Fighter's History (Arcade)

Fighter's History
Developer: Data East Publisher: Data East Platform: Arcade (Data East 32-bit ARM hardware) Released in JP: March 1993 Released in US: October 1993 Released in EU: 1993 Released in AU: 1993 Released in AS: 1993 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused sounds.

Fighter's History is Data East's first attempt to hop on fighting games trend of early 90's. This game is infamously known for being sued by Capcom, accusing it in plagiarism of Street Fighter II. However, Data East won the lawsuit on grounds that the copied elements like mechanics, 6-button layout and character archetypes were a standard for the genre and cannot be copyrighted. And after that the game received a sequel one year later, Fighter's History Dynamite, which was a major improvement over the original and got a niche cult following over the years.

FH unfortunately suffers from several core gameplay bugs, oversights and lack of polish. Alongside many unused assets, minor and major ones, it is highly implying that it had troubled development cycle and was released in unfinished state.

To do: Sound test contains many unused character voiceclips. Plenty of unused graphics.

Unused Audio

Track 75 in the sound test is an unused announcer clip of "JOKER!", very likely to be the early name of boss Clown - Which may just as likely explain why he is the only character without one in the final. The change of name was probably a very late decision, so they couldn't have had time to swap in a new clip. This does eventually get rectified for the SNES version.

Unused Graphics

Character sprites

What appears to be a boss like character. It's possible this may have been the final boss before Karnov was chosen, or the game had more than two bosses. Setting address 01005E4 to 0D reveals a rather buggy and unplayable character. However, the palette of this character appears to match up with these unused sprites. These are the only existing sprites left in the data, so the decision to not use this character must have been rather early in development.

Game's tileset also contains four frames of an unused character that remarkably looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800. Much like the rest of the cast, one of his body parts seems to have been designed to be removed after taking damage, namely his undamaged head. The character's palette hasn't been properly found yet, although the address 01005E4 0E seems to give the correct colors for his shades of black (i. e. jacket, pants, robotic parts and sunglasses).

(Source: https://twitter.com/Leot_buddy/status/1407426359153070084)

Stage sprites

Presumably early versions of background punks from Matlok's stage.

Special moves sprites

Early version of Samchay's fireball.

These are sprites of Mizoguchi's Screaming Tiger Bazooka projectile, a special move he only got in a sequel, Fighter's History Dynamite (aka Karnov's Revenge). The fact that it's sprites exist in the original game implies that this special move was planned to be in the game, but got axed for one reason or another.

Miscellaneous sprites

Near the end of the graphics data game contains sprites that depicts the entire cast as chibis, alongside weird Karnov cat. Every other game in a series also have chibi characters, which they use in staff roll or 1 coin clear screen. However, arcade Fighter's History doesn't have either of, unless there is a staff roll hidden within game's code? Either way, these chibi sprites can't be seen in normal gameplay.

A minor detail about Feilin's and Jean's chibi sprites is that their weak spots are made as separate sprites that are layered over characters. This allows weak spots to have their own color palettes and not be restricted by characters' main palettes.