Ehrgeiz: God Bless The Ring

It took me several hours to figure out but I eventually found and installed all the pieces required to run a PlayStation emulator. It took forever to get it properly configured in part because it has a terrible UI. If you load up a game then you can no longer access any of the options menus, but it doesn't tell you why you can't do it. They're just greyed out. It made it seem like I needed to go install more plugins or something to configure my xBox controller and set it to windowed mode. (I have a wide screen monitor and therefore full screen mode is terrible.) None of the various Google searches I made were much help with the reason either. They'd all just suggest using the options menu which was disabled for me. Eventually one forum post pointed out that you have to do all this stuff before starting a game. Why I can't change my controls after a game is loaded I don't know, but at least I could launch the game.

Ehrgeiz was apparently an arcade fighting game made by another company entirely that somehow convinced Square to lend them some characters. Cloud, Tifa, and Red XIII. Eventually it got ported to the PS by Square who added in some more FFVII characters and added in some sort of dungeon quest mode. I only tried the standard fighting mode a bit today and was pretty disappointed. It just seemed like a mediocre fighting game. It didn't help that I didn't know what any of the buttons were and how, if possible, to do any special moves. I did manage to beat several fights with Tifa before giving up. She is still unbelievably proportioned in this game which was more than a little off-putting. If I play straight fighting mode again it'll probably be as Sephiroth, though I think dungeon mode is probably the place to go for the marathon.

I found a FAQ for the different moves, and now know how to throw for next time. Seems simple... Hold guard, do a full 360 on the controller, then hit the top and bottom attack buttons! Yeah... Not really something I have the skills to do. I was rarely able to pull off Zangeif's spinning piledriver and this seems harder! My hand isn't good at hitting a trigger and two different buttons at once. Thumbo is great at some things, but not that! But at least now I know there actually is a guard button, and I know how to run and jump. And from the move list I see that Sephiroth has a 'draw sword' move and then lots of sword attacks. I feel like Tifa is a better fit for a fighting game since she just punches things but that chopping people with a sword has to do more damage than punching them. Man, that reminds me of Bushido Blade! CHOP!