with style. Ooh! And thank you for mentioning me in your Mortal Kombat Remakes Wha' Happun! That was wild ^^

"WELCOME BACK SICKOS-" Oh hey, he's talking about me!

I remember when some game magazine, I believe it was EGM, was getting bombarded with letters about WOTW's review scores, some of which had specifically mentioned the less-than-optimal 3DO controller as a major flaw. But then an adapter which let you connect Super NES controllers to the console came out, and the letters were telling them to re-review the game to account for playing with the adapter. So they did!... And it wasn't much better, just by virtue of how many bizarre choices Naughty Dog had made at a fundamental level. Also, please please PLEASE cover Tongue of the Fatman a.k.a Mondu's Fight Palace a.k.a. Slaughter Sport.

Just kinda stumbled in here from the youtube sidebar. Love the vid! Definitely subscribing. Also, War Gods is the fighting game I hate most. Also, a friend of mine really hates Rise of Robots.

This is a series that I put on right as soon as I see it. So good! I would recommend Pit Fighter for the SNES for this series

Damn you matt for making me grin and chuckle at an undertale reference in the year of our lord 2022

A thorough critique of Ultra Vortek would be greatly appreciated.