A look back at all the fighters in Eternal Champions

The ‘90s were a great time to be a fighting game fan.

That statement might get thrown around more than a dollar store Hadoken these days, considering the time period was the golden age of fighters, but it’s true. Following the staggering success of 1991’s Street Fighter II and 1992’s Mortal Kombat, there was an absolute outpouring of fighting games looking to replicate the heavy hitters’ success. While some imitators forged their own identity and stood the test of time, countless others were forgotten.

1993’s Eternal Champions, Sega’s answer to the fighting game craze, developed exclusively for the Sega Genesis is a fighting game which fell somewhere in the middle. It’s not exactly well-known in the present but back in the day it sold nearly as many copies on the Genesis as Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat 2 — over 1.6 million copies. (It’s also getting a live-action movie from Skydance, the producers of Top Gun: Maverick and Jack Reacher.) At first glance, it looks like a mix between those two formative games with the hand-drawn, animated characters of the former and the darker ambiance — blood, guts and fatalities (called “Overkills” here) – of the latter.

What set Eternal Champions apart from other fighting games at the time, was its premise: an all-powerful entity resurrects a number of deadly and important figures throughout time who were unjustly murdered to literally fight for their lives – or more accurately, fight to come back to life. Many of the backstories implemented real life historical events, such as the Boxing Rebellion of early 1900s China and the Salem Witch Trials in colonial Massachusetts, which gave them a sense of gravitas – to ten-year-old me especially – that the other fighting games lacked.

The following is a look back at all the fighters in Eternal Champions.

Trident

My personal favorite fighter in Eternal Champions was Trident, a menacing-looking merman gladiator with green, alligator-scaled skin, golden plate armor and of course, an enormous trident for a hand.

According to his backstory, Trident lost his real hand in a battle with a shark, which – on top of being a green-skinned, merman gladiator – instantly endeared him to ten-year-old me as a consummate bad-ass. He was also the chosen champion of Atlantis, serving as the city’s protector from the Roman Empire in 110 BC before invading Roman forces eventually sank Atlantis into the sea.

Trident’s fighting-style was capoeira-based, with fluid, dance-like footwork and whirling roundhouse kicks to accompany his skewering trident and fireball attacks.

In addition, Trident also had a number of unique, preternatural attacks which linked to his Atlantean merman side, like a teleport move where he’d transmute into an ocean wave, spray into the ground and then reappear on the opposite side of the screen and different colored force fields which could stun the opponent (green mist), repel them (yellow mist), weaken their attacks (red mist) and one which slowed their attacks and movement like they were moving underwater (blue mist).

It’s easy to see why Trident was a clear-cut favorite fighter in Eternal Champions, considering he was stacked with an intriguing look, moveset and backstory.

Jetta Maxx

At first glance, Jetta Maxx looks like Sega simply checking off the “attractive, acrobatic, agile blonde woman” check box, a seeming prerequisite for ‘90s fighting games.

And even though it’s a trope that has endured to the present day, evident in characters like Mortal Kombat’s Sonya Blade, Fatal Fury’s Blue Mary and Street Fighter’s Cammy White, Jetta is an interesting take in that she was a Russian aristocrat, revolutionary, undercover acrobat and a practitioner of Pencak Silat and savate. Pretty impressive resume if you ask me.

Jetta’s story takes place in China of the late 1800s/early 1900s during the Boxer Rebellion, which was a reactionary revolt against foreign imperialism started by a group called the “Boxers,” or Yihequan (Righteous and Harmonious Fists). It’s a period of history I probably would have never remembered otherwise, so I have Eternal Champions to thank for fomenting an interest in world history at such a young age in addition to an exposure to extreme, digitized violence.

Take that, ‘90s politicians.

Xavier Pendragon

Eternal Champions is a pretty tragic game, considering every playable character in it was unceremoniously killed but among all these tragic figures, Xavier Pendragon’s story strikes me as perhaps the most tragic.

Xavier is a failed blacksmith who turns to alchemy, falling into the age-old pursuit of converting base metals into gold. He failed this endeavor too, but inadvertently stumbled upon a source of cheap, clean-burning energy. Xavier’s finding should have been deemed one of the most important scientific discoveries of all-time and made both he and his hometown acclaimed, honored and forever etched in history.

If only it weren’t 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. Instead, Xavier’s findings had him burned at the stake as a warlock during the Salem Witch Trials.

The silver lining of Xavier’s woeful existence is that the scientific discovery he was murdered for also gave him magical powers.

And he’s one of the more enchantingly designed fighters in Eternal Champions. He wears blue, becowled wizard robes. He has glowing green eyes. He wields a wizard staff that ties into his Hapkido cane fighting style. He can conjure dimensional portals, stick his cane into them and whack people from the other side of the screen. He can temporarily transmute his opponent into gold and reflect attacks with his cane.

All in all, Xavier is an essential fighter in Eternal Champions and one of my favorites alongside Trident.

Shadow Yamoto

Eternal Champions can be commended for many things but creatively named fighters isn’t one of them. Case in point: Shadow.

Shadow’s name certainly fits the character, a Japanese ninja assassin for the mysterious Black Orchid Corporation. Unfortunately, the cliched name extends to her wardrobe, which consists of a domino mask, thigh-high boots, and a lacy lingerie and pantyhose set that’d make an Agent Provocateur model and Kitana from Mortal Kombat 2 blush. The ‘90s were a wild time.

Much like Kitana, Shadow utilized serrated fans as weapons, along with a knife, shuriken and a bomb. She could also enter “shadow form,” which would grant her invulnerability for five seconds.

Slash

Another unfortunately named fighter in Eternal Champions is Slash, the prehistoric hunter from an ancient tribe in 699 BC whose fighting style, described in the instruction manual as “Pain,” consists of headbutting, stomping and beating enemies’ skulls in with his enormous, spiked club.

With a name like Slash, you might think that the pain-inflicting caveman met his demise as a result of the others in his tribe ostracizing him because of his overaggressiveness but the inverse is true: the elders of his tribe, likely jealous that Slash was the greatest hunter and fighter of his generation, who used an emergent “intelligence in his fighting, which meant he could out-think most of his opponents.”

According to his in-game character bio, “The cave elders resented Slash for his intelligence, and rejected his every idea, including an agricultural plan which would have freed the clan from its enslavement to a life of drudgery as hunter-gatherers. The elders turned down this idea at once as they saw no value in having free time and enjoyed the violence of the hunt.”

Being a smart caveman/neanderthal/troglodytic-looking primitive human doesn’t preclude Slash from being an absolute savage in terms of fighting ability in-game. He might be the most intimidating character in terms of looks, like some cross between Blanka from Street Fighter and Grug Crood.

R.A.X

What’s a man named Coswell, the best Muay Thai kickboxer in the United States to do in the year 2345 when he finally concedes to the fact that professional kickboxing has been overtaken by cyborgs and other similarly cybernetically-enhanced pugilists?

Become a coach for fighting robots like Hugh Jackman in Real Steel?

Hook himself up to some insanely advanced, futuristic neural interface from the year 2345 and partake in virtual reality kickboxing?

Find a new career?

No. Coswell figures if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. He does what any one of us would decide to do in the same situation: get cybernetic enhancements himself.

The pros of the situation? Coswell will now be known as R.A.X. (Robotic Artificial eXoskeleton) Coswell.

The cons? Coswell will now be known as R.A.X. (Robotic Artificial eXoskeleton) Coswell.

Also, the fight promoter who is helping to found Coswell’s cybernetic upgrades is a shady mfer and ends up being the reason R.A.X. is killed during a championship match. According to the game’s bio for R.A.X.:

R.A.X. didn’t trust this promoter, but needed his financial support to afford the cybernetic implant operation. After the operation, R.A.X. rose through the ranks and won the right to take on the champion. He was killed as a result of the corrupt fight promoter trading R.A.X.’s life for a sure bet on the championship fight.

The promoter used an advanced electronic virus planted in R.A.X’s cybernetic brain during the implant operation to shut down all of his vital systems. This shutdown was seconds before he was about to deliver the fatal blow to the reigning champion

Surely nobody could have seen that coming.

All joking aside, I have no idea what competitive sports will be like in the year 2345, but I sure hope it’s not anything like what R.A.X. had to deal with.

That being said, R.A.X. is a pretty solid character, reminding me of a mix of Street Fighter’s Sagat and DC Comics’ Cyborg. He has a number of fun kickboxing moves that are bolstered by his cybernetics that look cool on screen, like jet-pack boosted jumping knees and uppercuts and a move where he pounds the ground and emits an electrical shockwave.

Larcen

Larcen is a 1920s Chicago mobster cat burglar who practices Praying Mantis Kung Fu. And refuses to kill. How did he not end up more famous than Al Capone and John Dillinger combined?

Unfortunately, we’ll never know just how notorious Larcen would’ve been because his own mob boss sets him up in a destined-to-fail hospital bomb gig.

Despite being fueled by the fervor of the dozens of fans who saw Bruce Willis’ underperforming Hudson Hawk in theaters in 1991 (I don’t care what anyone says, the movie will always be my guilty pleasure), Larcen’s cat-burglar motif might still have seemed too blase for a fighting game – but it’s actually one of the most fun. Larcen sports a fedora, trench coat, brass knuckles, steel-spiked dress shoes and can both swing around with and trip up opponents with a grappling hook.

Perhaps the most memorable thing about Larcen was his Overkill — the stage-interactive fatalities in Eternal Champions — which was stone cold ruthless. It depicted a group of mobsters spraying the downed enemy with Tommy Guns drive-by style, presumably laughing like Johnny, the mobster character from Home Alone‘s “Angels with Filthy Souls” the entire time.

Blade

When it comes to tragic backstories in Eternal Champions, Jonathan Blade’s is right up there with Xavier Pendragon’s on the scale of woe.

Not to be confused with Blade the Vampire Hunter, Blade the Bounty Hunter is a former super cop from the year 2030 AD whose temper – which leads to him nearly beating a dangerous suspect to death – ends up getting him fired from the New Chicago police department.

He returns to his homeland, Syria, where his skill in bounty hunting lands him one of the biggest bounties ever: stopping a mad scientist from smashing a vial containing a virus that would “kill 95% of all human life.”

Blade succeeds in his mission of course, but not before the Syrian government, who was tracking him the entire time after telling him they wouldn’t interfere, interferes, and f—- the mission up, laser-gunning down Blade in a nefarious double-cross that ends up smashing the vial anyways and releasing the virus to the world.

I’m no scientist, but something tells me that your chances for being the 5% of human life that survives the most deadly virus ever severely diminishes if you’re right there at the source of the outbreak, Syrian government of 2030 AD.

What makes Blade’s story even more tragic is what he chooses to do if you beat the game with him: he goes back to the scene of the bounty and saves the life of the rogue scientist, ensuring that the vial doesn’t break. That’s particularly impressive character growth for a fighting game character whose defining characteristic up until this point has been wanting to brutally murder adversary he comes up against.

Blade is an absolute unit. He towers over the other characters and is built like a tank. Although he’s wearing black sunglasses, in-game they look like a visor; combined with his green jumpsuit that looks like a Starfleet crew member’s uniform and crew cut hairstyle, it gives Blade the appearance of a roided-out Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

In addition to having one of the most memorable-looking moves in the game, a leaping dropkick where his feet move so fast they look like a blurry, green energy harpoon on the way down, Blade also has an E. Hondian hundred-hand slap, blades which extend from his hands, an auto-attacking tracking blade and a clever move which temporarily disables his enemy from using projectile attacks.

Midknight

Another character whose backstory deals with deadly viruses in Eternal Champions is Midknight. Unlike previous entry Blade, Midknight isn’t trying to stop the deadly viruses: he makes them.

Formerly a biochemist and CIA agent on loan from Interpol, Mitchell Midleton Knight created a virus that would have ended the Vietnam War. The virus was intended to be implanted into the Vietnamese water supply, but Knight refused to do so.

He fled with the virus, ensuing in a chase that ended with Knight being cornered by both the CIA and Interpol at an airport. Knight ends up falling from a nine-story building and into a vat of chemicals in an airport storage facility. With the virus. Instead of immediately disintegrating him or turning him into a microbial broth, falling into the vat of chemicals turns him into Batman’s arch-nemesis, the Joker. Wait, wrong story. Knight turns into Midknight, a living vampire.

Midknight has one of the more impressive character designs in Eternal Champions. He looks like a zombified vampire, with glowing red eyes, fangs and pieces of partially exposed anatomy, most glaringly his rib cage and feet and finger bones, the latter of which more closely resemble talons in their exposed state.

He’s got some cool specials too, like hypnotic eye beams, transforming into a giant wolf, using his vampiric powers of levitation to slam his opponent’s head into the ceiling.

Character photos courtesy of Giant Bomb.

What did you think of our look back at all the fighters in Eternal Champions? Which fighter from Eternal Champions is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

Check out our retro category for a look back at more classic games from the past.