Ehrgeiz

Ehrgeiz differs from most 3D fighting games by drawing heavily from the concepts of wrestling games and DreamFactory's own Tobal series, which allows for full 360-degree movement and does not require fighters to be facing one another at all times. This restricts the camera to a more or less fixed position, zooming in and out with the action, but not tracking around the arena as would be common in most other 2D and 3D fighting games. Characters can move freely in a 3-dimensional stage which is filled with many interactive objects and changes in elevation, allowing characters to leap on top of crates or use them as weapons, for example. There are four action buttons: guard, high attack, low attack, and special, which is a weapons-based attack that is different for each character.

The PlayStation version includes a Quest Mode, similar to Tobal No. 1 and Tobal 2, titled Brand New Quest: The Forsaken Dungeon. Players fight through an extensive dungeon crawl, much like the Blizzard title Diablo, and can equip different weapons and items. There are also several smaller minigames, such as a race mode, where players run laps around a course while engaging in combat to slow down their opponent, and a board game similar to Reversi.

The sword Ehrgeiz, legendarily powerful, was sealed away and could only be opened with the Ehrgeiz stone. This stone was made a prize for a fighting tournament, and whoever won, would take the sword.

Ken "Godhand" Mishima – Once a mercenary for Red Scorpion, Godhand decided to leave the organization and take with him the knowledge of the ancient ruin. Resigning from the organization meant cutting off one's right hand. As painful as it was, Ken did the deed and then betrayed Red Scorpion by selling the information to a large wealthy syndicate group. Together, they formed an excavation company to seize control of the ancient ruin in the Middle East.

Ehrgeiz was developed by DreamFactory, who previously developed the Tobal fighting games for Square. The game was directed and designed by Virtua Fighter and Tekken designer Seiichi Ishii. The game's characters, both the original ones and those from Final Fantasy VII, were designed by Tetsuya Nomura. Ehrgeiz was announced as the first project to result from a licensing agreement allowing Square to develop games for Namco's Namco System 12 arcade board, and was exhibited at Namco's booth at the February 1998 AOU Show.

Ehrgeiz Original Soundtrack contains sixty-one musical tracks from the game. It was composed by Takayuki Nakamura, who previously composed the DreamFactory and Square collaboration Tobal 2. It was released on November 21, 1998, by DigiCube.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Ehrgeiz on their April 15, 1998 issue as being the sixth most-successful arcade game of the month.

Ehrgeiz sold over 222,000 copies in Japan by the end of 1998, and sold 340,937 copies in Japan by December 2004. It has scored a 32 out of 40 points by the Japanese gaming publication Famitsu. 5 or "Good", citing the game's beautiful graphics and presentation but noting both its generally simplistic gameplay and very difficult combination move executions. GameSpot concurred, writing that the blocking controls were "unintuitive" and generally disappointing minigames outweighed the games beautiful graphics and Full Motion Videos.