EVAN FIGHTERS

There are tons of games released in recent years. From big names that everyone goes head over heels for them, to nicher ones that gather a rather small, yet passionate following. But those who are daring enough to venture beyond the boundaries and look for games in places other than their regular storefronts are greeted with doujin world; a wonderland of indie games of mostly Eastern origin, where the developers' creativity and restrictions of their game engines are the limit. You can find a lot of these games on MyAbandonware, some examples being Dong Dong Never Die or ArmJoe.

Evan Fighters is such a game as well: An unofficial fighting game based on Neon Genesis Evangelion that was only released in Japan, and was forgotten for a very long time. Is it a good game? Well... I personally cannot say so. The gameplay is rough and your only choices of playable characters are Rei and Asuka, with the rest of the characters (as seen in the screenshots) being unplayable. That is, if you can actually get the game to work with ease and not run into problems. It's not a game someone would pickup and play for fun, rather a game that most appeals to gaming enthusiasts and those who actively search for such titles.

The game was first found and released to the public in 2006 by Evamonkey, a Neon Genesis Evangelion fan site, which got it through a generous contribution of a fan. However, the page was removed sometime later. The link is still online, but navigating to the page that once hosted the game just shows an empty page. Why the game was removed? No one knows at the moment. Maybe it was the fact that floppy disc versions of the game were still being sold on obscure Japanese marketplaces. Or maybe the copyright holders of Neon Genesis Evangelion thought the game was damaging their property and asked to remove it. Or maybe it's an entirely different reason.

Whatever the case, with the physical versions of the game becoming unavailable, let's try our hand again at preserving this rather unknown part of the doujin world. Should it need to disappear again, so be it. At the very least, we tried our best to preserve a part of gaming history and make it easily available for enthusiasts, rather than letting it to easily disappear among the sands of time.

Review By Parham Aghakhani