Fatal Fury

"Street Fighter minus innovation equals Fatal Fury"

Let me begin by saying that Fatal Fury is by no means a poor fighting game. Actually, I enjoy playing it and its numerous successsors. However, I have a BIG problem with the game's lack of originality that other Street Fighter clones like Mortal Kombat added in order to keep the genre fresh.

The basic premise of the game is that the Bogard brothers and friend Joe Higashi are fighting for revenge against men that have done them wrong. Specifics of the story are meaningless and forgettable; all you need to know is that each has their own Street Fighter-ish reasons for fighting minions all across the world.

Now, on to appearances. The graphics are ridiculously primitive compared to games released in the same time period. Magic Sword, among other games, easily make FF look like an ancient relic from the late eight bit era. The music is similarly unimpressive. It sounds like a poorly loaded MIDI file and the bass is rarely present to drive your adrenaline along with the game's beats. Overall, the game's aesthtetics could be best describes as lackluster and only passable.

The control, on the other hand, must have been something SNK focused on. Fatal Fury is easy to control and a dream even using the ill-suited SNES pad as your controller. While some of the super moves are difficult to pull off, the game isn't exactly unforgiving and it gives you a nice sense of accomplishment when you pull off just the right move at exactly the same time. This is a nice balance between tap-tap combos and games that force you to mash on the buttons and directional pad even just to jump.

The gameplay is a mixed bag. With a total cast of eleven characters that are mixed and varied, the game certainly has personality to equal or even best pre-Championship Edition Street Fighter. However, one may be tempted to scream when the one-player mode begins. What?!@! I can only choose from three different characters? What is going on here? Is this Final Fight or a fighting game? This is certainly frustrating, but allowable given the fact that fighters were just beginning to pop up on consoles. But the two-player mode seals Fatal Fury's fate as a pretender to the throne: why can the second player choose from ANY of the eleven characters and I can only choose the same three Ryu clones regardless? This is NOT FAIR, and not a smart move by the developers. Sure, characters like Tung Fu Ru are awesome and a great idea, but they are hardly cool when I can't select them and my little brother is using them to pound me into the ground.

Overall, the bottom line is that Fatal Fury relied on a flawed engine and questionable judgement by its creators in unbalancing gameplay like they did. Street Fighter this ain't.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99