Final Fight

aka: Final Fight CD, Street Fighter '89
Moby ID: 5088

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The Arcade version of Final Fight appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Amiga port theme music

Jolyon Myers' theme music from the game's Amiga port is an original composition of his called Lost In Time, originally made for the 1990 Amiga demo/musicdisk Amazing Tunes II, which also had other tunes by Myers under his scene name The Judge (Final Fight credits him under that name rather than with his real name). While the actual compositions and samples are identical between both versions, the version used on Final Fight plays slightly faster than the original Amazing Tunes II version.

Amiga startup-sequence code reference

Amiga version programmer Richard Aplin included a humorous piece of text in that version's startup sequence, in which he dismisses the accomplishment of Ronald Pieket Weeserik's Dynamic Loading System, used in SWIV to load the game as it played without losing any speed. Aplin argues that others had written the same code trick before, but found it too unwieldy to justify its use in most circumstances - though it was on show in Final Fight.

Development

Capcom firstly designed Final Fight to be the sequel to Street Fighter named Street Fighter '89, but they changed their minds and decided to give the game a new name and start a new series. Akira Nishitani said in Retro Gamer 37:

"Our intention was to develop Final Fight" as an original game in its own right - and that's what we did. However, "Street Fighter" had such a high name value, we decided to make use of its recognition and changed the name to "Street Fighter'89" fof a game show where it was displayed. At the game show it received an excellent reception, proving even more popular than we could have hoped. But this really wasn't related to "Street Fighter". We'd made "Final Fight" as we'd intended - with a totally different and new world view, so once its popularity had been confirmed, we decided to go back to the original name."

Sales

According to publisher Capcom, Final Fight has sold 1.48 million copies worldwide since its initial release (as of June 30, 2016).

Version differences

  • All home computer versions of Final Fight include a shot of the Mayor's daughter tied up in her underwear during the opening sequence, which was only seen in Japanese arcades (it was censored in Europe and America).
  • The female gang members (Poison/Roxy, etc.) haven't had much luck appearing in the home ports of the game. All the Nintendo versions replaced them completely with male enemies (this includes the GBA remake, at least the US version) and while they appear in some rare ports they can only be found with edited clothing. Only the rare Japanese SEGA CD version shows them in their original form.
  • In contrast to the SNES version of Final Fight, the U.S. version of Final Fight CD had less differences to the original Japanese version: the girl punks were given slightly longer clothes, blood was taken out, Jessica wears her red dress in the intro (she was stripped to her underwear in the arcade and Japanese versions), DamnD's name was changed to Thrasher, Sodom's name was changed to Katana, the "SEXY" graffiti from the restroom stalls in one level was removed, and the references to beer and whisky were removed.

Wrestling connection

The enemy Andore bears resemblance to a wrestler called Andre the Giant however Akira Nishitani in Retro Gamer 37 stated that he had a friend whose nickname was "Andre" and it was actually him who the characters in "Final Fight" were named after. Though, Akira also admitted that those characters do look like Andre The Giant.

The story of Mike Haggar also has a parallel with the story of former wrestler Jesse Ventura, who left the ring to become governor in Minnesota.

Easter eggs

Japanese version of the game is filled with many Easter eggs.

  • When you smashed up a bucket and a drum, if you could hit the right button at the right time the items change into lump of gold or a diamond that are worth 10000 points each.
  • On level 3 Edi.E - the boss spits out the gum. It is possible to pick it up. When your character has full energy, it gives you 42910 points which is the date of birth of Akira Nishitani (42nd year of Showa Era (1967), September 10th).
  • If you complete the last level on one coin, you can see a special ending which in Japan was called the "gyudon" (translated means "beef bowl").

Bonus stages

There were many different ideas for the bonus stages. It was planned to have a crash bonus rounds like destroying a piano and a house as well as beating bad guys until they were buried in the ground up to their shoulders. Eventually all these ideas (some of them were even developed) were cut out.

Awards

  • Commodore Format
    • July 1993 (Issue 34) - Modern Classics: Beat-'em-ups (It's a Croaker!)
    • November 1994 (Issue 50) – #2 & #5 The Bottom 10

Information also contributed by Alexander Michel, Cantillon, Depth Lord, Johnny "ThunderPeel2001" Walker, Perfil Falso, and Zovni.

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Trivia contributed by Satoshi Kunsai, Alaka, Martin Smith, Lance Boyle, CalaisianMindthief, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, FatherJack.