Deadly Arts

It's easy to pass off Konami's 1998 release Deadly Arts (referred to in Japan and Europe by the more convoluted title G.A.S.P!! Fighters' NEXTream) as just another lackluster N64 3D fighting game, to be filed away in the dustbin of gaming history with forgotten titles like Dual Heroes, Dark Rift, Flying Dragon, and many, many more. Indeed, in terms of game play, Deadly Arts does little to stand out, and suffers from the same floaty controls that plagued many of the aforementioned titles. Deadly Arts does, however, distinguish itself by way of its aesthetic. It is, for instance, very Japanese, which is perhaps best indexed by the fact that its default female create-a-character is a school girl.

This create-a-character mode was truly revolutionary for a fighting game made in 1998, and it singlehandedly prevents the retro gamer from giving Deadly Arts a summary dismissal. Even at present, create-a-character modes are few and far between in fighting games, and compared to those found in later versus brawlers, Deadly Arts' costuming options are not lacking. Although the much-vaunted Fighter Maker (1999) is far more robust in terms of maneuvers (and the ability to animate moves), there is no customization of the character models themselves. In 2006's Mortal Kombat Armageddon, most of the costumes and parts thereof have to be unlocked. This is not the case in Deadly Arts, as all apparel is available from the outset. Relative to create-a-character modes in other genres—RPGs and wrestling games, to name a few—the outfit options are limited, but there's still enough to forge a copacetic character. I was able to quickly fashion a sassy dominatrix with a pert black-licorice bob-cut and alabaster skin who looked like she could kick some serious ass, and sexily at that. Her ass-kicking capabilities were much easier imagined than actualized, though, as one has to slog through an inordinate number of tedious tilts in order to earn moves for a newly-minted character. Due to the created character's initially limited moveset, Deadly Arts proves to be more enjoyable with non-created characters—and by "more enjoyable" I mean as fun as any other cookie-cutter N64 3D fighter.

Deadly Arts also deserves some praise for its presentation, which adequately speaks to the "art" referenced in its title. The game manages to capture an urban, punky sensibility due in large part to its youthful, rave-ready characters who, on the whole, give off a bit of a Fighting Vipers vibe. While the graphics aren't anything to rave about, Deadly Arts manages to set its scenes swimmingly with some nifty backgrounds: apart from the inner cityscapes of brick and graffiti, we get pastoral countryside as well, with one stage depicting snow falling among bamboo shoots in proximity to a Shinto temple gate. Characters can interact with these backgrounds, and an adroit suplex can cause cages to fall and brick walls to collapse. All of this is captured from astute, adaptive camera angles that shift with the action, for the most part non-annoyingly. The piece-de-resistance of the Deadly Arts atmosphere is the soundtrack, with dance, dubstep and breakbeat offerings sizzling on spider legs throughout the action, turning the combat into a rough and rivalrous sort of dance. The music brims with percussive tintinnabulations, thorough and well-wrought, with even the venerable, ubiquitous break from the Winstons' "Amen Brother" garnering a cursory interpolation in one of the mixes.

Alas, an enduring soundtrack is not enough to save a mediocre game. Aside from its soundscape and its creation mode, Deadly Arts has little to offer beyond any other N64 versus fighter. For the old-school gamer desperate to create-a-fighter, playing through Mortal Kombat Armageddon is a much better use of time. And if time isn't an issue, then making the painstaking efforts to actually animate moves frame-by-frame in Fighter Maker is a far more satisfying endeavor than blindly learning them in Deadly Arts.