Deadly Sport: My observations on an unreleased fighting game

So yeah, figured I'd start my blogery off with my observations on a game that has yet to see the light of day yet interests me beyond the lines of sanity.

In 1993 a sub company of Sammy (known for Guilty Gear) called Scarab developed the "MK rip off" called Survival Arts. Sure it wasn't the best game ever, but despite what you hear morons say about it on the internet it's actually pretty decent.

Well the game wasn't much of a success from what I could gather. It was gonna be ported to the Genesis but that never happened for possibly a number of reasons. In any case Scarab seemed to be working on a follow up to the game that would be released the next year. However it never got passed anything beyond a prototype cabinet. Originally titled Street Brawl (probably changed to kill confusion with that other more well known fighting game series), it was renamed Deadly Sport, and well.....that's it. That's all I got and that's all that seems to be out there for the moment.

So why am I doing this? Well I'd figure that my observations on what little I can find of this game online are better than nothing, and amazingly there are quite a few screens floating around of this game. Notably, a flier of the game was sold on Yahoo Auctions a while back, and scanned/uploaded to The Arcade Flyer Archive:

I'll be using the images on the back of the flyer as well as some other images I have gathered from various sites to present my observations. Also, as a side note, I wish I could read Japanese so I can see what is being said on the back of the flyer, it would give me a better idea of things and probably clear up a lot of these pseudo theories.

Right, let's look at our characters:

This fellow here is named Braxton. Judging by how prominent he is on the front of the flyer, I'm gonna go on a hunch and say he would have been the main protagonist of the game. His special attacks are a blue fireball of sorts:

And....whatever this is:

Those that are quick to judge may say that's clearly him doing a flash kick styled move, but if you look closely it appears that he isn't kicking......hmmm.... At any rate as you can see his stage is on a Air Force Base.

Next we have this fellow named E.Halkon. The wrestler of the group (maybe the Face equivalent of Santana from Survival Arts?) his stage is a wrestling ring during a cage match.

Now I honestly can't say what he's doing here. I'm guessing (since that's him on the right there) that it's a grapple move of sorts. Should point out this is the only image of one of his attacks I can find.

Next up is Sheena, who honestly makes me think of someone from Hokuto No Ken or even The Road Warrior with that outfit of hers. Her stage is some kind of dance/rave thing from what I can see.

Here is also the only pic of one of her attacks, not much to say here except that it reminds me of Jax's projectile from Mortal Kombat 2. Next.

Meet Olaf, the viking. His stage is high in the mountains. He also sports what is possibly the best fake beard I've seen in a digitized fighter.

His special involves an axe in some way. Also once again, only pic of a attack of sorts.

Next up, Thunder Cloud ( in pictures his name is T.Cloud so just do the math). While you could make an argument that he was "inspired" by T. Hawk from Super Street Fighter II (that was released in 93, this would have been released in 94), you cannot say that he's "inspired" by Nightwolf, since MK III wouldn't be out until a year later from this one.

Yet again this appears to be the only pic of a special I could find. It's pretty self explanatory. His stage is in the forest........somewhere.

Next up from our cast is this juggalo reject named Jester. Being a clown, his stage is some creepy fucking circus.

Like Braxton, he has two pictures showing special attacks. One where he shoots a stream of flame from his mouth:

The other being on the back of the flyer (like most of the other pics) which shows him doing a downward kick of sorts:

Nifty.

  

Our next fighter is named How Wong. His stage appears to be some event in China. Though the presence of soldiers makes me wonder a bit.

The two specials shown for him are a lighting blast of some sort:

 

And.........whatever this is:

The pic isn't clear enough for me to make out honestly. Is he waving a stick at his opponent? Why does it look like the opponent is holding one too? Would the game have had a weapons system like Survival Arts? (Probably not since the other pics don't show that)

This fellow with his Koldan The Conqueror-esque blade hands is named Kanunga. And judging from how his eyes look in the pic, he really hates being in that costume. I feel for ya buddy.

Strangely, where as everyone else has accompanying stages in their pictures, Kanunga has none....or at least one that appears to fit him. He is pictured in some mansion with tons of armor and weapons so maybe that was it?

Also, it appears that no pic featuring him shows off any of his special attacks at all. Only this:

This image here (a similar one is on the back of the flyer) shows him deflecting Braxton's projectile attack. Maybe that was his special attack of sorts? The flyer makes it a point to show this off however, so maybe it was universal for everyone?

The last guy for the life of me, I can't seem to figure out his name:

He's also wearing the oddest cobbling up of costumes ever. Let's see, a cloth "helmet" that looks like it would offer zero protection from any kind of attack, a belt buckle that looks lifted from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Gloves that look like they were taken from a space man outfit, a tie, a shirt that has plenty of pockets, and a GUN. As dorky as he looks he's my personal favorite of the cast. I just can't figure his name for him. I'm guessing from the bad quality pics that his name is Lugger, so that's what I'm sticking with.

 

Well being a Knight (I guess he's supposed to be a knight despite the rushed costume) he uses a sword (you have to look real close, but it's there in the pic above). His stage appears to be.........Huh. I can't figure out where that's supposed to be actually. I let you guess.

Lastly there's this shadowy figure:

OH MY GOD IT'S DRACCAR FROM THEA REALM FIGHTERS

Actually there is zero information about this guy anywhere. I'm assuming Draccar here would have been the final boss or at least someone that gets in your way. Who knows.

Seeing as how I have at least three more pics to use, might as well show them off:

VS screen. Nothing much to say here.

This pic shows E.Halkon in a bonus stage where you smash stuff under a time limit. These were in Survival Arts too, so it's not too surprising to see them here.

One more pic from the back of the flyer. And it kinda disappoints me. This pic shows that, unlike Survival Arts, they probably would have implemented Fatalities for all the characters. One of the charms of Survival Arts in my opinion was that you didn't have to know a bunch of fatality inputs to get your reward of a dead opponent. You just had to hit them with a special or an attack from one of the weapons. Oh well, at least LET'S FINISH is enjoyable in an engrishy sense.

So there you have it. These are my guesses/observations on a fighting game that has yet to be dumped to a certain arcade emulator. Will we ever get the chance to play this? I honestly hope so, mainly because I wanna see what I got right and what I got wrong. But maybe I'm just being an optimist about these things.

But who knows. We live in a world where Primal Rage II , a game long since lost, has been shown and actually dumped to MAME (though from what I could gather, due to dumb copyright protection we can't actually play it.....yet) so maybe my optimism is a good thing.

Hope you enjoyed my look at this interesting (well to me at least) unreleased title. Maybe when I work up the drive I'll do another one of these.

UPDATE:  Thanks to aleksandar for letting me know about this, and special thanks to 1983parrothead on FFshrine.org and to swymsunofficial on on NicoNicoDouga, we now have a rip for the OST!

Snag it here.