Red Earth is probably one of Capcom’s most unique yet underrated fighting titles to have emerged from the 90’s decade. Red Earth was an arcade exclusive that appeared on the CP System III. This game revolved around four different characters named Leo, Tessa, Mai-Ling and and Kenji each with their own unique backgrounds. Red Earth contained a single-player Quest mode and two player versus gameplay. The Quest mode featured a total of eight bosses who had health bars more than twice the size than the player’s. The characters seen in Red Earth along with the art style that Capcom utilized was reminiscent of the DarkStalkers title from 1994. It should also be noted that Red Earth was one of the very few Capcom games that included fatalities similar to that of Midway’s Mortal Kombat series from the 90’s. It felt like Capcom took various elements from different fighting games and mixed them together in order to create Red Earth.
The idea of having four protagonists and eight boss characters in one game seemed unfathomable at the time; especially since its normally the other way around in most fighting titles. The setting for the Red Earth storyline took place in a fantasy-medieval themed world in 1999. The main antagonist was a character named Blade who had monsters to ravage the world. The plot for Red Earth was nothing special and seemed pretty basic because it lacked depth. Also, Red Earth looked like a game that would have been better off as a RPG than a fighting game. Despite, not being nearly as popular as Street Fighter Alpha 2 from ‘96 it still received good reviews from a critics and gamers alike.
Gaming Hearts Collection 