Genre: 2d Fighter
Developer: Viccom
Publisher: LG

The Eye of Typhoon started out development as a Neo Geo game, and it shows: detailed, colorful sprites and intriguing, well-drawn backgrounds made their way fully to the 3DO. The stage even zooms in and out smoothly as the players move around, ala "Samurai Shodown". The game is let down a bit by a lack of visual polish: the stage erroneously zooms in one frame during the round introduction audio, and tacky "five minutes in Photoshop" static images adorn the inter-round loading periods. All the same, Typhoon is a good looking, clearly SNK-inspired 2d fighter.

The vast bulk of 3DO games use digital audio files for their music. On rare occasions, its mighty DSP is allowed to flex its muscles-- think "Crash N Burn", or in-race "Road Rash". In this case, the music was very obviously generated by the DSP-- but then recorded and played back as digital audio! This reviewer suspects it's so the music could be re-used for the DOS port. The songs themselves range in quality, with some-- Nelson's in particular-- being super cool, while others are a bit too chaotic. The game's sound effects are high quality, and the characters' various shouts and yells add to their personalities.

Typhoon has "Street Fighter"-style hit-box collision, and the pace plus overall pattern of play feels similar to "Samurai Shodown". As per its Neo Geo origins, there are two punch buttons- A and C on the 3DO controller-- along with two kicks, mapped to B and R. There are super powerful-- and woefully unbalanced-- super special moves which can only be used a finite number of times per round. The input windows feel just about right, and there is very little latency during play. Like "Samurai Shodown" the collision detection does not feel as water tight as it could be, while the AI is positively relentless.

The Eye of Typhoon is a glimpse into what might have been, had LG gotten a South Korean development house in place to make supporting titles for their "Goldstar" 3DO. Its character designs are really interesting, with the moonwalking, hip-thrusting "Wang Chang" being a real highlight. All the game needed was a little more polish, on every front: cleaned up menus, improved hit detection, and difficulty levels for the AI. In the pantheon of 3DO fighters, this one ranks around the same tier as "Ballz" or "Primal Rage"-- just a shade below the B-tier occupied by "The Way of the Warrior".