"Compared to SF2, this is pretty bad. Fatal Fury does have some interesting features though."

Fatal Fury was suppose to be one of the first good fighting games to be available to arcade players, but then Capcom made Street Fighter 2 and put it out in every arcade before SNK even had a chance to release Fatal Fury. This pretty much sealed it's fate.

In the one player mode you can select one of four characters; Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi, who have all entered the King of Fighters tournament. The organiser of this tournament, Geese Howard, killed Terry and Andy's Dad and they want revenge. Family friend Joe is also going to help out.

The controls are VERY basic, with just one punch button, one kick button and a throw button. Throws will only work when you are near the opponent, obviously. Combos in this game are non-existent.

Each of the 3 characters has 4 special attack moves each, and if they hit they will do quite a bit of damage, just like in the first Street Fighter game. Special attacks are done with joystick motions and then button presses, mainly.

In the one player mode you have to take on all of the other fighters in the tournament, and there are a total of 8 of them. You cannot play as any of these fighters though, not even in the 2 player mode, making the game lack any depth, especially compared to Street Fighter 2 which had 8 characters.

The game plays poorly and is no where near as good as Street Fighter 2. The animation isn't very good at all and is very jerky in some places when characters move around.

The sound is slightly better, with some tunes being quite good (like Geese's, for example) Sound effects for character moves are OK but sound effects for when moves hit are poor.

One interesting feature of Fatal Fury is the plain system. On most of the stages, you can go into the background plain. If the opponent is on the other plain, you can do a plain attack where you leap and attack the opponent and switch plains again.

The best feature of Fatal Fury has to be the 2 player team mode, which would later be copied by Capcom and called "Dramatic Battle" Basically, if another player joins in when you are playing in the one player mode, the match will start again and it will be a 2 on 1 fight! The human players will be on separate plains at the start but you can change during the fight. This can help you out in the one player mode, but you can hurt each other, hilariously, so you have to fight carefully. After you win this match you will go into a human vs. human mode.

But these features don't really make Fatal Fury any good and teh game is no challenge when compared to Street Fighter 2. Fatal Fury 3 is where the series starts to get good, so play that instead.

5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/15/05