View source for Shadow War of Succession

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{{quote|''"Yes, it was created by a bunch of guys who knew nothing about making video games and they laughed all the way to the bank after selling it. They were actually one of the very few game developers that made a profit that year!"''
''"That's exactly what it was. We didn't know what the hell we were doing and did not get much support from 3DO either. Yeah, the game stank, but we didn't fail. It made money."''|[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjUOeGz7vOo TheMadViper's comments], [[Or So I Heard|a coder for this game]]. }}

[[File:shadow_war_of_succession_5881.jpg|link=Covers Always Lie|frame|[[Sincerity Mode|What a great cover]] for some [[Film Noir|Noir]] [[Mortal Kombat]] for [[3DO Interactive Multiplayer|the 3DO]]!]]


[[Describe Topic Here|Describe]] ''[[Shadow War of Succession]]'' [[Describe Topic Here|here]].

''[[Shadow War of Succession]]'' was [[Seen It a Million Times|one of the many]] [[Fighting Game|fighting games]] [[Follow the Leader|that tried to copy]] [[Mortal Kombat]].

No no, wait, let's try this again....

At first glance, ''[[Shadow War of Succession]]'' looks like a game that tried to [[Follow the Leader|piggy-ride in the success]] of ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'', in the same fashion games like ''[[Way of the Warrior]]'', ''[[Tattoo Assassins]]'' and ''[[Kasumi Ninja]]'' had done before. Remember that there was a huge market for said games, particularly on a console with such an small arrays of games as [[3DO Interactive Multiplayer|the 3DO]], so [[Tropes Are Not Bad|there's nothing bad about that]].

[[Covers Always Lie|But once you look beyond the cover]], and actually get to play the "game", [[It Gets Worse|everything changes]]. ''[[Shadow War of Succession]]'' might be one of the most poorly programmed games ever released commercially, up to the point of making it virtually unplayable. Just to give something to compare with, the infamous ''[[Porting Disaster|MortalKombat Advance]]'' actually plays better.

Why was this game even created in first place? There are two simple yet convincing explanations. First is the theory that this game was produced by amateurs who received no technical support from [[3DO Interactive Multiplayer|the 3DO]] headquarters, and released a [[Obvious Beta|very incomplete demo]]. Second, it might have been an [[Violin Scam|scam on the players]] who were [[Covers Always Lie|unable to know how the game was before buying it]] (Remember we are talking about 1994, so there was no internet back then <ref> Chatting with friends was the only way to really know how good a game was, and since very few had a 3DO, it was impossible to know about these games</ref>). If the comments by the self-proclaimed coder ''"TheMadViper"'' above are to be believed, this game was actually a little bit of both.

Since this trope-page is [[Wall of Text|getting too wordy]], let's just pin-point the most noticeable stuff:
* The game was virtually unplayable with unresponsive controls and impossible to understand mechanics.
** There were lots of bugs which makes the previous point stronger.
** [[Bullet Hell|The IA was very cheap]].
** There is a moment to ''"finish"'' your enemy, but they didn't actually program any [[Fatality]]. <ref> [[Covers Always Lie|They probably programmed that moment to '''pretend''' you could do fatalities]]</ref>
* The audio quality was low and ear-piercing.
* The graphics were no good either and the frame-rate was awful.
** The actors that played the characters clearly know no martial-arts whatsoever.
* The introduction of the game includes an 3D opening sequence of an helicopter blowing up a building. <ref>Shamefully it adds nothing to the actual game.</ref>
* The story, while silly, is not bad for a fighting game. The mob boss had died. You wanted to be the next mob boss. You had to kill the other candidates. <ref> until you get to the final boss, which is a giant ball of goo</ref>
* The idea of the characters speaking phrases before every match was actually good.
* The cover looks incredibly AWESOME. ([[Violin Scam|most likely to sell the game]])

With all that being said, with youtube available, this game has recently became more known as a way of [[Bile Fascination]]. Just seeing the quality of the game and knowing it was published and sold makes the player/watcher feel weird.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjUOeGz7vOo Here you have some Game-play footage].

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=== This thing we generously call a "game" contains examples of: ===
* [[Follow the Leader]] - this was (or at least pretended to be) a ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' clone.
* [[Money, Dear Boy]] - according to TheMadViper, the reason why they created it.
* [[Perfect Play AI]] - The AI opponents are more susceptible to fireballs than the usual examples of this trope, but let them get in close and they'll annihilate you in seconds.
* [[Shotoclone]] - Riggs could count as one
* [[Shout-Out]] - Carlos introduces himself with "You killed me once, [[Star Wars|but I have become more powerful than you ever imagined!]]" As the game has no story to speak of, and he says this line to ''everyone'', who killed him before and how he came back is unknown.

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[[Category:Fighting Game]]
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