Mace: The Dark Age

1997 · Atari Games · Arcade, Nintendo 64

Mace: The Dark Age is a fighting video game released by Atari for arcade machines in 1997 and ported by Midway to the Nintendo 64 in 1997. The game is similar to Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. and the Mortal Kombat series. Like in Mortal Kombat, when a character wins both rounds, they can perform an execution move on the enemy. Methods included severing an opponent's limbs and torso (Al Rashid), beheading (The Executioner), repeated stabbing (Koyasha), impaling the opponent with a sword (Lord Deimos), breaking an opponent's back by hoisting them on top of a Viking helmet and throwing them to the ground, causing their body to explode (Ragnar), and some more far-fetched methods including pulling out an opponent's heart (Xiao Long), shrinking (Namira), transforming the opponent into a chicken (Taria), and entering an opponent's body and bursting them from inside (Dregan). Note: Heavily borrowing from the arcade game Soul Edge (1995)--first of the Souls Series. Which borrowed heavily from the framework WeaponLord (1995) laid out. Visual Concepts (developers of WeaponLord) would send builds of the game to Namco (the publisher of WeaponLord) to playtest.