The series plays similar to many other fighting games, but instead of a 6-button layout, the original "World Heroes" uses only 3 of the standard 4 Neo-Geo buttons: one for punching, another for kicking, and the last for throwing. The former two buttons can be held down longer in order to deliver stronger attacks, similar to the first "Street Fighter" control scheme, with only two levels of strength and using standard buttons instead of pneumatic buttons. In the SNES version (and later games, starting with "World Heroes 2 Jet"), it is possible to assign the 4 basic attacks to different buttons. In "World Heroes Perfect", each character had a traditional four-button attack layout, but could also achieve stronger attacks by pushing down two respective punch or kick buttons at the same time.