Red Earth

About Red Earth

Red Earth (1996), Warzard in Japan, is the first game on Capcom's CP System III board, a fantasy fighter with RPG growth in which four heroes battle giant boss monsters and level up, kept from home consoles until 2022.

Red Earth in Depth

In Quest Mode, the player picks one of four heroes and fights eight computer-controlled monsters one-on-one, each a boss with a huge health bar shown along the bottom of the screen and none of them playable. Hits knock out coins, which give experience to raise attack and defence and unlock new moves, and treasure chests with orbs for super moves and food to restore health, making it closer to Capcom's side-scrolling Dungeons & Dragons games than a standard fighter. A password saves the character's progress for later. Versus Mode lets two players fight as any of the heroes. It is one of the few Capcom games with fatalities, such as splitting opponents in half, and has multiple and hidden endings shaped by the player's choices, continues and the way enemies are killed.

Set in an alternate 14th century that never had a Renaissance, the evil wizard Scion sends monsters to conquer the world. The heroes are Leo, a king turned half-lion by a curse; the ninja Kenji; the "sorcerologist" Tessa, who studies the science of magic; and the martial artist Mai-Ling. The bosses include the dinosaur Hauzer, the oni Kongou, the harpy Lavia and Gi Gi, a robotic statue.

Making Red Earth

According to Takashi Sado, Red Earth was made because of the growing popularity of fighting games in the 1990s, but with parameters and equipment to set it apart. It was the first game on Capcom's CP System III hardware, which Street Fighter III later used, and Takayuki Iwai composed its 72-track soundtrack with help from Ryoji Yamamoto and Wataru Hachisako. Game Machine listed it as Japan's second most popular arcade game in its 1 February 1997 issue, and Hyper rated it four out of five. Although it was never ported at the time, its characters lived on: Leo, Kenji and Hydron became playable in Capcom Fighting Evolution, Tessa in SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos and Super Gem Fighter, and a Darkstalkers crossover manga, Maleficarum, was published in 1997.