Tobal 2

Hi

I don't really play Tobal 2 but I hear it is the most technical and the deepest fighting game.......
Are there any VF players here who have played tobal 2?

I really want to know which of these 2 games are the most technical?

any help or opinions are welcom!
thanks! /versus/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

Thank you for your explanations,Mike! /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

It makes me interested by this game
I had Tobal 2 but I never care about it,maybe it's time for me to find out an another technical gameplay /versus/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

It's a shame they canceled the franchise. I think the same team that produced it also developped Kakuto Chojin but that game was nowhere near Tobal's level. Fighing engine wise I'm not sure but I think Tobal was the first actual ''3D'' fighting game. Definitly one of my favorite old school games.

 

Kakuto Chojin was made by Dream Factory yes, but not by the same team that made Tobal 2. I'm fairly certain that Ehrgeiz is the only true successor to Tobal 2, but they changed the game play significantly at that point. That team went on to form a company called Anchor, who you might know from the WWE Raw series of wrestling games on the XBOX.

Anchor actually made an arcade fighting game for Sega called Toy Fighter that was never released.

The Raw team, incidentally, was recently laid off due to the lackluster performance of the title. They were replaced by the company that made Tao Feng - no, I'm not joking.

 

This is fair, so I'll try to rephrase this. Tobal 2 was a fairly traditional 1-on-1 fighting game in that the focus was squarely on the other player and the direct damage you could inflict on them with your physical attacks - all on one plane. Ehrgeiz was in many regards the same, save for the introduction of a larger focus on environmental/object interaction and multi-tiered environments - almost in the vein of Capcom's Powerstone. That part of the game just never struck my fancy.

Tobal 2 however, is very dear to me.

 

Both games were, in general, highly underrated.


I don't know about Ehrgeiz but I remember Tobal 2 getting rave reviews. The thing that hurt it the most imo was the character design, although made by Toriyama, it just wasn't a universe that you could easily jump into like VF, Tekken and Soul Blade. Those games sorta reminded you of old kung fu flicks and you easily got drawn into them. Whereas Tobal looked like a DBZ rip off meets random kids game. It just didn't really catch on with the public. It's funny when you see franchises like Bloody Roar getting sequels after sequels while Tobal is forgotten and gone. That game really had potential.

 

A few other awesome things about Tobal 2:

The RPG mode, which let you unlock all the new characters found in the dungeons (and was a kind of deep game in itself).

The music in Tobal 1 & 2 was great.

Tobal 2 is the only game I know besides the PS2 VFs to include replays of expert players on the disc.

The training mode was really nice for it's day, and it taught you how to do strings and the Just Frames (Tobal 2 actually invented "Just Frame"s as far as I know). It had little lights for the High, Mid and Low buttons, 2 sets of each. One was to show when you pressed the buttons, the other showed you your options from there. For example, if you pushed the High button, and your character made a punch, the High button "pushed" light would come on, next you'd probably see 2 or 3 of the "string" lights come on, indicating that this character has a "High-High" and "High-Low" string. So next you try "High-Low", and notice after your Low, the Mid "string" light flashes very briefly, this is the correct timing for a "Just Frame".

This is a feature I think VF's training mode should have, it teaches you the moves instinctively, and the proper timing for everything (IE while people can read the command for Wolf's "Shining Wizard" in Command Training, the game doesn't teach you the proper timing).

The game also had a 10 minute or so video that showed you the ins & outs of basic game play, with voiceovers!

Tobal 2 also had the first edit-able characters I know of in a fighting game. You could alter the color of all the Key parts of the characters & save them as the defaults. The colors were altered by using sliding bars to control Red, Blue and Green; you could create your own colors!

The fighting system was definately ahead of it's time, I think it also had Recovery (like Ukemi).

Anyway, great game. I will agree that the ultimate downfall (for me) of the game was the light-hearted Toriyama character designs. While some were really cool (Green, Ill), in the end it kept me from feeling too serious about the game (combined with the fact that some of the animations also reflected this "cuteness", see: Hom, Oliems).

Spotlite

 

very impressive for a game be4 it's time. Thx to Myke and spotlite for raving it, and now, I'll have to check it out myself.

 

Some stuff that I remember from Tobal 2:

I thought one of the coolest thing with Tobal was when you grab the big Demon/Alien guy by the tail. You can do a giant swing him by the tail or, if he reverses you, he can swing you around instead. That and all the other throw reversal animation are all really cool.

The front throw system, like Myke described before, if much like Goh's tsukami (or the other way around). You drag them around just like in tsukami. But there's also an element like Vanessa's arm hold where you can choose to hit them in the head or kick their shin. You him them in the head enough, they'll wobble around kinda like before you do the fatalities in Mortal Kombat. If you kick them in the shin enough, they'll hop around on one leg. Both sets up for combo or guessing game follow up. The side throw/back throw doesn't allow you to move around but they do allow you chose between doing a throw move or a strike move.

You can move around in full 3D and if you dash back too many times (or randomly), you'll stumble and fall flat on your butt.

Someone already mentioned this in the FT thread, but Kage's new DP air combo looks just like the old man's combo from Tobal.

Doctor from Tobal 2 is the first character that I know of that has the boxer sway move like that of Steve and Brad.

If I remember correctly, i's also the only game I know of that allows you to fight using Chocobo /versus/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

Thanks Spotlite and Myke for sharing the video. /versus/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

I played the first Tobal to DEATH. I even unlocked Toriyama's robot by defeating the dungeon mode.

I really wished they ported Tobal 2 domestically. I remember at the time it was highly unlikely because they didn't feel like translating the quest mode.I only got to play it a few times at a friends house.

 

yeah, so many things were copied from this game.

If you watch the clip, you can see Gren doing a Flamingo (with 3D movement that looks just like Hwaorang), a mount system, just tons of things that wouldn't be implemented until much later, or at all.

Spotlite

 

I'm not sure but didn't Tekken 3 and Tobal 2 come out at the same time ?

 

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure but didn't Tekken 3 and Tobal 2 come out at the same time ?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is always hotly debated. As the two games exhibit many of the same features, people are always trying to determine who stole ideas from who. Tobal 2's official Japanese release date was April 25, 1997. Tekken 3's release is generically referred to as Summer 1997. It's doubtful that any design changes were made in between Tobal 2's release and that of Tekken 3's.

However, the Tobal 2 team was said to be comprised of ex-AM2 and ex-Namco employees, so it's safe to assume that the team brought along alot of ideas from the development of both VF and Tekken. IMO, none of this detracts from the quality of any series involved.

 

IMO, none of this detracts from the quality of any series involved.

You're absolutely right, and thanks for the info. ''ex-AM2 and ex-Namco employees'' !!? No wonder the game was so solid, now if only Toriyama wasn't drunk !