It's about time, Arc System! At long last, Guilty Gear 2 comes out of hiding. The sequel to last year's sleeper hit 2D fighter for the Sony Playstation rears it's pretty little head. This time around, the game is being developed for the Naomi arcade board (which is basically a souped-up version of the Dreamcast, with more memory) and is slowly creeping toward completion.

It's still not stated yet what system is going to get a port of this fabulous looking game. The two likely candidates are the Dreamcast and the would-be Playstation 2 (when it arives on U.S. shelves next fall). A Dreamcast port probably wouldn't be a direct port of the arcade game, but it's said that the Playstation 2 would be able to do a 95% conversion.

Returning characters are the normal cast from the first Guilty Gear, with the exception of Kliff (he did die...but hey, all those other characters came back) and Dr. Baldhead. A replacement for Baldhead is a character named Faust, who's just as tall (about 9 ft), a bit beefier, and yes that's a brown paper bag over his head with an eyehole poked out. It's not certain whether or not Testament and Justice made the return trip (though let's hope). The "Instant Kill" System used in the previous game is gone from Guilty Gear 2. In it's place is something called the "Tention Meter". Time will tell what that is all about. The sheer size of the character sprites is terrific and without a hint of pixelation. Pray the home systems retain this. Expect plenty of new moves, tweaked control, and plenty of new characters.

--Lorsavasus

Update 4/25/2000: Guilty Gear 2 has been renamed as Guilty Gear X. Why? Haven't a clue. The game seems to be coming home to Dreamcast. After seeing what happened to Dead or Alive 2 on the PS2, maybe this is a blessing. The Tension Meter now acts like the Chaos Gauge in the first GG. Half a Tension Meter means you can pull off a special move (i.e. Ky's Ride the Lightning), whereas a full Meter means you can pull off two consecutively OR one Instant Kill (yes, that system still remains). But, luckily it seems to have been tweaked a lil. If you pull of the manuver and connect, you will instantly kill that character for that round (not both rounds). Then, in the next round, an Instant Kill will be unavailable to the character who was successful with it previously. Also, by pressing three buttons together, it is said to be able to preform something similar to "Gamble" from the first game, but this time it will interrupt ANY move from the opponent (though it requires part from the Tention Meter). On the negative side, dashing has been said to not take your character as far across the screen as it did in the first one (if it's anything like Marvel vs. Capcom, I'm gonna scream).