Fatal Fury: Battle Archives Volume 2

"An awesome compilation of the final Fatal Fury saga!"

Fatal Fury was a game created by a Japanese company known as SNK, SNK competed with rival company Capcom during the 90's, while Capcom had Street Fighter II, SNK had the Fatal Fury series.

Fatal Fury was SNK's first fighting game, and the original games included Fatal Fury, Fatal Fury 2, Fatal Fury Special, and Fatal Fury 3, many people acknowledge Fatal Fury Special as the best out of the original series, for those not in the know, this collection contains the final saga of the Fatal Fury series known as Real Bout.

Real Bout Fatal Fury is to SNK what Street Fighter Alpha was to Capcom, but Real Bout was done much later than Street Fighter Alpha series.

Real Bout Fatal Fury is the inital first game of the series, the thing with this title is the ability to 'ring-out'; your opponents, much like another fighting series called Virtua Fighter, there is also the ability to side-step making the game much more fluid and dynamic than having a single plane to fight on, the game has characters from previous Fatal Fury games, as well as some new ones, the story in this game basically involves Geese Howard trying to get his hands on the Jin scrolls, and it is your duty to stop him from doing that, that's all there is to it.

Also in Real Bout Fatal Fury you fight a series of opponents in a group rather than individual opponents like other fighting games, you fight 3 other opponents after selecting your first one, then move on from there.

Real Bout Special is definitely the best game out of the compilation (well in my opinion at least); the gameplay remains the same as Real Bout original, but there is also a new combo system to where you can get up to 10 hits in one combo! Similar to Super Street Fighter II Turbo's combo system, this one feels much better executed on the game, and the combos are easy to do compared to the other game I mentioned, the graphics look beautiful, the characters have an anime-esque art style to them, and this is some of the best character animations I've seen on the NeoGeo, the backgrounds you fight on are full of detail and dimension, the music is almost cd quality with some great soundtracks to the game.

Real Bout Special is probably my favorite game on this compilation, but there is one more game left, and that is Real Bout 2 The Newcomers.

Real Bout 2 The Newcomers is basically the final chapter in this trilogy, the game plays similar to RBS, but not much has changed from the gameplay, a few new characters are included in the game, making the roster even bigger than it was before, if you've played the first two Real Bout games, you pretty much played this one, this is my least favorite game on this compilation.

You should definitely pick this one up if you see it lying around (I had to look awhile for it, but you'll eventually find it); you won't be disapointed.

Final Score 10/10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/04/08

Game Release: Fatal Fury: Battle Archives Volume 2 (US, 04/08/08)