"A game saved only by comedy."

Let me preface this by saying that if you've never heard of this game, there's a reason why. It's bad. In fact, this is without any question the worst ever game that I've run across in an arcade. This arcade game sucks more than an airplane toilet, and I'm going to attempt to describe it without using chains of profanity.

-------------------
STORY
-------------------

''WHO WILL BECOME NO.1 QUARRELER?!?''

Oh sweet merciful Jesus, this is where the meat of the game is. Let the title sink in for a moment, to give you an idea of what's left in the game. In case you missed it: VIOLENCE FIGHT. Now, if you thought Zero Wing had horrible translation, let me relay to you, VERBATIM, the opening screen:

''In the early part of 1950's in the USA, a game galled ''Violence Fight'' was in vogue among Mafia, reckless drivers and general businessmen. The ''Violence Fight'' was the game to struggle for ''No. 1 Quarreler'' with fighters who were gathered from all parts of the USA speaking boastingly of their strength. And of course a lot of winning money as well as the honor were given to the ''winner''. Here in a downtown in L.A., a young fighter ''Bat'' and his manager ''Blinks'' seek for the winning money eagerly. As a matter of fact, can Bad take the no.1 place of the USA?''

There is SO MUCH I can pick apart here that it's really a question of what I want to tackle first. Let's go with my favorite part, where the Violence Fight is enjoyed by the Mafia, RECKLESS DRIVERS and businessmen. I mean after all, reckless driving makes me want to watch people pound on each other, as would a hard day at the office. Now not only that, but this guy ''Bat'' wants the ''No.1 place of the USA.'' Well hot damn. Sure, ''all your base belongs to us'' is an abortion of English, but this at least seems like some funny half-assed attempt to put night-school English in an arcade game.

At any rate, the fighters ''gathered from all parts of the USA'' each have their own stories to tell. Try to get through the sections ahead without laughing, if you can. Our main man ''Bat Blue,'' or ''Bad Blue'' depending on what the game feels like displaying, is actually a fighter feared for his ''reputation of plenty of technique and it's sharpness.'' By the way, Bat is also a fan favorite, kids! That's right, Bat is none other than the ''Street Champion of the last year''!

However, bat has some fierce contenders, like possibly African-American fighter Ben Smith, who ''has strong jumping force.'' SOLD! By the way ladies, Ben is nicknamed ''fierce eagle of Nevada.'' Ben also seems to be the most useless character in the game, despite his tornado kick, machine gun punch, and of course this unmistakable jumping force.

Let's not overlook another contender though, Lee Chen, who looks about as Chinese as Burt Reynolds in an orange karate gi. Although born in Miami, Chen ''has went over to the main land of China in his child age for learning assassination ken(hands).'' You just can't make this zany crap up, kids.

Finally, my favorite challenger is a giant tub of fat fondly called, get ready for it, LICK JOE. I really do not want to know how Joe got stuck with an action-verb for a nickname, specifically *LICK*. This guy really looks like a fat woman in knee-high boots. If you think that Joe couldn't get any more likable, how wrong you would be: Joe's got a mullet. That's right. But why is Lick Joe fighting for the title of ''No.1 Quarreler?'' It so happens that Joe was a professional wrestler, but ''his profession was revoked because he killed 13 wrestlers during play-ing.'' Here's my open-question to Lick Joe: 13? Didn't the officials at whatever 1950's pro-wrestling event blow the whistle on him after deceased wrestler number 2 or 3? For being as lenient as these guys were for Lick Joe breaking 12 wrestlers, Joe must have kept going. Can you see why I like this sack of fat so much?

The rest of the story, if it really does earn that title, is very poor. You fight for this described group of mafiosos and reckless drivers, and presumably earn money, or in Lick Joe's case maybe containers of Crisco. Depending on the character, there is a different picture and message for the win screen. As I use Lick Joe and Bat, there's a bad digitized picture of either Bat and Blinks, or two fat elderly people in Joe's winning screen. You're also treated to an enthusiastic message for your victory, like ''CAMON BOY!'', ''SAMMY YOU'', or the ever-threatening ''KILL YOU!''

Working your way up through the other 3 characters, as well as 2 non-playable characters, one of which ''especially his head is so hard it can destroy rocks,'' you fight a clone of yourself, or according to the game, ''your younger brother.'' The ending nets you (as I can guarantee that nobody is going to play this game all the way through) the following:

You won all fight and obtained not only money and peace but also glory. And at the same time, you defeated your younger brother and knew cruelty and vanity of violence. However, neither place for peaceful living not time for consolation exists. Because young and strong fighters will challenge you one after another. Until you are defeated just as you defeated them and lose the glory.

I half expected this to be written on that lined paper I remember using in first grade where the spacing was about 3 inches between lines. Looking at it that way, the story is epic. I think it's funny that everyone wanting to become a ''no.1 quarreler'' needs to have a younger twin brother who fights exactly like they do, which they are completely unaware of. Maybe this is why there's only 4 characters from ''all parts of the USA.''

I think my wish list for PlayStation 2 revivals of games consists of
1. Splatterhouse
2. Narc
3. Violence Fight

This game really is *stupid to the max*. If you think this can't get any worse than the story, you would be sorely mistaken. Read on to learn more about what exactly Lick Joe does.

By the way, if you haven't discovered the sheer redundancy-slash-stupidity of the title, now's definitely the time to do so. As a friend of mine says, ''Welcome to the department of redundancy department.'' What other kinds of fights are there besides the non-violent kind?!? By the way, that last sentence had so much profanity before I edited it, it's worth a mention.

Story: 10 / 10
For being this funny, I can't *not* give it a high score.

-------------------
GRAPHICS
-------------------

''GAGOOON!''

Listen to me here, the graphics are actually pretty passable, and like the story they actually suffer from a thrid-degree burn of funny. Even the translation on the sound effects were horrible, which I was actually impressed with. I didn't know ENGRISH could extend its firey grasp towards GRAPHICS.

What am I rambling about? When you hit someone, a giant block-letter ''GAGOON'' might fly out of their forehead. Also nice are ''DAGON,'' ''GOON,'' and the elusive ''BOGOO.'' I really have not idea how to express my thoughts on this without using massive amounts of profanity. So much profanity that it would corrupt an entire preschool if any part of it was overheard. Gagoon. I really just can't come to grips with that, no matter how hard I try.

Other than that graphical selling point, the pictures of the after-match party are pretty funny. Just now, I figured out that Ben's shows him with his woman, while Chen gets the company of a small Chinese man, presumably his manager, and not his woman. However, the old people in Joe's screen really take the cake for ''fat people in a video game.'' I mean, the lady's arm looks like pixelized oatmeal, and Joe's manager has about 4 juicy, moist, absolutely sexy rolls of chin fat.

The real graphics are a mixed bag. While the characters are large and detailed, from Bat Blue's girly shoes to Joe's man-boobs, they have little by way of animation. It's pretty typical of these fighters that came out in the early 90s / late 80s though, what with the whole ''We'll animate the outstretched punch, the frame before being the fighter standing still. Let's let our players fill in the gaps with their minds!'' Yeah, so expect pretty much every move in your arsenal to be all of 2-frames. I think Ben and Chin have some 3-frame moves, but don't quote me on that one.

The backgrounds are.. interesting. There's a barnyard (I kid you not), a pipe above what looks to be a bridge, a dock, another barnyard (sadly a recurring theme), and that's as far as I was able to get before I walked away in frustration. Maybe after that they had some really cool levels, like a city street or maybe another barnyard. It's freaking redneckville in 1950 L.A. I'm glad I live in L.A. in the present, after all the Mafia and reckless drivers went back to Italy.

At any rate, the backgrounds are on the same level as the characters, and because they don't do a great deal of moving, it works better having 2 frames of animation for the backgrounds. The fighters, however, do not share this excuse.

It's not to say that the graphics are bad, in fact they're quite typical. It's pretty much the norm, and the level of character detail was in fact better than Street Fighter II, a game that came out after Violence Fight, so I have to give some credit to Lick Joe's dough-ridden ass. Still Street Fighter II did deliver more than 2 animation frames.

All in all, the graphics are in line with the other games of that time, with nothing as a major highlight and nothing to severely detract from the game. However, because the detail is ahead of its time and this is perhaps the only game to illustrate poor translation errors in the sound effects, I think it's a tad above average.

Graphics: 6 / 10
2-frame punches, big characters, and Gagoons. A mixed bag, that's for sure.

-------------------
GAMEPLAY
-------------------

''I'd rather be hammering nails with my face.''

Let me be honest with you, this game is bad with a capital V. The ''special moves'' are either so well hidden in the annals of fighting game history, or they're mind numbingly easy to do. Example: Bat Blue has two specials: the star dust punch and the rolling kick, neither of which I have ever performed. By contrast, Ben Smith's moves can be done by pressing either punch or kick at the same time as the jump button. Quite a reason to pick Bat, no? Like winning the lottery, the rolling kick might happen to you! He was the champion of the last year and all that, so you might strike it rich with fighting game gold!

The goal of the game, as ''player one'' is to beat ''player two'' twice, typical fighting game stuff. When you do, a big screen says ''PLAYER ONE SCORE A POINT OVER PLAYER TWO!'' Oh yeah, point scoring! CAMON BOY!

The layout of the game is interesting in the fact that it's like Final Fight, but with less things to do. You have a regular punch, a kick, two special moves, and a jump kick that's about the most useless thing I've ever seen in a fighting game, considering the other guy would have to be jumping at the same time, which never ever happens.

The most effective way of defeating enemies, or at least I've found is by one of two methods: get close and kick them (which some characters have a quick, close attack) until they fall over. Most of the time, the AI will keep trying to knock you out of that close, quick kick, fortunately getting their knockout punches interrupted by a knee to the gut nearly every time.

The other method I have is to get a little bit below the ''plane'' that they're on, either above or below them, and move forward punching very slowly. Usually they take lots of hits, and scoot back and forth to compensate for the beating they're getting in the meantime. ROCK OUT!

Now, if these things seem cheap, that's because they are. To make up for the severely retarded patterns of the AI, the half-English speaking students of Violence Fight decided to:
A. Make all characters counter-attack you, knocking you out of your move whenever it's even remotely possible to do so.
B. Allow the computer characters to do twice as much damage to you as you do to them.
When I was actually trying to play, I kept getting beat like a drum. Even my cheese-patterns were wearing off by the time I got to that ass-clown Chen, who kept counter-attacking me ad nauseam, and the first boss after Chen demonstrated ''especially his head is so hard'' to the point where one headbutt sapped a third of my life. After a while, the game goes from stupid to impossible. I made the savvy choice to stop giving it money, to think about what it's done.

What's even more funny about the game is that it has the most retarded idea of what might be fun. Example: the second stage is a pipe, in which no up or down movement is allowed. If you thought the game was irritating before, wait until you see this. All you can really do is advance towards the guy, kicking until he falls over. Close in groin-bash away!!!

Listen to me here, the best parts of this game you can see from the opening screen and the demo. Really, there's no reason to even waste your money with this if you see it in an arcade, but the investment of 25 cents might in actuality be useful to you. How? That 25 cents provides a wealth of how much fighting games have progressed since... they sucked as bad as this particular one.

At any rate, all the Gagoons in the world aren't going to save the fact that the gameplay here is about as bad as anything I've ever played, and when your cheap patterns don't work, it really gets on your nerves. I really don't think the word ''bad'' can do justice for this game, it's just so horrendous. This gaming monstrosity is about the No-return point. If you've beat Violence Fight in terms of delivering a crappy game, you must really be the worst game-makers on the face of the planet. This game redefines what redundancy, cheapness, and stupidity are all about. Play it to laugh, but you have my sincerest apologies if you spend any more than 25 cents on this digitized hunk of crap.

Gameplay: 1 / 10
It wears its mediocrity like a badge of pride.

-------------------
SOUND AND MUSIC
-------------------

''No, Gagoon is not a sound.''

The sound, music, and everything else is so entirely forgettable that it's not even worth mentioning anywhere else but here. Punches and kicks sound so empty and unrealistic that it's not even funny. Hit a guy, and it's the most overused sound for a hit or a punch that sounds like every other kick and punch that you've heard in these kinds of games. Really, sound effects never took off until the mid-90s, when you actually started to get realistic punches, kicks, and voices.

Violence Fight again fails here, sitting in the sound corner with one of those pointy ''dunce'' hats and eating paste. ''You know I can get the sounding effects with good sharpness from all over USA?'' No Violence Fight, you can't. Sit back down.

The music is entirely forgettable as well, except for the screen where your ''money'' totals build up, as the music builds to a peak as you get the cryptic message. It lasts for all of 5 seconds, so don't get too excited. There's nothing like hearing a track build to a crescendo and seeing ''SAMMY YOU!'' to top it all off. The SAMMY YOU! still baffles me, as with any other game translation error I can gather what their message is. The SAMMY YOU transcends all that, delivering a moment of sheer confusion and in my case, laughter.

Other than that, the music is very standard stuff, and actually below average compared to other games back then. Way below average.

Sound and Music: 2 / 10
Bad, forgettable, and like everything you would expect for this game.

-------------------
OVERALL
-------------------

''Thank you for the playing!''

Violence Fight climbs to the top of bad games and immediately starts scratching its ass. This is the worst game I have ever played in the Arcades, and I can't think of any redeeming value it has outside of the humor that was mistakenly packed in. If this game had flawless translation, it would definitely go from being bad, but funny to being bad, hard and boring. Thankfully, this is not the case.

Because there is in fact this small level of humor to accompany this bad game in its stroll through hell, it's not as bad as you might expect. The fact that it does have a large amount of confusion and humor is no doubt the reason that this game is a spooky urban legend of bad arcade games, seemingly so unbelievable that nobody would ever assume you were telling the truth about Lick Joe, the ''Gagoon'', or the ''SAMMY YOU!''s.

The game is real, and outside of the piss-poor translation, there's nothing even remotely fun or interesting about it.

Overall: 1.5 / 10
This game is bad on every level, but at least it's funny.

------------------------------------------------
*Get some screenshots for the full effect.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/11/02, Updated 02/18/02