Introduction
Dual Blades, which is a port of an arcade game, is one of the few fighting games that have been released for the GBA and one of a different breed. This game left me with some very mixed feelings. First off, it seems like a lot of its elements were stolen from the Street Fighter series, and then it has this extremely wacky, and then it feels like a poorly made fighter. As I began to play the game, I realize that the originality and humor of this game do not make this game good, but help pull the weight of the other lacking parts.

Gameplay
While the fighting genre is little known for its excellent sound and music, at least game could do was make the music fit. As I was engaged in a serious battle between my ghost gang leader nun and some Arabian man in clothes too many sizes small for him, I noticed happy generic music playing in the background. What’s with this? Come on, this is a serious game! Anyway, the in game sound clips feel just like they were pulled from the old Street Fighter games. Otherwise, the sound is mediocre, but decent nonetheless.

Story
There isn’t much to say about this game’s graphics. They are plain, but not ugly, with the backgrounds and settings with the default “graffiti’d alley”, “Asian temple” and other usual stages you see in the common two-dimensional fighter. The fighters, if that’s what you can call them, all have unique colorful designs. The one thing that really glares is the gore colored in. Every time a fighter that uses a blade as their main weapon hits another character, blood sheds off ala Mortal Kombat. The “blood” tends to look like globs of cartoony maroon paint. Not only this, but one of the funniest parts of the game is that after a victory with a sword-wielding fighter, the top half of the other player is sliced off with just a solid red color underneath… and more blood spewing out the top, but in the same amount as when it was a simply, superficial wound. The decision to include this feature left me stupefied.

Graphics
Dual Blades has pretty much every mode you can think of, along with a nice training mode that actually has, *gasp*, all the moves and techniques for your particular character, although they are a bit hard to understand since they tried to squeeze the instructions onto the screen. Of course, the developer was able to include all the combos probably because of the number of characters, which I can count on both my hands. There are eight normal fighters and one unlockable fighter. This may seem like too few, but if you subtract all the “mirror” characters from other games, then you might just come close to this number. The fact that the fighters in this game are so completely different and unique also helps to alleviate the feeling that you don’t have enough to choose from. While there is more evidence of copying from Street Fighter, like the man-beast that is oddly hunched and tends to have long arms and long jaggy hair (you know, Blanca from the Street Fighter series?), there is a combination of the oddest assortment of characters I’ve seen. First there is some old woman, who is dressed in religious clothing and appears to be some kind of nun with specters that assist her as she hobbles over to her opponent and whacks them in the shins with her cane (they also do a lot of the fighting). From there on you can pick a large hairy Arabian man in a suit right out of Aladin, a Knight with a sword that could slice a small whale in half, some punk from the city with a sword, a Magacian that casts all types of spells that can freeze/burn/stun you, a ninja woman, and “evil” mystical lady with a staff. I found it interesting that every person in this game has some type of weapon on hand to deal out damage, whether it’s daggers or a tiny walking stick. In short, if you are looking for an “ok” game that may frustrate you, but provides a short walk from the norm, get this, otherwise, stay away from this title.