Bloody Roar

About Bloody Roar

Bloody Roar (1997) is Raizing and Hudson Soft's 3D fighting game, released as Beastorizer in North American arcades, in which fighters transform mid-match into animal forms, praised on the PlayStation for its speed.

Bloody Roar in Depth

Eight fighters punch and kick in enclosed arenas, with combos, air juggles, counters, guard reversals and guard crushes. Opponents can be thrown against walls and fences for wall juggles, and a hard enough throw breaks the walls for a ring-out. Attacks fill a Beast meter, and when it is full a fighter can transform into an animal form with more speed and strength, new moves, longer reach and some recovered health, until enough damage forces them back. The PlayStation version added a Beast Rave mode, boosting speed by 25 percent and allowing rapid attack chains while draining the meter, and in North America a sidestep on the shoulder buttons. Modes include arcade, versus with handicaps, time attack, survival, practice and a spectator mode.

The story draws on the Gaia hypothesis: the Earth long ago planted animal genes in humanity as a dormant trigger, creating "zoanthropes" able to survive environmental collapse, but the Tyron Corporation discovered the code and began engineering them as biological weapons. The cast includes the wolf Yugo, searching for the truth about his father's death; the rabbit Alice, who escaped Tyron's experiments; the tiger Jin Long, a former Tyron assassin; and the lion Alan Gado, a one-eyed mercenary.

Making Bloody Roar

Raizing developed the game and Hudson Soft published it in July 1997 on Sony's ZN-1 arcade board, with character and visual design by Mitsuakira Tatsuta and Shinsuke Yamakawa. The PlayStation version followed in Japan on 6 November 1997, in Europe through Virgin in January 1998 and in North America through Sony in March 1998.

Reviews of the PlayStation version were generally positive. Critics praised its fast, fluid play, precise controls and transformation system, and said it blended Tekken, Virtua Fighter and Fighting Vipers, with an engine some found smoother than Tekken 2's. Its rock soundtrack was divisive, and its eight-character roster and generic characters drew repeated criticism; Next Generation dismissed the backstories as uninteresting. It was North America's 20th best-selling game in its first month. Bloody Roar 2 followed in 1998, and the series continued to Bloody Roar 4 in 2003.