the level of character detail is there, the many chained combos, the feel of the game, the variety of fighters and fighting styles are all good. Dark Rift shines through its weaknesses, and, for the time being, can be called the best fighter on Nintendo 64." The most widely praised aspects were the graphics and animation; Shawn Smith of Electronic Gaming Monthly went so far as to compare it to Virtua Fighter 3 (a game which ran on cutting edge arcade hardware) in this respect. However, he and his three co-reviewers further commented that the game is weak in every other respect, and Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot said that it "feels like a Virtua Fighter-inspired mishmash of monsters, demons, and guys with guns. The graphic effects are the only things that save Dark Rift from falling below average." By contradiction, Perry and a Next Generation critic both highly praised the character designs, particularly Demonica and Morphix. The specific criticisms of the game varied. Perry and EGMs Dan Hsu said that the projectiles are slow to the point of being useless. Edge criticized Dark Rift for lacking original features, calling it an average fighting game that "fails to produce a single surprise or elicit one impressive moment of action." GamePro found the combos too difficult to perform, but nonetheless deemed Dark Rift "a fast, fun, polygon-based 3D fighting game that's imaginative with its use of graphics, and may break ground for other poly-fighters like Tekken on the N64." Notes References External links 1997 video games 3D fighting games Cancelled Sega Saturn games Fighting games Multiplayer video games Nintendo 64 games Vic Tokai games Video games developed in the United States Windows games