Are you ready to beat up some historical figures? SNK Playmore USA is bringing yet another famous fighting franchise home to the PlayStation 2 with World Heroes Anthology, due out next Spring. It collects the entire World Heroes saga into one convenient package. You’ll get World Heroes, World Heroes 2, World Heroes 2 Jet, and World Heroes Perfect. While their In Development page might have beat the press release to the punch, it’s always nice to get an official target window. The game was released earlier this year in Japan with online fighting capability, though the press release for the game doesn’t mention the feature, which one would think would be a pretty big detail to leave out. Still, with characters inspired by such infamous characters as Jack the Ripper, Billy the Kidd, Rasputin, Genghis Khan, and Jeanne d’Arc, it’s like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure gone horribly, horribly wrong – and that is beautiful.

When SNK Playmore announced a World Heroes compilation for the PlayStation 2 in Japan, it didn’t necessarily cause a flood of tips to the Kotaku inbox. When we found out that it was dubbed World Heroes Gorgeous, however, the air raid sirens at the top of the tower whined for hours. When the internet was alerted, we were surprised to learn that, despite how you might feel about the World Heroes series of Neo Geo fighting games, everyone loves stuff that’s gorgeous.

Today, thanks to a tip from Jacques, we can prove commenter Scuba Steve wrong. The World Heroes comp is coming stateside, sadly devoid of its flamboyant superlative. SNK Playmore of the US of A has added the insipidly safe World Heroes Anthology… zzzzz… to its list of upcoming projects. Sorry, SNK, but unless we’re promised something fabulously sassy and brassy, we’re just not interested.

In Development [SNK Playmore USA]

Anyone out there remember World Heroes, Alpha Denshi’s not that great fighting game for the Neo Geo platform? There were only a handful of them, with sequels like World Heroes 2 Jet and World Heroes Perfect hitting arcades throughout the early nineties. Fortunately for those who have fond memories of the 2D fighter, SNK Playmore is releasing a collection of four World Heroes games for the PlayStation 2.

And it might just have the best name ever: World Heroes Gorgeous! The emphasis is mine.

Seriously, does it get any better than “gorgeous”? No, I don’t think it does. Please take a few minutes to enjoy the ultimate fighting game name and mourn the loss of “turbo” and “hyper.” They were good to us.