War Gods (video game)

Midway Games

Company type	Private
Industry	Video games
Founded	1989
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois , United States
Products	War Gods, Mortal Kombat series

War Gods is a 3D fighting video game launched by Midway Games in arcades during 1996, with subsequent versions for Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and Windows released in 1997. Players select from a roster of ten combatants empowered by an enigmatic extraterrestrial ore, competing to overcome all rivals and claim the title of supreme warrior.

This title heavily borrows elements from Midway's Mortal Kombat franchise, incorporating comparable control schemes and signature fatalities. A notable innovation is the "3D" button, which allows characters to maneuver into the background or foreground of the arena for tactical offensive and defensive maneuvers. The camera dynamically orbits while preserving the classic left/right fighting plane, ensuring fluid two-player arcade matches. Visuals employed Midway's "digital skin" technique, which involved applying photographic textures onto three-dimensional character models.

War Gods garnered mixed critical reception, with particular scrutiny directed at its character aesthetics and animation fluidity.

Gameplay

War Gods presents a 3D fighting experience with control mechanics reminiscent of titles like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. It offers a story mode playable solo or cooperatively; on the Nintendo 64, engaging two-player mode requires connecting a second controller during character selection. The plot revolves around ten humans transformed into potent entities after encountering shards of a crashed alien ore. These deities vie to assemble all fragments, with malevolent forces determined to seize ultimate power and benevolent factions striving to thwart Exor’s plans and safeguard Earth. The climactic battles involve extraterrestrials Grox and Exor, who pursue the War Gods for a lost transporter device. Each stage reflects the fighter’s background, featuring settings such as military installations, pyramids, temples, and woodland environments.

The gameplay closely parallels Mortal Kombat 4, employing similar high and low punch and kick inputs. Instead of a traditional "Run" button, the game introduces a "3D" button that facilitates attacks and evasive actions into the arena’s depth planes. To prevent excessive spacing between opponents, each character possesses a teleportation move to rapidly close distances. Players choose fighters to sequentially confront adversaries. The game includes combo sequences and fatalities as finishing techniques. Besides one unique fatality per character, there are three additional finishing options: ten-hit combo chains, stage ring-outs triggered by combining a high kick with the 3D button, and uppercut moves that send opponents airborne.

Development

As Midway’s inaugural 3D software project preceding Mortal Kombat 4, War Gods was developed under the leadership of Joe Linhoff and George Petro. The arcade iteration integrated hardware from Cruis'n USA alongside a hard drive for data management. All character moves were captured through motion capture performed by two actors. Characters were designed using "digital skin" technology, which digitized photographs of live performers to texture 3D models.

In August 1995, Gamefan reported that War Gods would run on the same hardware as Killer Instinct and debut at Amusement Expo International in September 1995; however, its actual unveiling occurred only in March 1996. After receiving gameplay feedback, several months were dedicated to refining programming, resulting in the arcade release being postponed until Q3 1996.

The Nintendo 64 edition experienced delays aimed at lowering difficulty levels and incorporating additional moves. A Panasonic M2 version was initially planned as a launch title but was ultimately canceled following the system’s discontinuation.

Reception

The reaction to War Gods was generally tepid. Reviewers from GameFan and IGN acknowledged that the N64 adaptation addressed several problems present in the arcade original, including improvements to AI behavior and frame rate; however, GameFan viewed these enhancements as a questionable allocation of effort. A significant point of criticism focused on the character aesthetics. According to Computer and Video Games, attendees at the 1996 American Coin Machine Exposition expressed concerns that the character designs could negatively impact the game’s commercial viability. Matt Casamassina of IGN described the designs as "uninspired", while Next Generation disparaged them as resembling "mildly embarrassing Ringling Brothers' character design". In contrast, Game Revolution commended the diversity of characters and found the designs to be "pretty cool".

Opinions on the graphics were divided. While Computer and Video Games complimented the "digital skin" visual effect, Next Generation recognized this technique’s novelty but criticized the characters for appearing jagged and rigid when compared to contemporaneous titles such as Tekken 2 and Virtua Fighter 2. Jeff Gerstmann from GameSpot noted that the N64 version demonstrated some degree of system capability, yet most critics pointed out issues like uneven animation, inconsistent frame rates, lack of detail, and noticeable slowdown. Casamassina remarked that although the digital skin effect initially attracted attention, it was ultimately undermined by subpar animation quality and uninspired character design.

Feedback on controls was mixed as well. IGN regarded them as adequate but not exceptional, whereas GamePro commented that the novel 3D button feature contributed little and was often confused with the low guard function on the N64 controller. Several reviewers, including E. Storm from GameFan, criticized both control responsiveness and their compatibility with the N64 gamepad. Only Next Generation maintained that controls were more user-friendly on the N64 than in arcade versions. The AI in the N64 release also received criticism for being unbalanced; Casamassina observed that opponents executed moves flawlessly even at easy difficulty levels.

Gameplay was frequently compared to the Mortal Kombat franchise by reviewers. Gerstmann described it as having a familiar MK vibe, calling it "an interesting footnote to the MK legacy." A writer from Next Generation referred to it as a "next step" in Midway’s MK lineage, though not officially part of the series, but subsequently criticized its excessive similarity in move sets. Sushi-X of Electronic Gaming Monthly labeled it "horribly unoriginal" due to these parallels. Additionally, EGM awarded it the 1997 title of "Game That Should've Stayed in the Arcades," highlighting that its average arcade quality failed to translate successfully to home consoles.

Both Next Generation and Crispin Boyer from EGM recognized enhancements in the N64 port compared to its arcade counterpart—such as faster gameplay, improved anti-aliasing, and rebalanced boss encounters—but concluded these upgrades were insufficient to significantly raise its overall quality. Meanwhile, GamePro judged it inferior to leading fighting games available on Saturn and PlayStation, as well as less impressive than mid-tier N64 fighters like Killer Instinct Gold and Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

From a commercial standpoint, War Gods did not perform well in arcades, primarily because of limited distribution combined with negative word-of-mouth publicity.

See also

• Bio F.R.E.A.K.S.
• Mace: The Dark Age
• Mortal Kombat 4

External links

• War Gods on the Eurocom website