I was looking through my fighting game collection and thinking about how to categorize it, and decided to look into a few lesser known titles to understand their connections better.
First up are these
Racdym fighters for PS1.
Heaven's Gate was released in 1996 and was originally an arcade game that was ported to PS1. Probably the most interesting thing about this game in a "trivia/history" perspective is that the PS1 port lets you play as Kurara from the
Power Instinct series.
The next Racdym fighter was
Genei Tougi: Shadow Struggle, also released in 1996. It was a PS1 exclusive with no arcade version. The character designs were by Ryoji Mingawa (I know him mainly as creator of the Spriggan and Project ARMs manga).
Then, there was a "sequel" to Shadow Struggle called
Critical Blow released in 1997. Like Shadow Struggle, it was a PS1 exclusive with designs by Minagawa. Some of the characters from Shadow Struggle return but with totally new designs (though from the same character designer).
Of the group of games in these pictures (and not just of the Racdym selection), my personal favorite is Critical Blow. I think it is a pretty fun game with a nice, stylish look.
According to mobygames' Racdym page, it seems like Heaven's Gate was Racdym's first developed game (that was released anyway). Shadow Struggle came a bit later that same year. The more well known
Snowboard Kids for N64 was also developed by them and released next, and then Critical Blow (the sequel to Shadow Struggle).
After that, they made some other pretty cool games, like
Trap Gunner,
Snowboard Kids 2, and
Snowboard Kids Plus. And looks like their last big gaming "hurrah" moment may be
Wizardry: Tales of Forsaken Land for PS2. After that, the company's name was changed to
Racjin and they released a Bomberman Kart racer. Since then, they seem to mostly work on anime licensed games, and some Mario and Sonic stuff.
The Masters Fighter was developed by a South Korean company that was called
UNiCO at the time (no relation to Osamu Tezuka's heroic unicorn). It is a 2d fighter and had a Japanese PS1 release. They had made another fighting game in 1994 called
Dragon Master for arcades. Masters Fighter was released in 1997 for arcade and PS1.
Slam Dragon is a game from Jaleco released on the PS1 in 1996. I think it is a PS1 exclusive with no arcade port. Its most notable feature is probably its "
Killer Instinct" graphic style (2d plane with 3d pre-renders for characters).
Pretty Fighter X is a 2d Saturn exclusive from 1995 that is a sequel to the 1994 Super Famicom
Pretty Fighter game. A company called
Sol developed Pretty Fighter X, but looks like
Genki developed the original. Genki also developed the sort of sequel and last entry in the Pretty Fighter franchise:
FIST (1996) which was released for PS1 and Saturn as you can see in the picture. A few Pretty Fighter characters are in FIST, but it also has some male characters as well and is in 3d.