The mysterious Miss X has invited the worlds' most skilled female fighters to a figting tournament. The prize for winning? A Talisman that grants the bearer a single wish. Who could resist a prize like that? Certainly not the Gals of SNK!
Gals Fighters features the most popular girls from all of SNK's fighting games. Mai Shiranui from King of Fighters and Fatal Fury, Yuri Sakazaki from K.O.F and Art of Fighting, Leona from K.O.F, Athena Asamiya from K.O.F, Nakoruru from Samurai Showdown, Shelmy from K.O.F, Shiki from Samurai Showdown and finally Akari Ichijo from Last Blade. There are also three hidden characters, but you have to find those yourself.
As the title suggests Gals Fighters is a fighting game. You take your chosen lady through several rounds of pugilism before facing the peculiar yet familiar looking Miss X. Its standard fighting fair, punches kicks and special moves. The characters retain most of their special moves from their respective games. Each character has a new move or two just to make things slightly more interesting. New to Gals Fighters is the Gal Gauge, which is basically a super metre. You can build up to 3 Gal Gauges per match and once built up, you can use them to launch a devastating super special move. Each character has at least 2 and also something called "Pretty Burst" which is unique to each character and has differing effects, some are attacks whilst others are defensive. Upon winning matches you are awarded items that allow you special abilities for subsequent matches, these take the form of phtos of SNK characters, and girlie accessories (how lame!).That's the unique features over with, other than that its standard fighting again.
Gals Fighters features the normal Super Deformed cutesy look of Neo Geo pocket fighting games. The graphics are good. They are obviously cute and, as we have come to expect, superbly animated. In its favour the graphics are super smooth, smoother than any game seen so far but unfortunately the backgrounds are poor. They lack detail and are poor when compared to other fighting games, especially the benchmark, Match of the Millennium. But that's the only real downfall. To make up for the poor backgrounds when you finish off an opponent you get several excellent pictures of your opponent with some of their associated characters.
Aurally the game is satisfactory but isn't it about time that we had some speech in a fighting game? It would definitely add to the cutesy atmosphere and give the girls more character.
Gals fighters is a good game. It's a little simpler to play than most fighters and the characters are well chosen and look good. Unfortunately it comes AFTER Match of the Millennium. This means if you don't have either there is no choice. Match of the Millennium is so good you can't afford to pass it by. And that's the only real thing wrong with Gals Fighters, there's a better alternative, even if you do own MotM, do you really need another fighter? Well speaking as a fighting game fan, you can NEVER really have too many fighting games and Gals Fighters is worth a look, the new moves and general wacky approach to fighting actually makes it quite refreshing. But if you are a casual fighting game player, there really isn't a choice, Match of the Millennium is the only fighting game you'll ever need. But for those of you who have beat MotM and are looking for a new fighter, you could do a lot worse than get Gals Fighters. Its wicked.
-Bradders
