Fatal Fury Special

"One of the greatest upgrade to a sequel"

Everybody know Fatal Fury 2 was the most anticipated sequel to the original Fatal Fury that started on the Neo Geo and arcade. It was a spectacular arcade smash that made Fatal Fury every bit as good as Capcom's Street Fighter II. At the time when Capcom's is milking the SFII phenomenon with multiple upgrades, SNK had follow the same foot-step and create an upgrade to its arcade smash sequel. Thankfully, unlike SFII, Fatal Fury 2 only had one upgrade and surely enough that alone could hold its own against Capcom's multiple SFII upgrade offerings. After landing on the arcade and Neo Geo, Fatal Fury Special finally hits console for the Super NES and like those two versions, nobody had ever thought it would played this great on the 16-Bit platform.

Graphics:

When everyone look at the graphics of this game, they would always compare it back to the arcade and Neo Geo ports. How a shame they are because this game look great for a 16-Bit title even if it was a bit lacking in presentation. The arcade intro was not seen so if you want to know what the intro looks, get the Sega CD port and you'll see that there. Unlike the Sega CD port, outside of the intro presentation, every thing else looks almost pristine to its arcade big brothers. Each characters are present with their correct frames of animation although a few were cut off, the background effects after each round such as fighting in the day on round one and then on the evening in round two and so on also makes a return here. Every character's stage are also presented in good quality details, some stages like Kim Kaphwan, Cheng Sinzan, and Duck King all had good background scenery and effects for example Duck's stage took place in a techno night club with dancing crowd in the backdrop complete with a titantron-style stages and night light seen through the stage. Like the arcade and Neo Geo ports, all the endings make it to this game so you'll be treated to some good concluding story after playing as well.

Music/Sounds:

All the music and sounds effects from the arcade are all here. From Terry's shout of Power Geyser to Ryo's Koh Ken it brought the stunning thrills and mood of the arcade game home. Of course, the announcer could be annoying at times and a few male characters share the same voices but besides all that, the music themes are superb down from Mai's Japanese river bank to Laurence's Spanish bull fight arena, and even Krauser's orchestrated palace throne room each delivering its own musical magic that fit its fighter.

Gameplay:

Like Fatal Fury 2, not much is change here. You now get to choose from fifteen default selectable fighters with three returning from the first FF adding to the mix of the original eight from FF2 as well as the four bosses from that game. Also as a bonus, SNK and Takara also add in Ryo Sakazaki from FF sister series, the Art of Fighting series, as an unlockable opponent and playable character upping the roster to a stunning sixteen character line-up which quite frankly was the same amount of characters in Capcom's SFII upgrade, Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers. Besides the character roster, you still fight one-on-one, the plain jumping feature from the first two Fatal Fury game return, new moves were added to Tung Fu Rue, Duck King, and Geese Howard as well as the unlockable character. Super moves also makes a return and could be perform when your character's health meter is flashing. Also unlike the arcade and Sega CD version, you are not limited to a number of credits to play so you could play the game for as long as you want and unlike the arcade version, the A.I. here are decent, they aren't too cheap but also not too simple to beat as well so you'll enjoy kicking butt with this game.

Replayabilities:

Like all fighting game, this game could be replay countless time over and over just to master all sixteen fighters. You could also challenge a friend or rival anytime in Versus Mode or take on the challenging Countdown Mode for a time brawling result. Besides all that, Fatal Fury Special is a fun and enjoyable port of the arcade game. Even though it doesn't had the sheer number of playable modes like what Capcom's Super Street Fighter II did, what it offered in this home port is more than satisfying enough for all Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, and even King of Fighters fans.

Is it worth getting?

Consider you don't care about the arcade perfect conversion on the Neo Geo, never played Fatal Fury 2 or had not own any of the Fatal Fury collection on the PS2 and Sega Saturn or a version of this arcade classic on the X-Box 360 via X-Box Live Arcade, then yes owning this for the Super NES would definitely worth every pennies you could throw at. Even if you did play a Fatal Fury game or even one that was Fatal Fury 2, you should check this one out since this game was the inspiration to the The King of Fighters series.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/03/09, Updated 02/04/09

Game Release: Fatal Fury Special (US, March 1995)