Final Fight

The Good
I was one of those kids who never got a chance to really play Final Fight in the arcades. Most of my quarters were pumped into games like Gauntlet, Mortal Kombat, and Double Dragon since those were the main titles at my local arcade.

My first foray into Final Fight was when it was released for the Super Nintendo, and although many arcade purists will complain about a lot of missing content, it didn't phase me much since I never really knew it was missing in the first place.

Final Fight takes place in Metro City, a corrupted and violent city that has recently come under the jurisdiction of a new mayor, Mike Haggar. After a gang known as the Mad Gears attempt to buy off Haggar with no success, they kidnap his daughter Jessica to try to make him listen to their demands.

You can play as either Haggar or Jessica's boyfriend Cody in an attempt to take on the gang and clean up the streets. Both characters play differently, with Haggar being more powerful and slow, while Cody is more quick but weaker.

The player will venture through five different stages, and two bonus stages, which all look really good on the Super Nintendo hardware. The sprites are really large for a 16-bit game, and tends to make the player feel a lot more up close and personal than other beat em' ups from this era. Colors look vibrant, and animations are very good as well.

Final Fight makes it very easy for nearly anyone to pick up and play. There are only two buttons used on the controller, with one for a basic melee attack and the other for jumping. Some experimentation will lead you to uncovering some nice advanced attacks, and both buttons can be pressed together for a super attack. The learning curve is very easy, and makes controlling your player smooth and effective.

The Bad
One of the major gripes I hear about the SNES version is how much content was omitted. Prior to playing this version, I had no experience with the arcade version. I decided to try out the arcade version, and after doing so I can definitely say a lot of content was left out. This was not a major factor for me though, since I played the SNES version first, but I could see how it would be a negative to veterans of the arcade version.

The game also suffers from slowdown when a lot of enemies appear on screen. While this is definitely not game breaking, it still is annoying during critical times of a fight.

And finally, I really wish there was some sort of password or save feature. To beat Final Fight you will need a lot of practice to get down the patterns of the enemies and bosses. Nothing is more frustrating than playing the game for 40+ minutes, using all your continues, then having to restart over at the beginning of the game.

The Bottom Line
Overall Final Fight is a awesome beat em' up, which will surely please fans of the genre. While not perfect, Final Fight is a very fun game to play and remains a cult classic to many gamers.

Final Grade : A