Pushing The Limits: The Last Blade 2

How can a 2D fighter stand out in a world of 3D games? Simple – by pushing ageing hardware to extremes

Nick loves a good fighter, and he loves a technically impressive one even more

One of the crucial components in pushing a system’s limits is time. Every worthwhile piece of gaming hardware is designed with capacity to accommodate the growing ambitions of developers, and once the best tricks are learned and the barriers of the past are removed, the possibilities can be quite amazing. The Neo Geo was blessed with a long life, and it shows – sometimes, it’s hard to believe that Fatal Fury is running on the same hardware as an amazing game like The Last Blade 2.

SNK’S second entry in the weapons-based fighting series featured all of the same elements that made the first game great – game design shaped by years of exploration within the genre, and a 19th century theme that influenced the visuals and soundtrack. The game simply delivered more of it, using an extra 80 megabits of ROM capacity to introduce additional characters, an even more eye-catching introduction sequence, and a new set of backgrounds and music.

While The Last Blade 2 doesn’t break any of the

Neo Geo’s theoretical limits (except for cartridge size, which its predecessor also did), the game shows the system’s capabilities being used to their fullest in every respect. The classical-inspired music is as good a demonstration of the Neo Geo’s digital sound hardware as you’ll find, the animation is amongst the best on the system, and the background detail is superb. The game even uses the sprite scaling capabilities of the hardware, which weren’t often employed by the system’s later games.

Thanks to the fact that it’s fairly widely available, The Last Blade 2 sells for pretty reasonable prices. Neo Geo cartridge versions are, of course, very expensive, but the game was also the penultimate Neo Geo CD release. Although it suffers from the system’s notorious loading, it features an extra character, voiced cutscenes, a gallery mode and a quiz minigame, and will set you back £30 to £70. The Dreamcast conversion has a hanafuda card game instead of the quiz (but only in the Japanese version), and runs between £20 and £40. The arcade game was released in a double pack with the original for PS2, and also sells for £20 to £40. The game is also available digitally on all current platforms.