Gods was developed by a team led by Joe Linhoff and George Petro. The arcade game utilized a hybrid of the hardware used for Cruis'n USA with a hard drive for data storage. All the moves were recorded using motion capture with just two actors. The in-game characters were created using a technology called "digital skin", which involved digitizing reference photographs of live actors and mapping them onto 3-D models. War Gods was unveiled at a trade show in March 1996. In response to suggestions and complaints about the gameplay, several months were devoted to refining the game's programming, delaying the arcade release to the third quarter of 1996. War Gods adopted Mortal Kombat's fighting style, but was created independently and never achieved the success of Mortal Kombat. The game boasted a "3D button" that lets fighters dive around the ring, in a circular arc, as part of their attacks and defensive moves. The orbiting camera smoothly follows the fighters, working to maintain the left/right "fighting line" needed for coherent two-player joystick control on the arcade cabinet. The Nintendo 64 version was delayed in order to tone down the difficulty level and add additional moves. A Panasonic M2 version of War Gods was in development and slated to be one of its launch titles, but it never happened due to the system's cancellation. Reception The response to War Gods was lukewarm. One of the biggest criticisms the game received was for its cast of characters. Computer and Video Games reported that while the arcade game was being exhibited at the 1996 American Coin Machine Exposition, showgoers believed that the character designs would hurt the game's chances for success. Matt Casamassina of IGN called the character designs "uninspired", while a reviewer for Next Generation called them "mildly embarrassing Ringling Brothers' character design". Game Revolution, however, said the character designs were "pretty cool" and complimented the variety in the available fighters. The response to the game's graphics was mixed. Computer and Video Games had a positive impression of the in-game models with "digital skin". Next Generation said the digital skin technique is genuinely innovative and different, but the end result is characters which look jagged, move stiffly, and generally lack the smoothness of the polygonal fighters seen in contemporary games like Tekken 2 and Virtua Fighter 2. Commenting on the Nintendo 64 version, Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot called it "probably the first