Fatal Fury 2

"Pre-Fatal Fury Special..."

Fatal Fury 2 is another stepping stone in the long path that SNK has created in the world and realm of fighting games across the world. Though SNK is more widely known for the King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown series, you’ll find that Fatal Fury retains the same game play and control that all of the other fighting games in SNK’s arsenal does. Fatal Fury is still a hell of a fighting game, and a step above the original game, though with the addition of only five new characters, and a still insane difficulty level, you might be hard pressed to learn the steep curve needed here!

-The Game Play-

The game play is your typical fighting game fanfare with a few selectable characters, best two out of three battles and plenty of fighting moves for you to learn. One of the things about the Fatal Fury series though, is that the moves and using them all successfully takes plenty of practice and skill because the directional movements are all over the place. However, once you’ve gotten a handle on what you have and what you need to work with, the next part of the game is simply selecting a character that matches your playing style.

Another interesting portion of the game is that you have new characters to work with, though you can’t control the boss characters. Mai, Kim, Jubei, Big Bear and Chin all round out the new roster, with plenty of moves and attributes that will test your skills. Most of what a fighting game offers you is the ability to work with different characters that allow you to create combinations based on speed and power. Where Big Bear and Chin are rather large and slow, they hold the most power where Mai and Kim are smaller and allows for faster, yet less powerful hits.

The control can be slow and unresponsive in some situations and if you're looking to blast off a heavy hitting combination, you'll find yourself coming up short. The control interface here isn't very user friendly, and unless you have your timing down, you'll be blocked, kicked, thrown and stomped on more times then you can blink! Once you do have the control down, the moves are done ala Street Fighter style and really aren't that hard to pull off, as long as you get the timing down correctly.

When you do finally have the game down to a science, there should be no real problem in playing through the game and doing so in a professional fashion. Simply because the game offers up very little in terms of forgiving control, you’ll have to have a good handle on what the Street Fighter games have had to offer in the past in order to get a true handle on the game. You could almost consider this a test of your directional skills, simply because the game doesn’t follow the original format of back and forth, but is more or less all over the place on the directional stick!

-The Visuals-

Bright and colorful, Fatal Fury boasts some pretty impressive visuals, and some really flashy special moves. Unfortunately, it doesn't save it from the occasional image break up, and in some very noticeable cases, game slow down when the action becomes highly intense! Gamers will find reason to complain, although fans will probably overlook this as simply being a 'first-time' game glitch. While SNK does do a good job, it does have its problems, simply because with all of the impressive visuals and the flashy special moves, there are points of pixelation and break up in key points of the battles.

-The Audio-

The music is upbeat and funky, but doesn't match the game in some places. Duck King on the other hand, and his stage music makes a pretty good stand, and will have your foot tapping after a few moments of listing to it. The voice overs and even the actual in game sound effects sound pretty good, and some of them are original, even though you'll be sure to hear ported over effects from the Art of Fighting series before too long! Speaking of the audio, with most of the game music, you’ll find that the Arcade sounds that you hear can be a little tough on the ears after about an hour of play. While it does make a good effort, most Fatal Fury fans will probably cringe now after hearing what it is on the next generation games.

-The Verdict-

Fatal Fury 2 isn’t a bad fighting game from SNK and really shows that there is room to improve on an original idea. One of the following sequels, Fatal Fury Special is actually the same game as this, yet the boss characters of Geese and Kaiser are unlocked and available to play. While the visuals and the audio are slowly coming along, there is still plenty of room to improve here, and the control scheme is hard to work with. If you like the challenge of having to learn some difficult to control characters and love the insane difficulty that most SNK fighting games offer, then you’ll love this title. If not, then you may want to return to the Capcom fighters and save your money for an easier to learn fighting game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/02, Updated 08/09/02