#453
Gameplay of the final boss Ruler in Sega's Dark Edge
Ruler's Moves:
D: Missiles
E: Energy balls
No one can seem to decide if this game was released in '92 or '93, so I thought I'd just presume it to be 1992.
Dark Edge is an amazing, completely ahead of its time game. It runs on Sega's amazing System 32 hardware, another fighting game of which I'll be covering in the near future. It takes place in a variety of amazing looking locations, most of which seem based on Sci-fi films such as Blade Runner. Design-wise in particular it just looks damn incredible, and it's a shame you don't see its pixel-art being appreciated more, like you do with SNK's games. Dark Edge's has an amazingly unique, pseudo-3D fighting engine, and though the fighting is a bit rough around the edges, it's still a decent game in its own right, with entertaining, sporadic 3D fights which are surprisingly enjoyable, for the better part.
The final boss of the game is Ruler, probably the first giant boss in an existence. Like other giant bosses (Apocalypse, King from Asura Buster) he runs into difficulties when being emulated. Namely, he doesn't even fully render correctly when in player hands, losing his dangly arms for a start, and not able to move around the arena at all. Ruler is only able to use two attacks, a sporadic mass firing of missiles, or an overpowered continuous firing of energy balls. The latter is so powerful that it will take down every opponent he comes up against, presumably because it stun-locks them. Ruler's ludicrously over-the-top design points towards Sega attempting to be visually impressive over practical, a decision which may well have influenced their creation of the humble Dural in the Virtua Fighter series. When Ruler gets past the six regular fighters, he crashes the game when the game attempts to load the Space Harrier-esque mini-game. I'm not too sure why this is, but considering how boring he is to play as anyway, it's not much of a loss. Ruler isn't much to write home about, but at the very least he's a curiosity, and an intriguing look at experimenting with boss designs so soon after the staples set in Street Fighter and Fatal Fury. Ruler however really needs to be fought against though, as he's simply not interesting to utilise otherwise.