The 90’s was such a glorious time period to be a Capcom fans especially since the company released some of its most memorable video games during that decade. When it came down to the fighting genre of gaming we got to see the release of high profile classics such as: Super Street Fighter II: Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Rival Schools, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom. Capcom had released so many incredible games during the 90’s that its almost hard to keep track of them all. However, there were also underrated fighting titles that got overlooked in America back in the mid 90’s such as Star Gladiator from 1996. Star Gladiator is a game that not too many people are familiar with due to the popularity of other Capcom franchises such as: Street Fighter, DarkStalkers, Mega Man along with the any major Marvel that came out during the 90’s. In terms of gameplay Star Gladiator looked similar to that of Street Fighter EX game that was also released back in 1996. The visual presentation for Star Gladiator looked great for ’96 standards and the gameplay felt similar to that of Soul Calibur.

Star Gladiator was a game that had the potential to spawn an entire video game series if it was heavily story driven. The storyline for this game was also intriguing with its futuristic them and everything being set in the 24th century during the year 2348. The story for Star Gladiator revolved around the main antagonist Dr. Edward Bilstein who attempts to conquer the universe with a group he formed known as the Fourth Empire after being imprisoned and exiled from earth. Blistein was a physicist who worked for the Earth Federation and got arrested for experimenting on humans while creating a plasma powered weapon. Blistein was also the final boss for this game which had two different endings depending on whether or not he is defeated in the end. As impressive as Star Gladiator was on the PS1 there was way too much competition on that console back in the 90’s. If Star Gladiator was more story-driven with greater emphasis being placed on cutscenes and character interactions it could have been more memorable than it was. Despite, having a sequel on the PS1 in 1998 Star Gladiator did not become popular enough to develop into a multi game series which was a shame since it had a lot of potential.