Who says the GameCube is not going to have any good fighting games? If you’ve said that already, then surprisingly, Bloody Roar Ex is here to prove you wrong. HudsonSoft did a great job putting this one together.

For those of you who had never heard of the game until now, let me explain the basic format. There are 10 playable characters, and a few you have to unlock. Their names are: Marvel, Bakuru, Alice, Busuzima, Gado, Long, Shenlong, Stun, Xion, an Yugo. Each of them has an animal doppelganger that they can turn into. For example, Alice can turn into a rabbit, Stun into an insect, Yugo into a mole, and so on. When you do morph into the beast, you do some kind of power move too. The game is your typical two person fighter. You stand on a platform with a border around it. The moves are punch, kick, throw/double-punch, change/double-kick, and sidestepping. You can use either the control stick or the control pad to move the character around. Whatever, it's a Tekken-type game. The version on display was stuck in arcade mode, but a rep told me there would be other modes in the final release.

Unfortunately, the booth was tucked away, and HudsonSoft only had one playable system set up at TGS. Nonetheless, there was always an audience of twenty people crowded around the bench, cheering on their friends, or simply "ooh-ing" or "des-ne-ing" at the graphics. They were superb. The framerate was very fast. Some trails come off your hands (or claws) during a power punch, but this effect wasn’t overdone like in Soul Calibur. The stages themselves were rather generic fighting arenas, ranging from Japanese temples to an American air force base a la Street Fighter. There were amazing details composing the background such as mountains, weather, and surrounding buildings.

You will also be glad to hear that the stages are interactive. You can break through the floor, get thrown through a fence, or smash through a wall to draw the fight into a completely different stage! I know this has been done in other fighting games, but it's the first version of Bloody Roar to have it. I'm not good enough to bust through the floor, but these Japanese “Tekken-heads” were going nuts killing each other. One had turned into a chameleon and the other was still human, and the Chameleon did some power slam, and the wooden floor shattered into splinters as they fell into the basement. The audience and I screamed with amazement! Well maybe just me. In any case it’s an awesome feature.

At the bottom of the screen there is a little meter titled "Beast Change". It gradually moves up as you beat up your opponent. The Tekken kids launched their beast in to this frenzy mode that puts ten seconds on a timer that appears, and the beast moves at lightning speed around the stage, doing mad amounts of damage.

As a first timer to the game, the controls were easy to pick up. All the moves are pretty standard. The control stick is a too bulky for this game though. All kids who were doing a good job used the gamepad. I tried that out for a while and it felt more natural. Also i had some trouble sidestepping. I thought it was a simple matter of hitting L or R, but it the response was hit or miss. Overall, the control was easy and quick.

I spent a lot of time both playing, and just staring at this game. One of the cool things I learned how to do is air throws. I was in beast mode, and was jumping around like a fool rabbit. My opponent jumped up to kick me, but I accidentally hit the throw button, and I grabbed him in mid-air, flipped him around, and used my rabbit-feet to slam him to the floor and win the game. The replay was brilliant.

This is definitely going to be one of the best two person fighters on the GameCube. Just from my brief time with it at TGS I`m definitely going to buy it. I tried to get a release date and a price out of the rep and all she could tell me was 2002. The game felt pretty polished, but release dates are release dates. All I know is I’m looking forward to getting more time with Bloody Roar EX.