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As a kid I remember that I couldn't finish this game although I've reached the final boss once or twice, but only after spending too much time in training mode figuring out the moveset and combos by myself. It's THAT difficult of a game.

Unfortunately, this hack makes the game so unreasonable easy that it hurts it as much as it is in its original unreasonable difficult version. Just by testing this hack and without remembering a single special move, I've reached the final boss of the game without losing a single round. A middle ground should be the ideal thing. Actually, the ideal thing would be a difficulty slider in the options menu like every other fighting game (I don't know what the original developers were thinking) although I can imagine this would be extremely difficult to program / hack into the game...

I'm pretty sure if the game had been released back in the day in the shape that this hack puts it, it would've become one of the celebrated Sega Genesis games, one of the 16-bit games that people now remember fondly and always put on lists, hell it might've received a remake or revival by now. It's that good. Finally enjoyable in its single player, and all it took was slight rebalancing and change in difficulty (and making overkills easier, those sure would've helped its popularity back when). A great game was hidden beneath a coat of being inaccessible. Every Genesis fan interested in playing its best exclusives should give this version at least a try.

It's sad for me to write a negative review of this hack, because like many people, I've been waiting for something like this for a loooong time. After saying that, the current version has several flaws that ruin all the experience:

·Difficulty is a joke. For someone with no much practice, win WITHOUT LOSING ONE ROUND is tremendously unsatisfactory. Where's the challenge?

·Shadow, Xavier and the E.C. get stuck in a loop when they are away from their opponent, making the taunt move and becoming helpless.

·The original Inner Strength system rewards the player for chain attacks, and force him to rely less on special moves. It wasn't perfect, but it helped differentiate E.C. from the competitors. With the changes that have been made, the cost of attacks is so low that in practice it's no different than playing with the patch that allows you to use attacks without limit.

·I also found a notorious flaw playing with Rax: His special attack "Overload" doesn't waste energy, although it's more powerful than the "Lock and Load" attack, which wastes 1/4 of energy. Now you can use "Lock and Load" to stun opponents, and cause the time they stay stunned is longer, you can chain them with the "Overload" and cause huge damage without effort.

I encourage the creator to keep working, although I would like to see a version of this hack that only changes the difficulty for a more adjusted one (maybe 3 or 4) and keeps the facility to perform the Overkills. That way we would have an experience closer to the one Sega wanted to offer, but more friendly.

As an Eternal Champions player since the game came out I always felt this one could have been better with a few changes, because:

• Has overpowered characters
• CPU abuses some movements
• Contest difficulty is out of hand, high with no difficulty select
• Has punishing continue system
• Final boss formula way absurd, 5 forms to win, too long and a lottery to end

This hack addresses some good points and could deliver a better experience overall for newcomers, and I like the creator has included optional features. I still need to test deeper but I've got this on my mind right now:

• If taunt doesn't remove inner strength sometimes makes the CPU get looped trying to do so, so gameplay is a bit broken.

• Going from default difficulty 7 to 2 was too much, now it's too easy. Even the last boss can be beaten without seeing all the movements CPU usually do.

• Movement and energy rebalance is harder to see.

I appreciate the effort, and I hope this game can be tweaked to optimum some day.

I'm so excited that someone finally made this hack!

It is an excellent hack that addresses most of my gripes with the original game. FYI I owned and played this game extensively when I was a kid back in 1993. It was always a solid game but it had some flaws and this hack manages to address nearly all of them.

The decreased difficulty in single player mode is welcome. CPU opponents in the original game seemed to block so nearly everything and time-out rounds were common. I would add that it may be a touch easy for fighting game veterans. I'd love to see a difficulty option added to the options menu in a future update.

The re-balanced inner strength system is much improved. A system like this can never be perfect but I appreciate the efforts of the author in greatly improving a system that really killed some of the fun of the original game.

The increased frequency of the overkills is also much appreciated. They were so rare before that you'd have to play for hours on end to have a chance to see one, unless you bothered to carefully set it up in 2 player mode. I managed to see 3 overkills on a single playthrough now. Great to see these made more accessible.

Like the other reviewer, I haven't been able to get combos to work in single player mode. I'd love to see this changed in a future update.

Big thanks to the author as I'm sure I'll get many hours of enjoyment from this very well-done improvement patch.

As an Eternal Champions fan and veteran, I've been waiting for someone to make a rom hack for it for decades. I've got around to playing this hack and I gotta say, thank goodness the AI got the nerf hammer, it used to be a pain in the butt, especially the Eternal Champion. Now about the new combo system this hack added, I'm still playing around with it, it's ok but it's not on par with the EC sequel, Challenge From The Darkside or other fighting games like SFII. The combos seem to work on human opponents but not on the AI. The AI can still get out of hitstun after the first hit of a combo connects. Otherwise, it's a good hack and I recommend it for those that were unable to beat the original EC and bashed on it. With the tweaked AI difficulty, anyone should be able to beat it now.