Battle Arena Toshinden

Battle Arena Toshinden takes the fighter into true 3D, but is it enough?

Publisher:Sony
Developer:TamSoft
Genre:Fighting

3-D fighters are a dime a dozen these days. Everybody and their grandma has come out with some kind of fighter. And while Sega's Virtua Fighter is undoubtedly one of the first, it wasn't until Battle Arena Toshinden came out that the 3-D realm was taken advantage of. Tamsoft added one little move to the characters' repertoires, and that one little move changed the fighter forever. Behold: the sidestep!

The graphics are pretty impressive, with nice backgrounds and a lot of detail in the characters faces. The game also makes good use of light shading. Not as impressive as, say, Tekken 2, but then again, BAT was part of the PlayStation's initial launch group. The game makes good use of the basic fighter preset - kick, punch, etc.- and throws in a few cool projectiles to boot. Unfortunately, Toshinden does tend to respond a little slowly. And in fighters, that can mean everything.