"Average beat 'em up."

Fatal Fury, despite not being anywhere near as good as Street Fighter 2, was still pretty popular and because of that fact a sequel was made. This time the king of fighters tournament is set all across the world instead of just South Town.

First off, most of the characters are new. Terry, Andy, Joe and Big Bear (who had a different name int eh first game) are playable but this is the first time classic characters like Mai and Kim appear and there are some other fighters as well. In total there are 8 different playable characters. When you beat all the standard characters in the 1 player mode, you move onto the 4 bosses, who are Billy Kane (from the first game) Axel Hawk, Laurence Blood and Wolfgang Krauser. Hmmm. That rips off Street Fighter 2 quite a bit doesn't it? 4 unplayable bosses? One of which is a Spanish matador? Oh well.

The controls for this game are completely different than before. The throw button is gone, instead you throw just like in Street Fighter 2. There are now 4 attack buttons, two for punch and 2 for kick.

The graphics for the game have all been re-done and the old characters all have new sprites with more animation. Some of the backgrounds look pretty good, like Terry's and Mai's.

The game play is the same as any standard fighter with a 2 out of 3 rounds system. The "plain" system from the first game is still present and is now much easier to use. Basically you can change plain and into the back plain. This means you can evade attacks. However, there is also a plain attack where your character will leap and attack from one plain to the other.

All the characters have various special moves, but they also have tide turner super attacks which do quite a bit of damage. These can only be done when your characters health is flashing red.

However one of Fatal Fury 2's main problems is the control. It just isn't responsive enough for some move commands, especially the super attacks. They are very hard to do.

The AI in this game is quite tough, even on level 1. Because of this it is very hard to see your character's ending in the one player mode (since you are not allowed to use continues) and the bosses can get really difficult.

Some of the music to this game is quite good, whilst some other tunes are just forgettable. The sound effects are not that great, especially the speech come characters use for their special move attacks.

At the time though, this game was still not really must of a challenge to Street Fighter 2's dominance, mainly because the Champion Edition update had been released.

Fatal Fury 2 is an average beat 'em up in the arcades, but to be honest I actually thought the Genesis/Mega Drive version was a lot better due to much better controls and how certain special attacks work differently, so check that out instead.

5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/17/05