Final Fight CD

"A Faithful translation of this game!"

Final Fight is one of Capcom’s most well recognized games of the early 1990’s. Mainly because it would be the game that would inspire the drafting designs for Street Fighter II and would kick off the side scrolling beat-em-up genre to an advanced category than Double Dragon did. Its success in the arcades demanded a home version, and in 1990 Capcom delivered to Nintendo’s new 16bit Super Famicom. Unfortunately the game suffered the loss of its 2-player feature and Guy, one of the main selectable characters in the game and one that many saw as their favorite.

The disappointment of this game carried out into 1991 when the SNES was launched, only to find itself slaughter in reviews when players and critics compared it to Sega’s Bare Knuckle/Streets of Rage game which had the 2-player feature, awesome moves, darker theme and intense music. Nevertheless, Capcom didn’t give up and did offer an apology by re-releasing a version of the game called Final Fight Guy, adding guy and a few cosmetic features but still no 2-player and Cody was sacrificed.

Capcom has always been a negotiator and that’s how it got so big in the 90’s, while Nintendo always claimed to have had the best relationship with games like Mega Man and Captain Commando, Sega was already getting to know Capcom in a different format. Sega had already reprogrammed Capcom games for its 16bit machine with ranging success, Ghouls & Ghost in 1989, Strider in 1990, and Mercs in 1991. Just before Capcom gave Nintendo exclusivity to SF2 and the Final Fight sequels. They once more gave Sega programming rights to a version of Final Fight that would be done on the Mega/Sega CD machine with the hopes that it would be intact as the arcade. After closing the deal, Capcom made one final change, SF2 would be exclusive to Nintendo……….just for one year.

Story: 8/10

Metro City: 199X
The newly elected mayor, Mike Haggar has been successfully cracked down on crime, so successfully that The Mad Gear, the most powerful crime syndicate in town, is not too happy of Mayor Haggar’s efforts. Therefore they kidnapped his daughter Jessica Haggar, and call him at his office to negotiate. Haggar doesn’t believe the call but surely a video of the kidnapped Jessica surfaces over the TV news and Mayor Haggar gets MAD! He’s destined to stop The Mad Gear with the aid of Cody, who upon hearing of Jessica’s kidnapping gets even angrier since Jessica is his girlfriend. Guy, a childhood friend of Jessica, has looked at Mike Haggar as a father figure, and Cody’s best friend, also sets out for revenge. The Final Fight begins!

Graphics: 8/10

The graphics in FF were great in the arcades mainly because of the bigger sprites they used on their characters and had fluid animation, but this was in 1989, when the game came out on the Mega/Sega CD in 1993 they were still the same, so this lead to some disappointing fans who were expecting much more, but keep in mind that Sega simply wanted a recreation of the original game rather than to remix it. Besides why would Sega want to outshine themselves with FF CD when they had surpassed everyone’s expectations in December of 92 with their own Bare Knuckle II? Regardless these graphics worked, a bit off the color when compared with the SNES game but it makes up with all the stuff that Nintendon’t…hahah remember that one??

Game play: 8/10

Pretty good game play, quite a sore thumb after you go through it, in fact you may want to inquire about a turbo mode controller for this game, but you can execute some neat moves like Haggar’s spin which Zangief from SF2 borrowed, while the game only has about 6 rounds, these rounds are long and take you to many city sites ranging from uptown, the subway, offshore, downtown, factories, elevators etc. in fact the map and the city heavily resembles NYC, see of you can spot the Statue of Liberty in one of the latter stages.

Difficulty: 9/10

This game offers quite the challenge, even with good moves at your disposal these baddies come at you when you least expect it, if you have ever played the SOR series the you know what to expect because many of these bosses play and even look like the ones in the Sega game. Some interesting bosses like Rolento and Sodom make returns to the Street Fighter Alpha series of games, so its great to see them in action before their prime, but the trip can be painful.

Sound & Music: 9/10

The sounds in this game a ok, they are not extraordinary but they are up to par with the arcade, the music on the other hand is great, a great red book audio version of the music in the arcade, nice 80’s music that sound much like the BGM from movies like Steven Segal’s Above the Law, if you’ve seen this movie then you know what I’m talking about, my favorite track is the funky track when you face the 2 Andore twins and the boss Edi-E, it has a bit of soul voice in it resembling James Brown. Yeeeah!

Overall: 8/10

Final Fight CD is a faithful version of one on the most recognized beat-em-up games in arcades and a great addition to anyone who has a Mega/Sega CD sitting collecting dust, extra features in this game are a time attack mode which uses some new graphics that were designed by Sega just for this version of the game. Also the western version had to cover a little on its female characters and they seemed to show a little too much skin in some sequences, but if you have the Japanese version it is quite acceptable in today’s grand theft auto audience. If you are down with some kick ass action with your CD, then get a bruising with Final Fight CD!!!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/28/03