Battle Monsters

Overview

Battle Monsters is a 2D horror-fantasy platformer-fighting game developed by Scarab and published by Naxat Soft for the Sega Saturn in Japan on June 2, 1995. It was later released by Acclaim in both North America and Europe in 1996.

A spiritual successor to Scarab's earlier arcade game Survival Arts (which also used digitized actors and objects for the game's characters and backgrounds), Battle Monsters features a darker fantasy-horror setting (with undead warriors and freakish monsters) and varied stages with different layouts of platforms (which can be reached through a dedicated "Jump" button). The game's story is set in the Dark Kingdom, where several combatants fight in a tournament to determine its ruler.

Scarab and Naxat Soft later revisited the concept with the 3D PS1 game Killing Zone. While it was released a year after Battle Monsters in Japan, it was released at a similar timeframe elsewhere.

Characters

The game includes 12 playable characters and four unplayable bosses. After defeating the 12 playable characters, players fight a final battle against "The Big Four", shifting to a best-of-7 match where the player must win a round against each boss (while avoiding four rounds of defeat).

• Makaryudo
• Drethdok (Strawbelly Jam in the Japanese version)
• Chili and Pepper
• Headless Harn (Heart Heat Harn in the Japanese version)
• La Fa
• Fangore (Ki Ba in the Japanese version)
• Naga
• Kap Ka
• Deathmask
• Skythe (Kuja in the Japanese version)
• Albiole
• Shion
• Leviathan, Salamander, Jinnee, and Behemoth (all unplayable, all palette swaps, each fought sequentially to form a single best-of-7 match)