Friday, February 27, 2015

Final Fight - Too Much Muscle for Consoles
How one of my SNES favorites was forever displaced by its bulkier arcade brother.


I'll come right out and say it: Final Fight is my favorite arcade game of all time! Over the years, I've played through it a countless number of times, and I've spent dozens of hours enjoying its supreme beat-'em-up action.

Now, I love Rolling Thunder, Ninja Gaiden, Double Dragon, Bad Dudes Vs. Dragon Ninja, WWF Wrestlefest and Saturday Night Slam Masters, and I consider them to be some of the greatest action games ever made, but whenever I desire to have the absolute best arcade-action-game experience possible, I turn not to any of them but instead to Final Fight, which delivers fun in a way that the others simply can't. Each time I play Final Fight, I'm able to aggressively plow my way through large crowds of enemies and destroy foes with absolutely crushing strikes and slams and consequently enjoy the most viscerally pleasing, satisfying action an arcade game has ever offered!

Final Fight always provides me exactly what I'm looking for. That's why it's one of my go-to action games. It's why I've been returning to it frequently for over 20 years.

And I have much to say about my experiences with Final Fight. I have so many stories to tell.

But, well, I can't go into detail about my history with the game without first making a shameful confession: I had my first Final Fight experience not with the arcade original but rather with the SNES version, and for about two years, I was completely unaware of arcade Final Fight's existence! During that time, I thought that the SNES version was a console-exclusive game; I had no idea that it was actually a port of an arcade game!

I doubt that I can offer an adequate explanation as to how I, a frequent arcade-goer, remained oblivious to the existence of a revolutionary, scene-changing arcade classic for such a long period of time, so I won't even bother trying to come up with one. Instead I'll simply ask that you overlook my stupidity and continue reading.


So it all started in early 1991, on the day when Nintendo Power Volume 22 arrived at my house.

This particular volume, I learned while browsing through it, contained a special feature: a three-page Winter Consumer Electronics Show report that detailed some of the events that occurred at Nintendo's CES booth. It spoke of the author's experiences with upcoming NES and Game Boy products and his interactions with special guests like Alexey Pajitnov and the Ultimate Warrior.

And the piece also had a "Super NES Showcase" section that talked about games that were coming to Nintendo's next-generation console soon after its launch. One such game immediately caught my eye: an untitled action game whose visuals were extremely impressive. There was only a single screenshot of the game, but what that single screenshot displayed was more intriguing than what most other games were able to display with several screenshots. It showed large, highly detailed characters battling it out in a realistic-looking bay-area setting, and it exhibited unmatched sprite and texture design.

"These graphics look awesome!" I thought to myself.

But as soon as I got a look at the screenshot's accompanying text, my mood quickly changed. The piece's author stated that this untitled action game was actually a new entry in the Street Fighter series, and the moment I read that, I lost all interest in it. I promptly put it out of my mind and moved on the magazine's next page.

Now, I didn't have anything against fighting games, no. I was fine with them. I thought that they had as much potential as any to be great (I mean, I loved Street Fighter II and considered it to be one of the most brilliant games ever made!). It was just that I didn't believe that they were a good fit for consoles. They didn't have enough content to justify a $50 price tag, and they had very limited value to someone who wasn't constantly surrounded by friends (because playing against CPU players was incredibly boring).

(Also, because I was still irrationally resentful of the SNES, I was actively looking for reasons not to be too interested in its games. If you want to know why I was behaving that way, kindly read my Super Mario World piece.)


Though, the situation was largely remedied by Nintendo Power Volume 28, whose features section clarified that the game in question was called "Final Fight" and that it wasn't actually a fighting game, no. Rather, it was a beat-'em-up in the vein of Double Dragon and Golden Axe!

The preview's tagline described Final Fight as "the ultimate street fighting arcade smash," but I didn't take that to mean that the game was an arcade port because gaming magazines often used the word arcade as a generic descriptor. They used it to communicate to readers that a game had arcade-game-like qualities like no-frills action or a high difficulty. So I had no reason to think that Final Fight was anything other than an an SNES-exclusive.

And by the time I finished reading the preview, I had significant interest in Final Fight. The game, I now knew, had two important things going for it: It looked spectacular, and it was a beat-'em-up, which was one of my favorite genres of action. Both of those were big plusses.

I mean, sure--the preview was disappointingly short, and it did its best to misrepresent the game by depicting Haggar as a black guy and Cody as a deeply depressed Paul Orndorff, but still the way in which showcased and described the game's action made it seem amazing. And I was so impressed by what I'd seen that I started to entertain the idea of including Final Fight on my soon-to-be-made Christmas list.

What convinced me to unreservedly add it to the list was the reality of my current situation. At that point in time, I was certain that the list was going to be very light on items because there were only two games that I desired to own: Super Castlevania IV and Metroid II: Return of Samus. So, I figured, it made sense for me to pad out the list by throwing in Final Fight, which wasn't a blockbuster game (as far as I knew), no, but still looked like a game that contained a decent amount of content. Also, Final Fight was a safe choice, I felt, because it was made by Capcom, whose name I associated with quality products, and because I'd rarely been disappointed by a console beat-'em-up.

And on Christmas Day, as I requested, I got a copy of Final Fight.


Going in, I didn't have amazingly high expectations for Final Fight. I figured that it'd fall somewhere between good and very good and succeed mainly on the strength of its visuals and cool fighting moves. It'd be a merely "solid" beat-'em-up like Bad Dudes and Captain America and the Avengers. But that didn't turn out to be the case at all. Rather, Final Fight was awesome! And it didn't waste any time in proving that to me. Right away, it grabbed me by the collar, pointed me toward the screen, and said, "Pay attention, kid, because I'm about to show you something special!"

And it certainly did. It wasted no time in hitting me with the most impressive graphics I'd ever seen in a 16-bit game and the most dazzling, intense action I'd ever experienced in a beat-'em-up. It was next-level right from the jump.

At first, I was more captivated by the game visual quality, which was, as the Nintendo Power screenshots suggested, incredible. I was super-impressed by its large, highly detailed characters sprites (which, before this day, were the type that I'd only see when I was playing the most technologically advanced arcade games) and depth of animation. Console characters had never looked so good, and never before had they moved with as many frames or with such astonishing fluidity.

Also, the game's texture and background work was awe-inspiring. I was enchanted with it from moment one. As soon as the action came into view, my eyes were drawn to the stage's striking cityscape, which was formed from an assemblage of gorgeously rendered buildings and skyscrapers. It was a breathtaking visual, and I couldn't stop looking at it. Even as I was fighting the enemies, I continued to train my eyes on it and marvel at it. That menacing teal-colored cityscape was telling me so many interesting stories about the game's world, and I was eager to give it all of my attention and let it deliver information and stir my imagination.

And it was the same deal with the stage's other sections. Each one had a gorgeously rendered, awe-inspiring cityscape that scrolled along with the action and created an important context. Mainly, it helped to convey the sense that the game's world had enormous scale to it and consequently provide the stage environments and action scenes a strong in-the-shadows atmosphere. And in doing that, it inspired me to wonder about the spaces that I was inhabiting and think about how they might contrast with those in the outside world--with those I visualized whenever I examined the cityscape backgrounds.

That was the power of Final Fight's visuals.

What Super Mario World, F-Zero and SimCity had shown me was impressive, certainly, but it didn't measure up to anything I was seeing here, no. Final Fight was on a much higher level. It was a visual powerhouse. And it, more so than any of the aforementioned, was type of game that I was expecting a next-generation Nintendo console to deliver.


Looking back at it now, I can see that Final Fight was pretty much my SNES Trojan equivalent. Its visuals stirred my imagination in much the same way. Whenever I'd played Trojan, I'd examine its desolate streets, deteriorated buildings, and neglected underground facilities and wonder about what they were telling me and how they might contrast with the seemingly undisturbed outer world that was being depicted in its backgrounds; and I'd do exactly the same thing whenever I'd play Final Fight!

The two games (both of which, not coincidentally, were early releases) have a strong spiritual connection, which makes sense when you consider that both of them were created by the same company. I'm just surprised that it took me this long to see the connection and realize that my Trojan and Final Fight experiences so closely match. I don't know how I didn't see it earlier (it's either that I wasn't paying close enough attention or that such connections can only be noticed in retrospect).

(Also, I have to note, it's probably not coincidental that both games' opening city stages display broken-down Volkswagen Beetles in their near-backgrounds and that both images tell a similar story. They both speak of civilizational decay and urban environments that have, due to reckless human activity, become shells of what they once were.)


I enjoyed playing as both hero characters, but I gravitated more toward the burly Haggar because his bruising wrestling style was more appealing to me (mostly because I was a pro-wrestling fan). And it helped that he didn't have any real weaknesses. I mean, his slow move-execution was obviously meant to be a troublesome limitation--one that was designed to ensure that he'd struggle to deal with groups of mobbing enemies--but it in reality it didn't hurt him at all. He was, despite the limitation, still pretty fast and extremely capable of dealing with groups of enemies. Really, he was kinda overpowered (his being so was a byproduct of the concessions that had to be made for this version of the game and mainly the huge reduction in the number of onscreen enemies; he only had to deal with three enemies rather than nine or ten).

Basically it was just more fun to play as Haggar! I greatly enjoyed suplexing the hell out of the Mad Gear ruffians and violently slamming them into each other! Nothing was ever more satisfying! And once I learned how to reliably execute the jumping piledriver, I became quite a master of crowd control, and consequently I established a highly effective formula for dealing with groups of enemies. What I'd do is grab one of them, headbutt him twice, and then either suplex or piledrive him into the rest of the pack! And this strategy helped me to advance far into the game.

At that point, I completely turned away from Cody, whose combo attacks weren't nearly as effective (mostly because he lacked finishing power). I'd only play as him when I was messing around with the game.


Another thing that I loved about Final Fight was its enemy cast, which was formed from the most wonderfully diverse collection of characters a beat-'em-up had ever showcased. The cast included aggressive grunts, evasive street thugs, high-flying punkers, bull-charging fatties, defense-minded bikers, and a number of other very distinct enemy types; and each enemy type had variants that came in different colors and performed moves in unique ways! All such enemies were amazingly-well-rendered and -animated and super-expressive (they'd grimace when they were punched and shake their heads to regain their bearings), and they all had cool fighting moves.

These qualities made them instantly memorable.

I also liked that enemies' health meters would display in the game's HUD whenever you engaged with them. It saw it as an innovative addition. It was ideal because it prevented you from having to guess as to enemies' remaining health, which was what you had to do when you were playing older beat-'em-ups. I especially liked that enemies had proportionately sized health meters: Weaker ones had shorter meters, and stronger ones had longer meters! "How clever!" I thought.

The most intimidating minor enemies were the giants: the Andore family members, all of whom had devastating power and a high level of priority. I found out right away that it was a bad idea to approach them in my usual reckless manner (by walking into them from the front). Whenever I'd do this, I'd get a taste of my own medicine; I'd get grabbed and become the victim of a brain-scrambling, health-meter-crippling one-armed piledriver! So I had to necessarily learn how to be more tactical in the way I approached them; I had to learn how to manipulate their movements and set them up for higher-and-lower-plane grabs.

The Andores were pretty much Final Fight's Abobo analog, but in terms of looks, they reminded me more of pro-wrestler Andre the Giant. I often wondered if Capcom's artists had based their Andore designs on Andre.

So yeah--Final Fight had the best, most visually diverse enemy cast since Double Dragon, and that was one of the big reasons why I was so impressed by it.


But for as much as I loved Final Fight, I couldn't overlook the fact that it had one glaring problem: It was too damn hard! In fact, it was the most difficult console beat-'em-up I'd ever played!

Final Fight was tougher than other console beat-'em-ups because it possessed the most unforgiving of arcade-game-like qualities: Its minor enemies were super-aggressive, and they'd combo you to death in a hurry. Its bosses had a ridiculous amount of invincibility frames, unfair priority, and crazy strength (even their lightest blows would deplete half of your health). It provided you a limited amount of continues (3 in total). And it started you with only five lives, which simply wasn't a high enough total to help you endure a game in which bosses had multi-level health meters and could deplete your entire health meter with a single attack (and it didn't help that use of your clear-out move, which was your only real counter to bosses' priority-heavy and stun-locking attacks, would subtract slivers of health from your meter!).

I could only reach as far as Round 4--the insanely long Bay Area stage--and when I'd get there, I'd usually succumb after advancing only a few screens. I kept trying to make it further into the game, but I was never able to do so, and after a while, I started to think that Final Fight was just one of those games that I probably wasn't going to be able to beat.

On a good run, I could make it to the Bay Area's boss, Abigail, with all five of my lives. But even then, it still wouldn't work out for me. The mohawked fiend (who I thought bore a strong resemblance to Road Warrior Animal) would invariably wipe me out with his throwing move, which had an absurd amount of priority, and his fearsome anger-fueled running punch. I could reliably counter his running punch with dropkicks, but I had no answer for his throwing move, which he could execute even when he was was standing several pixels away from me (at times, it seemed as though his grab range extended as far as half a screen). And for that reason, I couldn't beat him. He simply had too much priority and too much health.

"How many times do I have to hit this guy before his meter turns yellow?!" I'd question, angrily, after my 20th straight dropkick failed to cause any type of color change.


And for the longest time, that's how things went: After finishing a play-through of Super Mario World, F-Zero or Super Castlevania IV, I'd pop Final Fight into the SNES and attempt to reach the game's final round and subsequently achieve victory, and I'd fall short because of Abigail and his infuriating, stock-depleting attacks. Then I'd angrily switch off the SNES and stomp my way downstairs.

But I would never stay mad at Final Fight for too long, no. I loved it too much to maintain ill feelings for it. I couldn't stay away from it because I greatly enjoyed its fast-paced, satisfying arcade-style action. It always gave me what I craved. And because it could do that for me, I didn't mind not being able to beat it. I knew that I didn't need to beat Final Fight to have a great time with it.

To me, Final Fight felt very much like an arcade game. It provided me the same type of intense, viscerally pleasing action that I'd experience anytime I was playing one of my favorite arcade beat-'em-ups. It brought that experience home, and consequently it took the console beat-'em-up to the next level. And that's why I considered it to be the best in its class.


Honestly, though, I did want to progress farther into Final Fight. I still desired to make it to the game's final round and see what it was all about. And I got my best chance to do so when Nintendo Power Volume 30 arrived and provided me a very useful tool: Its Classified Information section revealed that the game had a hidden options menu that you could access from the title screen by holding down the L button and pressing Start, and on said menu, you could adjust the life-total and set it as high as 9 (the menu also had seven other options, but I had no idea what most of them were designed to do)! So now I had the ability to start the game with four extra lives!

But even then, I still struggled to make progress. It still took me a long time to put together runs that could get me to Abigail with a sufficient number of lives and all of my continues (I wanted to hold on to all three continues because I knew that I was going to need them in the next round, which, Nintendo Power had shown me, was just as insanely long as the Bay Area). Four extra lives could only go so far.

Eventually I arrived at a point in which I could reliably make it to the final round, but whenever I'd get there, I'd only be able to advance one or two areas in before running out of juice. And after failing a bunch of times, I started to think that I'd hit my limit--that this was as far as I was ever going to get. "I can't possibly endure this," I thought.

Though, I kept at it, and after putting in a lot of practice, I became capable of reaching the final boss, Belger, and beating him with some regularity.

What helped me the most was my discovery that Haggar had a built-in throw-combo that allowed him to execute a suplex immediately after landing two successive punches. This combo changed everything. It was the ultimate crowd-control technique, and it pretty much took away the enemies' ability to blindside me. If I was being mobbed, I could easily mitigate the issue by throwing two punches into the group of foes in front of me and then suplexing one of its subjects into the group of foes behind me. And with this combo, I was able to completely control the battlefield and consequently preserve a lot of health! (Cody had a similar combo, but it was difficult to execute and comparatively weak.)


If there was one thing that made all of my struggles feel worth it, it was the game's surprisingly touching ending music. Up until that point, the soundtrack had been comprised entirely of adrenaline-fueled rock music, but then, after I scored my first victory, the game decided to hit me with a soft, wonderfully sentimental tune that was able to stir the soul and evoke all types of powerful feelings and emotions: sadness, melancholy, wistfulness, joy, pride, satisfaction, and a few other feelings that I couldn't even describe.

"Where the hell did this come from?" I wondered as I listened to it. (It was just so strange for a game whose music had been so uniformly intense and spirited to suddenly introduce such a contrastingly tender, evocative piece. I can't say that I was completely surprised by it, though, because intense action games having contrastingly sad and evocative ending themes was actually a trend during that period.)

It was a terrific ending tune. I was very fond of it. I thought it was worth playing through Final Fight just to hear it. It was so powerfully evocative that sometimes I wouldn't even pay attention the scene it was accompanying. Rather, I'd just listen to it and absorb it and let it provide color to the "I'm a hero saving the day!" daydreams it always inspired me to have.

Final Fight had great music in general. Its every tune was rockin' in the most inspiriting way. It never failed to energize me and inspire me to fiercely and passionately assault every enemy in my path!

I especially loved the highly invigorating Big Katana Boss theme, which played in Round 2's penultimate section. Quite often, I'd pop in Final Fight just to activate this tune in the game's option menu and listen to it for a few minutes. At one point, I even recorded this theme with my tape recorded so that I could listen it to it in my den and use it as accompaniment to my workout sessions (which usually entailed my running in circles and jumping around like a hyperactive monkey boy).

So yeah--I loved Final Fight's soundtrack. I considered it to be one of the best beat-'em-up soundtracks in existence.


That's how it was with Final Fight. I was always trying to find new ways to experience it and extract enjoyment from it.

At times, I'd try to personalize the experience by inventing my own fighting moves. I created quite a few of them, but, honestly, the only one that was any good was Haggar's "scary dive," as I called it. It was a top-rope-style maneuver that you executed by jumping onto a barrel and then diving off it while using Haggar's alternate aerial attack. It was a useful move mainly because its barrel-mounting aspect caused enemies to mindlessly pile up right in front of you and then stand there idly and thus render themselves susceptible to the dive attack.(Sadly, the move isn't as useful in the arcade version, whose enemies won't approach you if you're not on the ground. But still, that doesn't prevent me from trying to execute it!)

Then there was my obsession with Haggar's moveset, which fascinated me because of how closely it matched Zangief's. I always wondered if the two characters were somehow connected (it was possible that they were because Street Fighter and Final Fight shared the same universe). I remember spending the school hours drawing up moveset tables in my notebooks' back pages and meticulously comparing the two characters' attacks and basic movements--just for the purpose of seeing how closely they resembled each other. At the same time, I'd put together theories about how they could be related and therein try to determine which one was copying the other.

But I had some of my best fun with Final Fight when I pretended that its campaign was actually a story about Haggar being a wrestling trainee who was vying for a spot on the WWF roster. To earn a spot, he had to pass a "test" that challenged him to run through "five obstacle courses" and convincingly beat up the company's Superstars.

I made the test more faithful by turning each of the game's enemies into a current or former WWF wrestler: Bred, Dug and Jake were jobbers like Barry Horowitz, Bob Bradley, Iron Mike Sharpe, Red Tyler and the Brooklyn Brawler. Two P and J were the Nasty Boys (Knobbs and Sags). Punkers Sid and Billy were the Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty). Slash and Axl were the Hart Foundation (Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart). Wong Who, G. Oriber and Bill Bull were assorted fatties like King Kong Bundy, the One Man Gang, Earthquake and Yokozuna. Holly Wood and El Gado were Tito Santana and Carlos Colon. The Andores were Andre the Giant and Giant Gonzales. Thrasher was Sid Justice. Katana was Kato. Edi E. was the Big Boss Man. Abigail was Road Warrior Animal (obviously). And Belger was Vince McMahon (sans the wig that we all believed him to wear).

And I loved doing these kinds of things. They greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the game and helped me to get even more out of it.

As an aside: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how my friends and I would always find great amusement in mocking the thug who lamented the destruction of his car with the overly compressed voice sample "Oh my CAH!" It was so terrible-sounding, and we loved that it was. It's what made it so hilarious. And hearing it made us think that even in this new generation of technology, some things just weren't going to change.


About a year or so later, I finally got a chance to play the arcade original. And for a second time in life, a game bearing the name Final Fight succeeded in impressing and amazing me. Within minutes, I was already awarding it the title of "best beat-'em-up I've ever played."

After I completed my first session with arcade Final Fight, it was very clear to me that us console-owners got the short end of the stick. Our SNES version, I realized, was just plain wimpy. It was highly compromised and missing vital elements like co-op play, empowering aural intensity, and, most egregiously, a playable character (Guy, who was a quick and agile martial-arts expert) and an entire stage!

Also, this version was so much more advanced that it could display an astonishingly large number of characters--seemingly a dozen-plus. At all times, the screen was filled with crowds of enemies, and more and more enemies just continued to spill in from all directions. And consequently, the game's action was amazingly intense and frantic. There was so much more going on. There were so many characters crashing into each other and so many masses of humanity being thrown around! And, most pleasingly, there was plenty of opportunity to violently slam targeted goons into large groups of surrounding enemies and send everyone flying!

"Now this is what I want from my beat-'em-ups!" I thought to myself while playing it.

I didn't have an opinion on the music because I couldn't hear it. Its volume was low and thus the usual arcade cacophony drowned it out. But I was able to get a sense of the game's sound effects, which, conversely, were booming and reverberant. And I was impressed by how crisp and vigorous they were. Haggar bellowed angrily and with great ferocity as he cleared away enemies with his spinning clothesline. Strikes and slams were thunderous. And the dismayed car-owner passionately expressed his lamentation! He looked at his destroyed vehicle and said, with a clear and expressive voice, "Oh my God!" (not "car" or "CAH," as he was forced to say by Nintendo of America's censors).




Truthfully, I wasn't much a fan of Guy. To me, he felt like a weaker version of Cody. He was faster than Cody, yeah, but lacked Cody's striking power, and thus he was too weak to contend with enemy hordes. Hell--it took him forever to take out even one minor enemy! For that reason, I mostly stayed away from him.

Also, I found Round 4, the Industrial Area, to be a terribly annoying stage. I didn't like having to deal with the constant flame-bursts (which were obviously designed to quickly and cheaply drain your life-stock) and the obnoxiously evasive Rolento, who had insane priority and a hitbox that was inactive 90% of the time.

But still, I was sad that these elements were cut from the SNES version. "They should have been in there!" I thought. "Capcom should have waited until larger cartridge sizes were available!"

I mean, I still had a fondness for the SNES version because of how much fun I'd had with it and because it had provided me so many great memories during the console's early years, but now, after playing its beefy arcade progenitor, I couldn't help but see it as anything other than a lesser creation. And once the arcade original muscled its way into my life, I never again returned to the SNES version (and I didn't go anywhere near the "compensating" Final Fight Guy, which cut out Cody and made no improvements to the gameplay).




Arcade Final Fight changed the way I viewed SNES Final Fight. It made me think about how inexplicable it was for Capcom to cut out something as vitally important as co-op play! It reminded me of how Technos brought Double Dragon to the NES but somehow failed to include multiplayer, which was the whole point of the game! But Technos at least compensated for the omission by tailoring the action for single-character play. Capcom did no such thing. Rather, it simply cut out content!

Also, I was frustrated with Nintendo of America for how it meddled in the game's development and forced Capcom to unnecessarily change characters' names and appearances (originally, Thrasher was "Damnd"; Katana was "Sodom"; the male punkers Sid and Billy were females Roxy and Poison; and Belger was riding in a wheelchair rather than a mobile recliner). As usual, its morality policing only served to damage the product and cause it to misrepresent the original work.

I mean, how incompetent do you have to be to willingly sacrifice a game's quality and authenticity and potentially hurt its sales just to appease people who you believe have no ability to think for themselves?

Welcome to Nintendo of America circa 1991.




The problem was that I only had access to arcade Final Fight for a limited period of time. As we moved into 1995, the arcade scene started to rapidly decline, and before long, all of our local arcades closed down. And consequently I was no longer able to play Final Fight (or many of my other arcade favorites). It was basically gone from my life. And the console space had no viable substitute. It had nothing that could compare to arcade Final Fight, which all of us regarded as the ultimate beat-'em-up.

I mean, sure--my friends and I had a great time with the SNES-exclusive Final Fight II (which actually had co-op play!), and we considered it to be a rock-solid console beat-'em-up, but in our hearts, we knew that it didn't hold a candle to arcade Final Fight. It just wasn't as visually, aurally and technologically advanced. Its host platform simply didn't have the muscle necessary to produce something on the level of the arcade original.

And thus I couldn't deny how I felt: I really missed Final Fight!




All I can say is thank goodness for MAME, which allowed me to reunite with Final Fight after 8 long years. It meant everything to me to once again have access to my all-time-favorite arcade game! And it was great to be able to play it in a more personal setting because of how surreal it felt. I was playing an arcade game in my home. That was crazy! My younger self never could have imagined that such a thing would be possible. "There's no way we'll ever be to play these technologically advanced games, which require the power of giant machines, in a home setting," he was apt to think.

Yet here I was playing arcade Final Fight in my den on my humble little Windows computer.

It was the stuff that dreams were made of.




And ever since then, I've been frequently returning to Final Fight and enjoying its supreme beat-'em-up action (and modern collections like Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle and Capcom Arcade Stadium have helped me to gain easier access to the game). Also, I've been continuing to be amazed by its depth, little of which I knew about back in the early 90s. I was astonished to learn, for instance, that Guy could wall-jump off of the screen's edge just like Chun Li could in Street Fighter II! "This is such a cool ahead-of-its-time mechanic!" I think to myself any time I execute the move.

And I'm still finding out new things about the game! I'm always discovering new mechanics and interesting visual touches.

Final Fight, I'm learning, is full of surprises!

I wouldn't expect anything else from a Capcom game.




I use the descriptor "perfect" sparingly because I feel that it should be reserved only for games that are able to do three specific things: excel in every area, define their respective genres, and show themselves to be superior even decades later. In my 40-plus years of gaming, I've used it describe only a select number of of games: Super Mario Bros. 3, Tetris, Super Metroid, Mega Man X, Doom and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, all of which have proven that they're the best of the best in any era. They're "perfect" games.

And I feel that Final Fight fits in very well with that group. It's still, to this day, the best in its class. It holds up visually, aurally and mechanically, and it's as fun to play now as it was back in the early 90s. Also, it continues to define the genre. It's the game that every beat-'em-up developer aims to emulate. It's what all newly created beat-'em-ups dream of being.

That's why I don't hesitate to say that Final Fight is the "perfect" beat-'em-up and still the genre's reigning king.




So here's to Final Fight--my all-time-favorite arcade game and an enduring classic. It's one of the best around.

May it continue to reign supreme and outmuscle the competition.


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