Final Fight

aka: Final Fight CD, Street Fighter '89
Moby ID: 5088
Arcade Specs
Included in See Also

Description official description

The streets of Metro City are filled with criminals who are part of a gang called Mad Gear. Former wrestler and newly elected mayor Mike Haggar tries to do something about it, much to the displeasure of the Mad Gear Gang who kidnap his daughter Jessica. Only three people are brave enough to venture into the crime-infested streets and try to bring Jessica back.

Final Fight is a 2D side-scrolling fighting game. Taking on the role of either Cody, Guy, or the mayor Mike Haggar himself, you must advance through six areas of the city clearing out the gang infestation. You will have to cope with a variety of thugs, ranging from firebomb-throwing maniacs to behemoth wrestlers. To defeat these thugs, you have an arsenal of punches, kicks, throws, and jump kicks at your disposal.

The Sega CD port adds voice acting to the game's intro and ending cutscenes and also adds a time attack mode (beat up as many enemies as possible in a limited amount of time). This version can only display four enemies on screen at once. The C64 version can only display two enemies on screen at once.

The SNES version has seen some significant changes.

Spellings

  • ファイナルファイト - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Arcade version)

25 People (21 developers, 4 thanks)

Planner
Programmer
Hard
Character Design (Object)
Character Design (Scroll)
Music / Sound
Special Thanks

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 43 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 123 ratings with 5 reviews)

not as good as they say

The Good
Final Fight cd is often praised for it's good music, extra introduction screens and being close to the arcade conversion. The introduction has spoken dialogues and extra animated screens that aren't in the arcade. The game has also a time attack mode where the object is to defeat as many baddies as you can. This mode has some new locations that fit the game very well.

The Bad
This "good" music are just plain audio tracks, and what is so special about that? Anyone can just record real music and put it on a disc. The audio tracks just fade out and start over and that can be real ugly to listen to especially in the real long levels like the bay area. The game is still heavily censored: there is no blood, roxy and poison's clothes are larger, the liquor is still absent, the thug that discovers his car in a bad condition still says: "oh my car" etc. Most of the stuff is still missing, from the beginning you can tell those barrels are deleted and so it happens many times during play. This is just an incomplete arcade version. The graphics may be close to the real final fight, it's colours are definitely not. Maybe the sega cd couldn't do any better, but I cannot bear to see these washed out colours any longer. There is something wrong with the animation and the hit detection. For some reason I can't explain it simply does not play the same as the arcade version. And finally my real complaint about this conversion: The introduction with spoken words is real nice but why didn't they hire real voice actors?? Haggar doesn't sound like a mighty wrestler but like a wimp! The voice of the villain also sounds like a goof. I am not very happy about that, it is a major disappointment as it just doesn't fit the gorgeous animated introduction.

The Bottom Line
If you want to enjoy the arcade game to it's full glory you still have to stick with the real arcade game. However, if you are a real final fight fan like me, I do recommend you to watch the enhanced intro and to try out the time attack mode.

SEGA CD · by Schutzstaffel88 (12) · 2014

Better than Final Fight on the SNES. Worse than Streets of Rage 2.

The Good
Final Fight CD is was the best version of Final Fight to hit the home console market until 2005 when it came out for the Playstation 2. It has many features missing from the Super Nintendo translation such as the missing level, the female characters, and the missing playable character, Guy.

There are some extra features and graphics not found in any other version of Final Fight such as additional into screens. There are also three timed levels with new backgrounds that are not found in the Arcade. I would rather they had incorporated them into the main part of the game as extra levels than making them selectable demos, however.

It is better than Final Fight for the SNES, better than Streets of Rage for the Genesis, and better than Final Fight 3. It is inferior to Streets of Rage 2 and about on par with Final Fight 2.

This was the best fighting game for the Sega CD and was among the main reasons many purchased the Sega CD system (which had few merits).

The Bad
The color pallet on this game is tremendously reduced from the arcade game, making the graphics inferior to its SNES counterpart.

This is not excusable because Sega's own Streets of Rage 2 had far more colorful graphics than Final Fight CD. Final Fight CD has all of the muscle of the Sega CD's extra processor and extra storage capacity leading one to believe that the only reason it could possibly have such a washed out color pallet is due to lazy programmers.

The music tracks are silly. I would rather have had a duplication to the Arcade game than the silly jazz tracks they put on this CD. The voices are also campy and poorly acted.

The game is has worse play control than the arcade resulting in difficult situations in which it is impossible not to get killed (in later stages).

The Bottom Line
This is arguably the best version of Final Fight to come to home systems prior to the Capcom Classics Collection for the PS2. It has some extra features seen in no other version of Final Fight making it worthwhile for collectors. I'd recommend the PS2 version over this one, however.

If you like this game I would also recommend the following: Streets of Rage 2 (Genesis) Final Fight 2 (SNES) Captain Commando (SNES) Capcom Classics Collection (PS2) *Streets of Rage (Genesis)

SEGA CD · by Majestic Lizard (670) · 2014

A bold attempt considering the circumstances but one that is ultimately lacking.

The Good
Amiga Final Fight features some pretty great graphics for a beat 'em up on this system. The sprites are actually from the arcade machine and haven't been custom re-drawn like the SNES port. Even with the reduced colour palette it still looks monstrous and considering the viewport on screen is smaller this makes the sprites appear even bigger. The sound effects are from the arcade game too, albeit at a bit of a higher pitch and clicker due to the Amiga sound format and they appear to have had a boost at around 10kHz for clarity. All are very meaty and satisfying.

The game plays very smoothly too. There's no real jerkiness anywhere (bar some slowdown) like other Amiga titles and there are lovely touches like the way bodies will bounce or slide when they hit the ground or the player does a little hop when they get punched by an enemy. The programming is watertight as there are no glitches anywhere and there's also some really clever stuff going on in realtime in order to load, move and scroll those huge graphics around, which is working the poor little blitter chip like a hungry slave.

The intro is incredibly impressive, which is pretty much arcade perfect and features an astounding piece of music which was chosen by the programmer himself from the Amiga demo scene.

The Bad
It's all just spread far too thin. The game has all the features of the original which look good on paper (all the levels, all the characters and a 2 player mode) but it means everything has had to equally take a hit. As such most of the player moves are missing and the enemy AI has been reduced to a basic pattern for just about all the baddies. It's playable to a point but the lack of variety from only having about 4 moves means it becomes monotonous very quickly. The SNES port made a couple of huge sacrifices in specific areas and used the space to cram in the rest to its best level, but the Amiga conversion almost equally skims the top off of everything. (Different systems though, so it's an unfair comparison).

The absence of any in game music makes the play feel even more sterile and bare although this is 100% down to US Gold not bothering to hire a composer to do any music for the game.

The thing I dislike most about this game is the fact that it could have been so much better, as the foundation is solid but it was ruined by US Gold only hiring a one man development team and giving him a ridiculously tight deadline of around 5 months to complete it in. No resources were provided aside from a bare arcade PCB board (which the programmer himself ripped the sprites from with a homemade ROM reader) and everything had to be written from scratch in Assembler language by pretty much just looking at how the arcade game played and trying to guess how it worked rather than having a proper code reference.

The Bottom Line
If you had never played the arcade game then Amiga Final Fight is a decent enough time in short bursts. It's fun in two player mode and at the end of the day there are far worse beat 'em ups for the system.

In saying that, if you were a fan of the coin-op you just can't ignore the glaring omissions. The sad fact is that if the programmer had been furnished with a labeled printout of the arcade source code (apparently the Speccy programmer had this), some sprite sheets and a more relaxed deadline, this probably would have been one of the all time great conversions. As it was, most of the time was gobbled up ripping sprites and writing the game code from nothing, so what we got was just as much as could be done in the time given.

Being an Amiga, you were never going to get an arcade perfect conversion due to the vast differences in hardware power between the arcade game and the Commodore machine, but if you put your burning love for the coin-op to one side it's really not a bad game if taken on its own steam. As a conversion though, it's sorely lacking.

Amiga · by Kitsune Mifune (4) · 2017

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

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.

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 was based on a wrestler called 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.

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.

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Final Fight 3
Released 1995 on SNES, 2009 on Wii, 2013 on Wii U
Final Fight Revenge
Released 1999 on Arcade, SEGA Saturn
Mighty Final Fight
Released 1993 on NES, 2014 on Nintendo 3DS, Wii U
Final Fight 2
Released 1993 on SNES, 2009 on Wii, 2013 on Wii U
Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight
Released 1990 on NES, 2014 on Nintendo 3DS, Wii U
Final Fantasy XIII-2 Pack: Fight in Style
Released 2012 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams
Released 1995 on PlayStation, Windows, 2000 on Game Boy Color...
Street Fighter 6 (Ultimate Edition)
Released 2023 on PlayStation 4, Windows, PlayStation 5
Street Fighter 6 (Deluxe Edition)
Released 2023 on Xbox Series, PlayStation 5, Windows

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 5088
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by NeoMoose.

Arcade added by 666gonzo666. iPhone added by Sciere. ZX Spectrum added by Martin Smith. J2ME added by Deleted. SEGA CD added by Satoshi Kunsai. Sharp X68000 added by Terok Nor. Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC added by Katakis | カタキス. Atari ST, Amiga added by The Ring Hawk.

Additional contributors: Terok Nor, Satoshi Kunsai, chirinea, Alaka, Martin Smith, Lance Boyle, Caelestis, CalaisianMindthief, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added October 4, 2001. Last modified March 4, 2024.