Blood Warrior

Blood Warrior, known in Japan as Ooedo Fight (大江戸ファイト), is a 1994 fighting arcade game developed by Atop and published by Kaneko. It is the successor to the 1992 fighting arcade game, Shogun Warriors, also developed by Atop and published by Kaneko. Blood Warrior uses digitized images of real actors within the game and is clearly inspired by Midway's Mortal Kombat franchise when it comes to both presentation and violence.

Gameplay


Blood Warrior's gameplay is quite similar to many of the 2D fighting games of the same era. However, Kaneko seem to have taken much of their inspiration from the Mortal Kombat franchise in terms of over the top gore and violence.

The player's character fights against his or her opponent in best two-out-of-three matches in a single player tournament mode with the computer or against another human player. Like its predecessor, Shogun Warriors, players has a character roster of eight fighters to choose from, and four bosses, each with their own fighting style and special techniques based on the ones in Japanese culture. In one player mode, after selecting a character, the arcade randomly selects an opponent. The opponent order goes randomly and always leaves the final boss last.

After winning two rounds, the winning player can perform a finishing move much like a Fatality in Mortal Kombat. Most of which tend to be over the top and humorous as opposed to disturbing. The fatalities are considerably easier to perform compared to Mortal Kombat as they only require a tap of any button.

Characters
There are nine playable characters, and no bosses:


 * Kinshirō (金四郎) - The protagonist of the game, based on Samurai from Shogun Warriors.
 * Arashi (嵐) - Based on Ninja from Shogun Warriors.
 * Ikkyu (一休) - A ksitigarbha.
 * Kasumi (霞) - A kunoichi.
 * Sanpei (三平) - A kappa.
 * Syogethu (秀月) - Resembles Shogun from Shogun Warriors, but his actual occupation is a samurai.
 * Shishimaru (獅子丸) - Based on Kabuki from Shogun Warriors.
 * Benkei (弁慶) - Based on Saitō Musashibō Benkei, but has a different look compared to himself in Shogun Warriors.
 * Goemon (五右衛門) - Based on Ishikawa Goemon.

Reception
Blood Warrior is an obscure title due it not being released outside of Asia, but it has become more recognized since being emulated with the MAME. The game is best known for being inspired by Midway's Mortal Kombat with over the top and comical violence. The Blood Warriorarcade machine is very rare: the Killer List of Videogames currently ranks the rarity as 2 out of 100 (with 100 being common, 1 being scarce), meaning finding an original dedicated cabinet for this game is extremely difficult.