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)

A bad game, but with an attitude!

The Good
The intro with the digitized meatheads! :-D

The Bad
A whole lot, but especially its brief duration.

The Bottom Line
This beat em-up is a conversion of the homonymous Atari’s coin-op arcade game. It introduces us to the cruel and brutal world of the illegal sport of Pit Fighting. Our goal is to win the championship and make money in the process. There are three available fighters to choose from: Buzz, Ty and Kato. They excel in power, agility and speed respectively.

Probably the best part of the game is the introduction. Here, with a nice tune playing in the background, the three challengers demonstrate themselves: Buzz clashes the heads of two of his opponents together, then he shows off his muscles and does some weightlifting. Ty is doing crunches, eliminates a foe with a kick in head and afterwards relaxes with some feet stretching and some rope jumping. Kato neutralizes an attacking enemy blindfolded, meditates on a hill top, smashes a block of ice and spins a wooden sword.

After we choose our contestant we enter the pit. There, we will face eight lethal competitors. Let’s meet these distinguished citizens, from the eighth in rank and going up:

‘The Executioner’ occupies the last place. The only thing that will get executed is his will, for he is not much of a challenge.

Then we have ‘Southside Jim’, he is small and fast. Apparently, he fights to cover his mother’s medical expenses. He is probably the reason for them.

There is also a female participant. Her name is ‘Angel’ and she should reconsider her manners and dressing style.

Next is ‘Mad Miles’, he is a Vietnam veteran. He is also mad. ‘CC Rider’ is the biker with the unknown past. Maybe we don’t miss anything important after all.

In the third place we see ‘Heavy Metal’. He is definitely not music for our ears.

‘Chainman Eddie’ has an eccentric taste in jewelry. He is also the champion’s henchman, like he needed one.

‘The Ultimate Warrior’ is the unbeaten champion with the original name. He is the one we have to overthrow.

The graphics are badly designed and extremely poor. Both the animation and movement of the fighters are spasmodic and unconvincing. There is a small number of different locations where the fighting takes place. Only the absolutely necessary elements are graphically represented and even these in a moderate way (e.g. The crowd that watches the fight are black and white figures). The one interesting feature of the graphics is that the sprites of the characters are digitized from real people, definitely something innovative for the period of release. The only music available is the introductory theme playing tirelessly, over and over. Sound effects are almost none existent. Note that we have to choose which one of the two we will hear during playing.

Vigorous player activity is highly important in this game. Victory in battles will come as the result of mechanical and extremely fast pressing of keys. The challengers have four attack moves, one of which is a ‘special move’ that inflicts more damage. Every character has a six-square energy bar, when a square is exhausted he faints for a little. During this time he is vulnerable to enemy hits. He can also be picked up from the floor and get thrown around. The three energy bars in our disposal prove more than we need to finish the game easily, in less than half an hour. Around the pit, some useful objects are placed: A knife for stabbing. A stick for beating. A barrel, some throwing stars, and a motorbike(!) for launching against our enemies. Also, in one level there is a power pill that enhances our fighting performance. It is crucial that we use these items because they give a winning advantage. After every two matches we participate in a ‘grudge match’, where we have to achieve three knockdowns against one of the initial trio of challengers. Out of lack of fighters, we will fight against ‘Angel’, ‘Southside Jim’, and ‘Chainman Eddie’ twice. We must win in the necessary twelve matches to be declared champions. Two-player game is supported, but it finally comes down to a key pressing contest that quickly gets pointless.

“Pit-Fighter” is a traumatic gaming experience. There are much better representatives of the genre to try, so you may not want to be distracted by this one.

DOS · by Iron Lord (40) · 2016

Gives Use for the Word Turd

The Good
Well, this game gives me a reason to use the word “turd.” Read on and you’ll see it.

Because of the overall style of the game, it gives ample fodder for gay jokes. Just wait, when you see your character flexing while standing on a forklift with the word “STUDLY” atop the screen, try to contain the urge to mock this turd. See? There’s one use of the word.

Oh, the two-player mode is co-op, which is kind of unique to the era this game came from.

The Bad
Aside from the ability to make ample gay jokes at this game, there’s little else of value here. And to be honest, that hardly seems like any kind of actual value at all.

The graphics are the ultimate turd of this game. In fact, that’s pretty much how they look. All brownish and lumpy and unattractive. Something that, if you saw it on the sidewalk, you wouldn’t just avoid it, but you’d stop in your tracks and then take extra care to make sure you don’t step in or too close to it. Because you don’t want this game lingering on any part of you. Not your shoes, not your hands, not your eyes, not your psyche. The goal was to, obviously, copy Mortal Kombat in this regard—to use some killer digitized graphics to create a more realistic-looking game. This is not like Mortal Kombat. That game featured some of the largest sprites found in a fighting game up to that point (deep into the 16-bit era), they were colorful, vibrant, and rife with personality. None of that is found here. The characters look ugly, bland, and uninspired. Sprites aren’t very big, and the usable characters all look almost exactly the same. Color use is so minimal and so poor that this could almost pass for an NES title.

The digitized graphical look is further damaged by the near lack of frames animating these characters. There isn’t even a semblance of fluidity here—just straight jittery images that only barely qualify as the bare minimum for animation.

Every stage uses almost the same background, with the exception of the lame grudge matches. Looking at pictures of the stages side-by-side (like I am on the back of the case right now) is the only way to notice any actual difference. In the game, the design is so weak that you likely won’t notice. So there’s all of, like, ten kilobits of space on the cartridge used for backgrounds. The backgrounds are also filled with jittery animated people serving as an audience. Sometimes audience members step out to mock you or push you back into the pit to fight. It really adds nothing to the game, and while it might have passed for unique at the time the game was released, it generally serves to be annoying.

The fighting game engine is shallow beyond compare (well, okay, I could compare it to Battle Blaze, but next to no one has ever played that, so what would be the point?). Amazingly, blocking is accomplished pressing the A and C buttons together. Keep in mind that the Genesis controller has that big old B button between those two, so blocking is now removed from gameplay. There’s a punch, a kick, and a jump button and really no special moves. Pressing all three buttons together activates the single special move per character. Perhaps in an effort to add some depth to the fighting, there are items (like crates and barrels) scattered about the arenas for characters to throw at each other. They generally don't seem any more affective than just spamming the kick button, and trying to pick them up tends to open you up for attack and some of the choppiest animation you'll likely ever see.

Because the animation is so choppy and the hit detection so hit-or-miss, there’s never any guarantee that you’re actually doing anything other than spamming buttons while you and the computer take turns damaging each other.

Speaking of life bars, the damage you take carries over from one fight to the next, which means the game is always like the survival mode in a much more fleshed out fighter.

There are only three usable characters, and they’re pretty much interchangeable except for that solitary special move I mentioned. They all have red pants, no shirts, and coloration like a turd—except gayer. So yeah, the characters are like big ol’ gay turds. Crude, I know, but strangely accurate--not exactly a pinnacle of artistic design. It looks like the digitization was done with a prototype digital camera from the early 90’s where the quality is measured is micropixels rather than megapixels. With only three playable characters, no real move depth, and no variance in character design, the amount of content in this game drops to almost nothing.

The music and sound effects are terrible. Not much else I can say about it, except that they’re terrible. The music is flat out annoying and among the worst you’ll find on the Genesis. The sound effects, essentially, all sound the same. Think of what generic early 90’s video games sound like, and downgrade them a bit and that’s what you have here.

While there is some variance to the design of the enemy characters, it doesn’t save them from being downright generic and they all fall into the same category of turdish ugliness as the rest of the graphical presentation seen here. The story is not elaborated upon in the game at all, so apparently it’s just about one of three guys fighting to be the best pit-fighter guy around. I don’t have the manual, and who knows, maybe it mentions it in there, but as for the game, no effort was put into any kind of story presentation at all.

The two-player mode is just lame. While it is interesting that it’s co-op and in a fighting game, it’s also just lame as hell. Sure, that’s somewhat interesting, but this is the ONLY two-player mode. There’s no one-on-one fighting going on here. But then, maybe that’s a blessing in disguise since, again, there are only three playable characters.


The Bottom Line
Fighting games, man. It’s like there’s no tender middle to the way these things are made. Either they’re straight awesome or straight crap. This is one for that pile of straight crap. Up to now, I’ve reviewed two other fighting games, Shaq-Fu and Battle Blaze, both of which also shamefully drop themselves into that crap pile. You might notice that I used up the “like” part of this review with filler.

This game is pretty much terrible all around, and while I did manage to find some redeeming points in crap like Shaq-Fu, there simply is none to find here. The graphics are turds, the sound is a turd, the feel is a turd. The game is just a massive turd. I know that’s not super descriptive, but it’s pretty much the most apt word in the English language for this game. It’s so shallow that most gamers will likely tire of playing the game long before they finish it even once—and that’s considering that it can be finished in probably about 10 or 15 minutes depending on your button mashing skills. You’ll be tired of it before that time is up.

Pit-Fighter is simply not worth your time.

Genesis · by ResidentHazard (3555) · 2010

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

[ 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

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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. Atari ST, ZX Spectrum 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.