All about Athena Asamiya
Friday, May 18, 2007
SNK's Athena Asamiya is a video game babe who's largely overlooked outside of Japan, even though at one point, she had been a mascot for the company (until Mai Shiranui came along, I guess). Here's a topic featuring a few items that tell about her history as a character. It all first began with the game shown in the recording here, Athena, which featured a winged goddess (I think) going on an adventure through about six stages:
She's armed with a club (that, as shown, can even be upgraded at one point to a wrecking ball), and there's a couple monsters you need to deal with along the way. You can knock out bricks in walls to work your way through, and there's even some armor you can obtain as well as other point containers and icons.
A year after this game was produced, SNK produced Psycho Soldier, featuring a modern-day descendant of the original Athena, last name being Asamiya, who's got psychic powers and uses them to fight evil zombies who've overtaken a city. Joined by her boyfriend, Sie Kensou, who also had psychic powers, she goes on a crimefighting mission. Here's a short recording of that old game right here:
The game was one of the first of its kind to feature special voice-overs, and even featured a cute song in Japanese. When distributed in English, it had an English language song included. You can obtain a special "psychic sword" with which to battle, for example, among other special power-ups.
Then, in 1994, when SNK produced their long-running King of Fighters series, they brought back Athena and Sie as fighters this time. Here's a short recording of Athena vs. Sie in their KOF versions on a Winmugen program:
Athena may also be the only character to appear in the KOF games to change her outfit almost every game, so that she got hotter and hotter with every entry, later wearing a bare midriff costume in some installments. It's said that she was characterized as pop singer, but it's hard to be sure.
Then, a few years ago, SNK developed a 3-D RPG game for the Playstation in which Athena came back into her own again as an adventurer. It's called Athena: Awakening from the Ordinary Life. I found a recording of what the beginning is like over here:
It's sort of like a redo of her older game from the late 80s, in which she discovers her psychic powers and goes on a quest to battle evil whereever it may exist. As far as I know, the game so far has only been released in Japan (and as you can see, the recording is only in Japanese), probably because Athena isn't well known enough outside the country to carry a game like this on her own. That's a shame if so, because she does deserve more attention and wider recognition than what she's got so far. With any luck, maybe it's possible to garner more attention for Athena Asamiya in the US and Canada, so that then, SNK and the Playstation will release a version for the American continent as well!
Open trackbacks: The Bullwinkle Blog, Mark My Words, Outside the Beltway, Samantha Burns.
Labels: action, fighting, hot computer game babes, platform, RPGs, side scrollers, SNK-Playmore
posted by Avi Green @ 12:14 AM,
