The game tried to set itself apart with unique features such as a heavier emphasis on its story, characters pulled from different time periods, reflectable projectiles, force fields, fighters that carried weapons, a training mode where players had to defend themselves against robotic traps, a novel method of executing moves, and elaborate stage-specific finishing moves called "Overkills".

Two years later, an enhanced version, Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side, was released for the Sega CD.

Eternal Champions was added to the Wii's Virtual Console download service on December 3, 2007, and included with the Sega Genesis Mini microconsole released in 2019.

An omniscient being known as the Eternal Champion predicts that mankind will soon fade from existence due to the untimely and unjust deaths of key individuals throughout history who were destined for greatness.

Seeking to restore balance to the world, the Eternal Champion gathers these souls from time moments before their deaths.

Beating arcade mode with any character reveals an epilogue detailing how the winner avoided their original death and then went on to make a positive change in their era.

[4] The cartridge was the second "packaged game" to be included with the Sega Activator, an elaborate infrared ring controller that players stood in and punched and kicked in order to make the characters perform different combat movements.

In the books, the reader controls the newest Champion and travels through time helping the game characters battle a megalomaniacal artificial intelligence called the Overlord, who is bent on replacing them with duplicates so that they cannot change the course of history for the better.

The characters also appeared in two stories in the main Sonic the Comic series, first in Eternal Champions (issues 19-24) and then Larson's [sic] Revenge (issues 37–40) which dealt with the professional thief Larcen Tyler returning to 1920s Chicago and working with the female ninja Shadow Yamoto to take down the crime boss who killed him.

[9] Upon the game's release, Eternal Champions was given a polarizing mixed reception,[10][11] and held an average aggregate score of 62.5% at GameRankings at the time of the site's 2019 closure.

[15] In 2008, IGN gave the Virtual Console release a score of 6 out of 10, criticizing its difficult to learn play mechanics while praising the game's story, training mode, and "inner strength meter".

[18] In 2011, Complex included it on the list of ten "most blatant Mortal Kombat ripoffs" but added that it was "one of the more successful faux-MK fighters" and "the only thing that sucked was the difficulty.

[21] Though Eternal Champions saw strong sales and was at one point a popular enough property to warrant a sequel, a remake, two spin-offs, and various multimedia tie-ins, after the planned third game in the core fighting series was cancelled Sega has not produced any new product for the franchise.

Rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's 1995 album E. 1999 Eternal was loosely inspired by the video game, not just in title, but even as far as the use of samples, such as the character bios theme for "Eternal", and the bad ending theme being the basis of the original "Crossroad", which would later be remixed, becoming the group's biggest single and earning them a Grammy.

Three new types of finishing moves were added in Challenge from the Dark Side: the second Overkill in each stage called Sudden Death (that could be activated when the victim still had a little life left), Vendetta, and Cinekill.

The plot is based in an alternate reality where Larcen Tyler did not die in 1920 as stated in Eternal Champions, and now seeks revenge on the Chicago Mafia.

Like Chicago Syndicate, its plot is based in an alternate reality, this time one where Shadow Yamoto did not die in 1993 and instead formed a vigilante group.

On August 16, 2024, a film adaptation based on the game was announced with Sega partnering with Skydance Media and set to be written by Derek Connolly.