[ecm name=’snes-world-heroes’]

World Heroes (ワールドヒーローズ) is a 1992 fighting arcade game developed and published by Alpha Denshi (later known as ADK) with the assistance of SNK. It was originally released for the Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinet on July 28, 1992. It is ADK’s first game in the fighting game genre, as well as their earliest attempt in the fighting game trend of the ’90s that was popularized by Capcom’s 1991 arcade-hit Street Fighter II. It was even the last game with the “Alpha” logo labeled within the game before the developer became “ADK”; however, the “Alpha” logo was last used on one of the arcade flyers of its sequel.

Due to its success in the market, World Heroes was followed by a sequel released less than a year later titled World Heroes 2.

World Heroes is controlled with three of the four buttons (“A” to punch, “B” to kick and “C” to throw) used along with an 8-way joystick on the Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinet. The punches and kicks have two levels, weak and strong. In order to get each strength with just two buttons, the punch and kick buttons have to be pressed briefly for weak and longer for strong. This same mechanic even can be performed with special moves. The throw button C, if close enough to the opponent, grabs and throws the opponent across the stage; however, if holding the joystick in the opposite direction at the right time, the opponent would be tossed the opposite direction. Introduced in the fighting game genre by World Heroes are some abilities exclusive to some characters that were used in several later fighting games, such as multi-jumping using Hanzou and Fuuma, and shooting projectiles from the air using Rasputin.