Sega’s legendary AM2 team took the helm for this arcade release, which along with Virtua Fighter Kids represented a drive to make fighting games more appealing to young players. Based on the Fighting Vipers engine, it’s a fun and frantic if slightly shallow fighter. New characters include Bark, a polar bear, and Bean, a bomb-throwing duck whose design harks back to Sega’s cutesy beat-’em-up DynamiteDux. A Sonic-style version of Fighting Vipers’ Honey was also designed but dropped, finally appearing in the game’s PSN/XBLA release.