Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi

In the wake of 2017's The Last Jedi, there arose among devotees of the series a grassroots internet movement to ban the film from the Star Wars canon. Efforts of these noble neckbeards aside, the movie still does the Star Wars universe justice, furthering (and finishing) a few vital character arcs. Thus, The Last Jedi must be respected. There are, however, several Star Wars offerings that do not further any arc or furnish any sort of earnest entertainment, and as such do not deserve respect. If anything, they deserve to be stricken from any and all canons to which they may pertain. One is the notorious Life Day special, which can only be enjoyed by those in whom the force of irony is particularly strong. Another is Masters of Teräs Käsi for PlayStation, which can't be enjoyed by anyone of sound mind.

A pivotal element of this blog's journalistic philosophy is what your correspondent lovingly likes to think of as "turd-polishing"—that is, taking a game widely considered bad and then showing the reader perspectives from which it might in some sense be appreciated. That approach is not foolproof, though, largely on account of games like Masters of Teräs Käsi. Teräs Käsi is the worst Star Wars video game of all time, and it also ranks among the most terrible fighting games of its none-too-hallowed era.

The thought of a Star Wars fighting game sounds intriguing, no? In the mid- to late-90s, generic fighting games were a dime a dozen, and so you might assume that a game benefitting from a Star Wars license would, if nothing else, stand out. After all, most fighting games, no matter their era, are at least somewhat playable by virtue of their simple, Manichean objectives and manageably-sized environs. Apparently, the bona fide marketing mavens at LucasArts intuited as much, and so they shoehorned Star Wars into the tournament fighting milieu by inventing an ancient martial art known as “Teräs Käsi.” In playing the game, however, the distinguishing principles of Teräs Käsi are unclear, as the move-sets are so boilerplate that you can easily convince yourself you're playing any other uninspired fighting game of the era. In effect, the Star Wars license only makes Teräs Käsi’s fundamental lack of imagination that much more obvious.

Masters of Teräs Käsi’s graphics are not atrocious, but beyond the visuals, key canonical cues are unconvincingly executed. Star Wars games—and the movies, for that matter—succeed principally on how well they deliver the basal sensory aggregates of the series: that is, the sounds and images that have come to condition the average fan’s experience of the brand. The Last Jedi had these crucial perceptual adjuncts, as did the unequivocal stinker that was the Phantom Menace. After the usual horn-blaring clarion call-to-prayer and the familiar yellow text crawling up the screen, though, Masters of Teräs Käsi does little to reassure the player that they are participating in the larger Star Wars cosmos. Sure, we see an AT-AT in the background of one stage, but where are the squalls from its massive leg joints? And sure, Boba Fett's roguish Kiwi accent is sufficiently muffled by his helmet, but it's hard to persuade yourself you're playing as the galaxy's most bad-ass bounty hunter when you fire up his jetpack only to fly straight out of the ring and then lose via ring-out.

Beating Teräs Käsi is no simple feat, and it's hard to make much progress through the various stages even on the easiest setting. It's one of those games where you find yourself asking: is it really that challenging or is the control just that bad? But even in terms of difficulty there are inconsistencies. If you play as Chewbacca, for instance, whose rangy limbs afford him excellent reach, you can beat opponents by pretty much just spamming kicks. Even Darth Vader, light saber and all, eventually falls to the mighty front-kicks from Chewie's long, hirsute dancer's legs. Evidently, the lost art of Teräs Käsi is built on a foundation of cheap, repetitive kicking.

Only the most hardcore Star Wars packrats should consider picking up Masters of Teräs Käsi—we're talking people who meet the DSM-V's diagnostic criteria for hoarding. This unpolishable turd will surely match the overall decor of the cluttered, festering hovels in which such people dwell. If you absolutely must play a Star Wars fighting game, check out Star Gladiator for PS1. It's a Capcom 3D-fighter that rips off Star Wars so shamelessly it's almost artful, featuring an obvious Wookiee-styled space Sasquatch and even a Darth Vader lookalike as the final boss. And if using the real Darth Vader and Yoda to kick the midi-chlorians out of Soul Calibur characters is fighting enough for you, then fire up Soul Calibur 4. Now if only we could kick the midi-chlorians out of the actual Star Wars canon...