Final Fight
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Final Fight is a side-scrolling beat-'em-up video game produced by Capcom. Originally released as an arcade game in 1989, it was the seventh title released for the CP System hardware. It was originally meant to be a sequel to 1987's Street Fighter but became a spin-off series, getting four sequels: 1993's Final Fight 2, 1995's Final Fight 3, 1999's Final Fight Revenge, and 2006's Final Fight: Streetwise.
Plot
Haggar, a former street fighter has become mayor of Metro City, a city under the rule of the violent Mad Gear Gang. Incorruptible, Haggar has refused numerous bribes from the gang and has slowly begun weakening their power. In an effort to bring the mayor under their rule, the Mad Gear Gang has kidnapped Haggar's daughter, Jessica. Still refusing to let the Mad Gear Gang win, Haggar takes the fight to them and recruits Cody Travers, Jessica's boyfriend, and Cody's best friend Guy to assist him.
Why It's The Final Fight (In A Good Way)
- Three characters to choose from each with their own unique abilities, which was more than the usual standards in 1989.
- Haggar: Can grapple enemies and use Wrestling techniques against them. He is stronger than all of the characters in the game at the cost of speed.
- Cody: The only character who can stab with a knife rather than just throwing it. Has balanced speed and strength in comparison to Haggar and Guy.
- Guy: Very agile and can pull off a special wall-jump. Is the fastest of the three but at the cost of being the weakest in strength.
- The graphics are really good for the time, having beatiful sprite work, great color palette and also, they are very detailled for a 1989 Arcade game, it look even better than a lot of other games of the time, and they still are great to look at to this day.
- This game only has one attack button unlike most beat-em-ups. This may sound bad, but other beat-em-ups at the time like Double Dragon and Renegade had 2 buttons for each direction to attack in, which made those games clunky in comparison to Final Fight.
- All of the ports are good, and also most of them had a fair of improvements and some of the port could even give some different experiences with this game, which include:
- The Sega CD port had reworked cutscenes to look more like an animated series, and while it isn't as good as the like of Double Dragon 2: The Revenge on the PC-Engine, they are still pretty good and well animated for the time, combined with decent voice acting.
- The Game Boy Advance version had a score system, as well as reworking some of the gameplay mechanics, it also had an extra stage that doesn't exist in the other versions, and there is dialogues with the bosses, much like Double Dragon Advance (Though that one was released in 2003, not 2001).
- The X68000 port is one of the most faithful port of the game, and while it isn't as good as the Sega CD port, it is still fun to play and is still one of the best port.
- Extremely fun, fast-paced gameplay that will never bore you except if you doesn't like beat em up, as not only does it is fast but also it is satistying to beat up your opponents, not to mention that there is variaty due to how different the three playable characters are.
- The story is pretty good, a gang try to get Haggar in it but he refused multiple times, so in order to make him quit and join their gang, they kidnapped his daughter, so Haggar take the fight to Cody and Guy, and Haggar join the playable roster too.
- A lot of characters from the series would later appear in the Street Fighter series, such as Cody and Guy.
- Great controls, the characters will never feel unresponsive nor clunky, since they always respond to your commands, the controls revolutionized the beat-em-up genre to this day.
- Six stages with their own gimmicks and unique bosses as well, as well as being some of the most unique stages in a beat em up.
- The level design is pretty great, since the levels are all unique, and most of them are designed with the difficulty of the game, and while at times it might be repetitive or poorly designed, the levels are still awesome like how they are supposed to be.
- Amazing soundtrack that is begging to be in your MP3 player or smart phone right about now, especially the Arcade and Sega CD versions that had some of the best soundtrack in a 1989 game, it will never ever be repetitive or annoying to listen.
Bad Qualities
- While all the ports are good, some have huge flaws that make them almost bad port or at least keep them from being as awesome as the Arcade original, such as:
- The SNES version is notorious for being a decent port but is ruined by the extremely hard difficulty that could make the game almost unbeatable, and due to some of the levels being overly long, and the fact that there are no checkpoints, it safe to say that this port had fake difficulty and is very unbalanced.
- The GBA version is better than the SNES port but a fatal flaw is that once again there's not any checkpoints in the levels, though the difficulty isn't as broken and the port is still much easier to beat.
- The Final Fight Guy version is a bit of a cash grab, since it is pretty much the same game as the original SNES port, only with replacing Cody with Guy, and reworking a little bit the difficulty to be more balanced, though it is still a great game notheless.
- Like Magic Sword, the Super Nintendo version lack the two-player mode, which is dissapointing since the SNES was capable of producing a two player mode in a game, though it is somewhat understable considering that the SNES version came out in 1990 but still.
- The emulation of the arcade game on Final Fight: Streetwise is horrible thanks to the lack of music and poor framerate.
- The game can be extremely frustrating at times, especially on the Arcade and SNES version.
Reception
Critical
Final Fight was acclaimed by critics and players and is considered to be one of the best beat em up of 1989, and possibly one of the best beat em up of all time, Mega magazine compared the Mega CD version of the game favorably against the incomplete and "poor" Super NES version and placed it top of their list of the best Mega CD games of all time. The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly declared it a strong conversion of a game with "solid fighting action", though two of them also commented that "the necessity of the CD is questionable at best."
Bran D. Butter reviewed the SNES version, giving it a generally favorable review, calling it a "classy beat 'em" and praising the "superb" graphics. However, the review criticized missing features from the arcade original, including the lack of two-player, missing levels and the missing player character Guy. On release of the Game Boy Advance version of the game, Famitsu magazine scored it a 31 out of 40.
Accolades
In the February 1991 issue of the Japanese coin-operated video game magazine Gamest, Final Fight took the No. 1 spot as the Best Game of 1990 in the 4th Annual Grand Prize. Final Fight also won the category of Best Action Game, placed No. 4 in Best Video Game Music, No. 9 in Best Graphics, No. 2 in Best Direction and No. 5 in Best Album. The character Mike Haggar was displayed on the cover of this issue, who took the No. 1 spot in the Top 50 Characters of the year, with Guy in second place, Cody at No. 7, Poison at No. 26, Sodom at No. 33 and Jessica at No. 40. In a 1991 Gamest reader poll, Final Fight was voted the second-best arcade game of all time, just below Valkyrie no Densetsu (1990). In 1995, Total! ranked the game 87th on its Top 100 SNES Games writing: "Tragically, it's missing one of the main characters but this was still a stonking conversion."
Crash gave the ZX Spectrum port a "Crash Smash" award. MegaTech gave the Sega Mega-CD port a "Hyper Game" award. Final Fight was acclaimed by critics and players, and is considered to be one of the best beat em up of it's time and maybe one of the best beat em up, Mega magazine compared the Mega CD version of the game favorably against the incomplete and "poor" Super NES version and placed it top of their list of the best Mega CD games of all time. The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly declared it a strong conversion of a game with "solid fighting action", though two of them also commented that "the necessity of the CD is questionable at best."
Bran D. Butter reviewed the SNES version, giving it a generally favorable review, calling it a "classy beat 'em" and praising the "superb" graphics. However, the review criticized missing features from the arcade original, including the lack of two-player, missing levels and the missing player character Guy. On release of the Game Boy Advance version of the game, Famitsu magazine scored it a 31 out of 40.
Commercial
In Japan, Game Machine listed Final Fight on their January 15, 1990 issue as being the second-most-successful table arcade cabinet of the month. It went on to be the highest-grossing arcade game of 1990 in Japan (according to the annual Gamest charts), as well as Japan's second-highest-grossing arcade game of 1991 (just below Street Fighter II).
Overseas, the game had a successful launch in North America and Europe. In the United States, it was a blockbuster hit, becoming the top-grossing new video game on the RePlay arcade charts in February 1990, and then the top-grossing software conversion kit for eight months in 1990, from March to April, then from June to October, and then December. During November and December, weekly coin drop earnings averaged $183.50 per kit. It ended the year as America's highest-grossing arcade conversion kit of 1990. Final Fight sold a total of 30,000 arcade units worldwide.
The Super NES version was also a commercial success. It sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, becoming one of Capcom's best-selling games on the platform.
Trivia
- Guy and Sodom were featured as playable characters in the original Street Fighter Alpha released in 1995 with Sodom trading his katana blades in favor of a pair of jitte. Rolento was then added to the playable roster in 1996's Street Fighter Alpha 2, followed by Cody in 1998's Street Fighter Alpha 3, who was reimagined as an escaped convict. Also in Alpha 3, if Sodom is selected under the X-ISM system, he will fight with a pair of katanas again.
- In Guy's stage in Street Fighter Alpha 2, all the characters from Final Fight make cameo appearances in the background such as Cody, Haggar, Jessica, Poison and Hugo.
- Final Fight One is the only version of Final Fight that includes dialogue sequences with the player characters and the current stage boss. It has minor character color change options, a Sound Test to listen to the game's soundtrack and voice clips, a Stage Select and Starting Lives feature, the ability to play as the Alpha versions of Guy and Cody and an option to use rapid attacks.
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