Budget Release Cover

Box Cover

Storm's status as a sequel is a bit dubious. It's the only game released by a company called MOOV Generation, which mostly consisted of former TG Entertainment staff. However, the game establishes no ties to the original story, and its title screen just reads "Storm". When the game was first released, though, there was already a small subtitle on the box, designating it as "Eojjeonji... Jeonyeok 2". Upon subsequent releases, that subtitle became larger and larger, while "Storm" gradually made its retreat, until it vanished entirely from the cover image for the bundle with Eojjeonji... Jeonyeok 1. While the story was one of the strengths of the first game, there is none to be found here, but the intro sequence leaves one thinking that one was probably planned and then cut.

The Cast

	Han Ho He is probably what would have become Gunn if this was a "true" sequel, since he strongly resembles his look and adopts most of his trademark moves. He represents the "average" character, combining considerable strength with decent speed, and is a real combo monster. The intro has him standing in front of someone's grave, and a necklace is featured prominently.
	Ha Jin The only character brought back from the first game (probably because she wasn't in the comics, and thus legal property of the developers). In the intro, we see her covering a big scar on her forehead with the read headband. She's the "fast" character, and her wooden sword gives her a lot of range.
	Kang Hyun This is the hero the intro tells the least about, as he's just doing some movements that show he's getting ready for the fight. He is the 'strong' character, with rather short combos, but powerful moves, and he can just mow through enemies by running into them.

This time we're finally graced with not only a two-player mode, but even three-player, accordant to the three main characters. For obscure reasons, it's restricted to networked gameplay, though, multiplayer sessions at a single computer are not allowed.

The basic controls haven't changed much: you still have a separate key for each jump, punch, kick and crouch, but running isn't done by triple-tipping a direction anymore. Rather, you hold the crouch button, and then press the arrow key of your choice. The combo system is also very similar to its predecessor, with a few tweaks. Now a lot of your moves cost units from the newly introduced special bar, which counts up to ten, but in reality can be charged up indefinitely above that amount by beating up thugs, so it's not that likely to run out of charges. Every character also has a couple of so-called "Storm Combos", which are basically automatically executed after a single input. The amount of enemies on screen, which was already unconventionally high in Eojjeonji... Jeonyeok, has been raised to ridiculous proportions, as not being able to see your characters between all the enemies is not a rare occasion. However, many of those are fodder thugs, and demolishing twenty foes' faces at once makes one feel like a major badass.

Storm

Once again you get experience points for beating enemies, which can not only be used to buy upgrades afterwards, but also extend your life bar while playing. Available upgrades consist of Strength, which means the force of attacks, and Defense, which grants a second life bar as well as an "emergency bar", used to lenghten your life even after your normal bars are depleted. This one can once again be extended through its own upgrades, until it reaches the end of the screen, and holds out much longer than the quickly diminished normal bars, so in the later stages, you'll mostly live on that one. Technical level is back again as well, but this time you already start out with a movelist not quite as barebones.

A big change in the game's progression is the new level structure that lets you choose any stage freely. There's eight ordinary stages and three extra zones that are mostly there to throw the most incredible amounts of enemies on a single screen at you. Also, every stage turns into a more difficult variant after you finish it (there's no conventionally selected difficulty setting). However, most stages are balanced for a character in a thoroughly upgraded state, so you'll find yourself playing the first level again and again, to grind for experience points, until you can play the second version of the first extra level, only to grind that one even more. Unfortunately, while you can save all your upgrades bought from the shop and your level progression, your normal health bars are reset to their initial length every time you quit the game or do only so much as to lose one of your infinitely numbered lives. Whether this is a glitch or just a very stupid design decision, it makes the grindyness even worse.

The radar in the top righ corner of the screen seems to be a bit of an odd innovation for the genre. It displays the player characters as well as four colour-coded types of enemies (which could be described as fodder, normal, strong and boss). It's not completely useless, as the areas don't scroll linear as in most beat 'em up games, but are rather freely accessible, and enemies spawn from all over the place. On the other hand, the individual level sections are all quite small, so the radar remains a questionable addition.

Storm

In 2001, pixel artistry was all but a thing of the past in Korea, and thus Storm is presented in pre-rendered graphics. Most classic game enthusiasts would condemn such a step, but there's a certain charm to that plastic puppet look of Asian rendered characters from the late 90s/early 00s. Of course it looks totally artificial, but somehow it all falls into place with Storm. The backgrounds are very versatile, and broken down into rather small sections, to introduce new themes more frequently. There's also some very cool special effects, like motion blur, or the flashing that occurs during Storm Combos.

The music isn't quite as exciting as in Eojjeonji... Jeonyeok, but not completely devoid of great tunes. A few stages feature remixes of tracks from the first game, but they're generally inferior, and particularly show the more mushy nature of Storm's soundtrack.

Just as with Eojjeonji... Jeonyeok, a few incomprehensible design decisions (and this time different ones than before, so no one can say they didn't know how to do better) prevent it from being the classic that it should be. Maybe that's even for the better, since otherwise it would have become a great classic hardly anyone ever played. It could have scored some success at least in its homeland, but several delays caused it to be released in 2001, when Korean single player gaming had already begun to get wiped out by the advent of broadband internet and the accompanying widespread digital circulation of warez. MOOV Generation was forced to fold shortly after the game's release, with the few employees whose career can actually be traced at all dispersing themselves among various internet and mobile game companies, as was the fate of most of developers from the country's early gaming history.

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