Ehrgeiz: Difference between revisions

''Ehrgeiz'' is a [[Fighting Game]] made by [[Square Enix]] in 1998, the title being [[Gratuitous German|German]] for "ambition". Unlike most [[Fighting Game|Fighting Games]], especially at that time, ''Ehrgeiz'' allowed full 3D movement around an arena which often had several levels and/or obstacles - in fact, it used the ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' technique a year before the latter existed.

''Ehrgeiz'' is noted for playing off of the astounding success of the then-recently-released ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' by having a slough of [[Cameo]] characters from that game. The original arcade release had Cloud and Tifa as secret characters named "Guardian" and "Summoner" which could be fought by beating the first X characters in a certain amount of time. They were playable after one or two months of real time. In addition, the final boss, Django, bears a striking resemblance to Red XIII.

''Ehrgeiz'' was later ported to the Sony [[PlayStation]] and increased the cameo characters to include Sephiroth, Vincent, Yuffie, and Zack. The PSX version also included a brand-new Quest Mode, which was a sort of RPG-Lite (as shown in Dream Factory's previous ''Tobal 2'') starring two side characters and invoking many ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' mainstays, including materia. The latter almost attempts to have a decent plot. Although it fails spectacularly in this attempt, many of the RPG section's game mechanics were later [[Rescued from the Scrappy Heap|re-used]] in ''[[Vagrant Story]]'', to ''much'' better effect.

The ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' characters are actually quite detailed, including some heavy five-years-ago flashback spoilers (if you know where to look) and a lot of moves from the actual game. Overall, it's a halfway solid [[Fighting Game]]. The real fun, though, ''probably'' lies in getting Sephiroth to lie face down in the sand waving a little flag above his head for winning a shirtless beach race.

* [[Adventurer Archaeologist]] -: The vocation of Koji Matsuda and his protegee Clair.

* [[Animorphism]] -: Jo can transform into a wolf.

* [[Artificial Limbs]] -: Han Daehan, who has a bionic leg that can shoot missiles.

* [[Combat Pragmatist]] -: Once you unlock Clair, you may discover she has an affinity for [[Groin Attack|targeting a certain location of the anatomy]] and carries ''hidden blades in her arms''.

* [[Creative Closing Credits]] -: You fight the [[True Final Boss]] during them.

* [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"]] -: In the arcade game, Cloud and Tifa are named Guardian and Summoner respectively.

* [[His Name Really Is "Barkeep"]] -: Quest Mode introduces us to Sommeleeay the sommelier.

* [[Killer Yoyo]] -: Yoko, whose main costume is a police uniform, if [[Sukeban Deka|the reference]] wasn't obvious enough.

* [[Multiple Endings]] -: As well as each character having an ending, Han has two: one where he wins the tournament but doesn't recover his lost leg from Django, and another where he does.

* [[Ninja]] -: Sasuke and Yuffie.

* [[Overly-Long Fighting Animation]] -: Koji has a charged grapple that is hard to connect with, but if it does, he'll spend about ten solid seconds breaking every bone in your body.

* [[Overly Long Gag]] -: Dasher Inoba's ending, which is an endless loop of him eating bowls of noodles.

* [[Randomly Generated Levels|Randomly Generated]] [[Dungeon Crawler]] -: The Forsaken Dungeon.

* [[Ryu and Ken]]: - theThe ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' characters are generally clones of existing ones; Yuffie for Sasuke, Vincent for Godhand, and Zack for Cloud.

* [[Tangled Family Tree]]: Godhand is a Mishima, meaning the game has a very weak connection with the ''[[Tekken]]'' series. This was a semi-cameo due to Namco distributing the arcade version of the game, and Godhand himself has moves taken from ''Tekken'' characters.

* [[Whoring]] -: Half of the characters have a very cheap and exploitable leg sweep attack. In order to win a fight, all you have to do is tap "X" repeatedly until the fight is over. You don't even need to use the d-pad, since the characters automatically gravitate towards each other.