Real Bout Garou Densetsu Special

"Like 2d fighters?, please do yourself a tramendious favor and get this game!"

I don’t know what it is about 2d fighters that I enjoy so much, but I just keep coming back to them over and over again. Tekken is o.k. but I just thank I will always enjoy the classic feel of 2d games until the very end. Real Bout: Fatal Fury Special on the Saturn may not be “arcade perfect”, but it’s about as close as the Sega Saturn will ever come to capturing the feel of a high quality Neo Geo fighter such as this. The game require that you have a 4meg RAM cart to play this. The cart allows for much more animation and bigger sprites to be displayed on the screen. You can be any Fatal Fury character up to this point in the series, and there are quite a few choices. You can pick huge powerhouses like Franco Bash, or you can pick the more weak but agile characters such as Blue Mary and (one of my personal favorites) Mai. There are huge combos to be pulled off in this game, and for beginners, there fairly easy to pull off. The colors are really vivid and some levels are downright beautiful. On Andy/Mai’s stage, there is a big pink tree in the background, and leaves begin falling off the tree and blowing into the foreground, which brings me to another point about Fatal Fury. On most stages, there are 2 platforms to fight in, you can move freely between the 2 platforms with just a push of a button. If you are fighting a rather cheep opponent that keeps throwing projectile attacks your way, you can just move into the background, walk around the projectiles, and knock your deserving foe upside the head with a mighty blow. There are bars at the bottom of the screen that, when filled, allow you to pull off spectacular moves. The first time it fills up, it is called “H power”, and these moves are about as powerful as 2 special attacks. The next time your bar fills up, it is called “S power” these moves are about as strong as 4 or 5 strong attacks. The final power is called “P power”; you can only access this when you have been depleted of more than half of your energy. When this happens, you can pull off extra special moves called “desperation moves”, these moves can rob your opponent of more than half of their energy and you can pull off these moves as much as you like as long as you have “P power” energy. The energy bars in this game are a little different than your average fighting game; they are made up of 2 full energy bars per fighter, per round. Battles can take a bit longer than 20-30 seconds as in most fighters. I like this idea much more because I can’t stand seeing one player wipe the floor with the other player in 10 seconds or less. This game is fair at being balanced out well. As much as I love Capcom fighters as well, I can’t stand the horrible balance in Marvel vs. Capcom. One character is extremely strong, the other is extremely weak, and you get the same results almost every time. This game is very well balanced and you will have a fair chance at the game with just about everyone provided you are willing to take the time to learn moves. I do however have a few small complaints with the game. The fact that this is on c.d. format and do to the systems limitations, the load times are rather long (about 17 seconds) and the game has to load after every match. The game has to load the character selection scene, the game has to load after the fight, the game has to load the little scene after the fight, and the game loads quite a lot. If you are not very good at the one player game, expect to spend a good bit of time waiting through the loading scenes. I feel this is a small complaint, the game is great, and there is RED blood, it’s not White or Green like in other fighting games. There is also an option to put the game in full English. If you get to play a game and you must quit midway through, you can save the game and pick up on that fighter later on when you have more time to play the game

Game Play: 8 There are plenty of fighters and many moves to learn, in 2 player mode; you can pull off moves as fast as you can tap the R button, for more advanced players, you can turn that option off. I find that the moves are much easier to pull of on this game than in the original.

Story: 7 This has the same story as the original Fatal Fury Special, but you have much better graphics to look forward to, and the game just plays so much better than that game ever did anyway. Basically, this is Fatal Fury Special ’97.

Sound: 7 SNK audio is really an applied taste I thank. The sound is very loud punches and kicks. The music is better that the cart version of this game, and a lot of it is done with real musical instruments instead of the synthesized crap that some fighters still use to this very day.

Graphics: 8 The game may have a few frames of animation cut out of it, and some people may have a fit that the game is slightly dated looking, but let them pout, because this is about the best you are going to get out of this system using a 4 meg RAM cart, and you know what else; it looks pretty damn good for it’s age! Besides that, this game is just so fun that you could probable care less that a few frames are gone here and there, and if you have never played the Neo Geo version, you really won’t notice anyway. Even if you have played the Neo Geo version, the loss of animation (read: very little) is not worth fussing about.

Replay Value: 10 There is plenty of reason to keep coming back to this game. Even if you have beat it with every character on very hard (good luck!), the 2 player battles with your friends are very fun, and everyone I have played this game with really enjoyed it. The fact that you can put the game in English and it has red blood also adds to the replay value tremendously because you can actually read what’s going on. The game’s announcer (while annoying at times) is constantly motivating you to keep on trying.

I hope you find this game for sale, and I hope even more that you buy it. When it comes to 2d fighters, you really can’t go wrong with a modern SNK 2d fighter and the game is just so fun! Do yourself a big favor and buy this game, but please, make sure you own a Saturn “4meg RAM cart”, because the game will not function without it. Games like this show that there will always be a special place for Neo Geo fighters in the world, even if the company did pull it’s American branch.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/10/00, Updated 09/10/00