Pit-Fighter

aka: Pit-Fighter: The Ultimate Competition, PitFighter: The Ultimate Challenge
Moby ID: 1266
Arcade Specs
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Description official descriptions

Pit-Fighter is a 3rd-person fight game that features digitized graphics of real fighters and zooming effects. Players select one of three fighters (Buzz, Ty or Kato) to take on anyone who dares. At the conclusion of a match, players are individually awarded a Knockout Bonus, Brutality Bonus, and a Fight Purse. Every third match is a Grudge Match where players test the skills of each other. The last man standing is the winner of this three-knockdown match. Players fight their way to the Elimination Match to decide who wins the opportunity to dethrone the champion, the Masked Warrior.

Spellings

  • ピットファイター - Japanese spelling
  • 피트 파이터 - Korean spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Arcade version)

43 People (32 developers, 11 thanks) · View all

Buzz
Ty
Kato
Executioner
Southside Jim
Chainman
Mad Miles
Heavy Metal
C.C. Rider
Angel
Masked Warrior
Knife Woman
Knife Man
Finale Women
Project Leaders
Project Designers
Programmers
Digital Imaging
Engineers
Lead Animator
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 59% (based on 48 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.3 out of 5 (based on 110 ratings with 6 reviews)

Like a bad Xerox copy, this port amplifies the flaws in the original.

The Good
The graphics effort in porting the game was admirable. There is no easy way to downmix 256-color graphics with multiple palettes to a 16-color format -- in a quarter of the resolution. So the fact that the graphics look as good as they do is impressive. (Note that I wrote "as good as they do", not "great".)

Two fighters can battle via ComLynx.

The Bad
The original game had very little to like about it except that it was arguably the very first fighting game with digitized sprites (human actors or otherwise). Mortal Kombat came out two years after the original Pit-Fighter, so for two years, Pit-Fighter was it. Unfortunately, the actual game itself was flawed: The computer AI was fixed at a difficult level, but the AI had holes. So if you didn't "get it", it was insanely difficult; if you "got it", it was rediculously easy.

The sound is truly abysmal. Very short, very repetative music that irritates within 20 seconds. And there was absolutely no digitized sound whatsoever, which seems unexcusable.



The Bottom Line
All Lynx coin-op ports have a reputation for being among the most accurate ports to any system; the positives are accentuated, adapted, and enhanced, while the negatives are downplayed. Pit-Fighter is no exception, except there was very little to be positive about. Unless you have an overwhelming desire to fight a friend over ComLynx, there is no reason to buy this game.

Lynx · by Trixter (8952) · 2003

At the very bottom of the pit

The Good
For starters the game takes place on illegal streetfights and I do mean illegal, with nice touches like weapons, chairs and other stuff to use against your opponent, you also have some power-ups around and the fights can include multiple opponents which is why the 2-player cooperative gameplay is a nice addition. The crowd also joins in on the excitement and for the first time in any game I've ever seen they can hit you or push you back if you get too close to them, pretty cool idea.

Noteworthy for the game are the crude but eye-catching digitized graphics, which were a first for a 2D fighter and predate even Mortal Kombat by some time.

The Bad
Everything. And that which wasn't crap on the original arcade version was made crappier on this PC port.

For starters you have only 3 fighters, and they are the same typical boring characters one associates with this type of games: the beefed-up powerhouse, the fast martial artist, and the "guy in-between" which in this particular case is practically identical to the martial artist but slightly stronger. The game has a barely readable life bar which is depleted in a nanosecond and (get this) doesn't refill between fights!! That's right, so the whole game is like this gigantic "survival mode"... cool, uh? The special moves are non-existant and the control scheme is slow and unforgiving which makes the already slow gameplay even more boring... but that's on the arcade version, when Pit Fighter got ported to the pc it got even worse! And the graphics and sounds were completely trashed, specially the graphics which for some odd reason are all vertically-expanded and seem to have lost half of the already few frames of animation they had.

The Bottom Line
Stay the hell away from this stinker, ok? Get out NOW!! Run Fool, RUUUN!

DOS · by Zovni (10504) · 2003

The Worst Licensed/Fighting Game on the SNES.

The Good
Can't find anything However techinically: - Not as bad as Hong Kong 97 - Proof that Shaq Fu isn't the worst fighting game - Reason to make a website called 'destroypitfighter.com' - That's it.

The Bad
Oh boy, where do I begin? - Your health doesn't regenerate, so if you didn't somehow beat the first enemy with 75+ HP, you're pretty much screwed. - Remember that 'Genesis Does What Nintendon't' campaign. It's bullshit. I've checked everything and the SNES is pretty much better in every way (except graphics). However, Pit-Fighter on the Genesis is way better than this pile of trash. - Shaq Fu (a game that's just bad, not horrible) has a website dedicated to destroying copies of it, while Pit-Fighter on the SNES (A game so bad it makes Shaq Fu look like Super Street Fighter 2) doesn't.

The Bottom Line
2/10. Absolute Trash. I'm being generous with the score too.

SNES · by JDomarus · 2023

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

Cancelled Atari 7800 version

Atari had a 7800 port underway, outsourced to Imagitec Design, but abandoned it around 1992. You can read about it here.

DOS version

The DOS port of Pit-Fighter inexplicably uses a sprite resizing algorithm that stretches only vertically, not horizontally. This results in very odd-looking "skinny" fighters onscreen (as well as almost everything else).

Awards

  • Commodore Format
    • July 1993 (Issue 34) - Modern Classics: Beat-'em-ups (Check 'em out)

Information also contributed by Игги Друге

Analytics

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1266
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by rcoltrane.

SEGA Master System added by Bock. ZX Spectrum, Atari ST added by Martin Smith. Commodore 64 added by festershinetop. Arcade added by Pseudo_Intellectual. Antstream added by lights out party. Amstrad CPC added by Katakis | カタキス. Game Boy added by quizzley7.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Alaka, formercontrib, j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】, Garcia, Rik Hideto, FatherJack.

Game added April 2, 2000. Last modified January 27, 2024.