Description of Savage Reign / Fu'un Mokushiroku - Kakutou Sousei ROM - MAME

This game Savage Reign / Fu'un Mokushiroku - Kakutou Sousei ROM - MAME working perfectly with emulator version mame64ui, you can download on this web site.

Savage Reign is a fun little fighting game released by the SNK for their NEO-GEO line of arcade machines. The game is set in a (sort of dystopian) vision of a future city, where various fighters fight in arenas and try to become the most succesful fighter of all.

Now, I say it’s a fun little game for a reason. For as the GamePro magazine pointed out somewhere in the August of 1995, the game is an audiovisual blast, but since it brings so very little innovation into the genre, it’s straightaway predestined to be one of those rise-and-fall titles, that cause a great hullabaloo when they come out, yet are virtually forgotten only mere months after their initial release.

Savage reign offers you 9 playable characters in total. And well, some of them are at least somewhat interesting, I guess. But although the game pretty much tries to build on the successful foundations of the Samurai Shodown series, too produced by SNK, and uses roughly the same kind of humor in the character dialogue and animation, it doesn’t appear to me like it does so that much successfully. Really, as much as I’m concerned, Savage Reign just doesn’t quite feel complex and attractive enough for me to get invested in. And, since it is originally an arcade title, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. For you see, some arcade games you’ve got to play only once in your life anyway, such as when you were visiting a neighboring town or you just were on a holiday trip and got a minute to spare in the local arcade.

Yet SNK has ported Savage Reign also to their home-based NEO-GEO hardware and later even to Playstation 2, Wii and believe it or not, even PS4. And why—yes here it could be a problem, I’d say. For when you buy a copy of a game, you want to get invested in it. But then you get this and you just feel like an idiot.

There are no combos or character specific moves at all. At the beginning the game explains the (very simple) controls to you itself, and that’s about it. The rest is just attack and dodge and cover—simple button mashing. And about the only factor that makes the game difficulty rise as you play through, is the increasing agility and aggressiveness of the computer controlled opponents.

I guess the two player mode could be more fun, though. There it’s about the individual player’s character and fighting style, that decides whether the match is going to be tough or easy. And since you pickup the controls pretty quick, without the need to learn character specific moves and combos, there is a high potential for casual fighting skirmishes.

Having said all that, I don’t really think Savage Reign is a bad game in its core. It’s actually quite fun, and yes the sounds and the visuals are as great as one would have expected from a company like SNK. And if I weren’t enjoying it in the first place, I wouldn't be writing this review at all.

And thus, I still do recommend you to at least give it a shot, for you never know, everyone likes something different, isn’t that true?