Fatal Fury

"Geese Howard Will Conquer All!"

When many gamers first saw the original Fatal Fury in arcades, they immediately labeled it as a Street Fighter 2 rip-off. That wasn't the case at all. You see, Fatal Fury began its development cycle before Street Fighter 2 did, but it was released about two months after.

Fatal Fury marked the beginning of one of SNK's biggest fighting franchises. Over the years, the series has spread onto various other consoles, like the SNES, Genesis and the SEGA CD.

In Fatal Fury you assume the role of one of three characters. First off is the ever-popular Terry Bogard. Next is his slightly more agile brother, Andy. Finally, there's the Japanese kick boxer, Joe Higashi. Aside from different appearances, each character has his own unique set of normal and special moves as well. Although three characters isn't very many for a fighting game, please keep in mind that this was one of the first fighters out there, one of those that popularized the genre. Back then, thirty or forty-eight characters (common today) were unheard of.

The game itself features more than three characters. You'll duke it out with several other characters, including the boxer Michael Max, a wrestler called Raiden, punk rocker Duck King, and the master himself, Geese Howard. Like the three selectable characters, each of these opponents has his own normal and special moves. Sadly, there's no code to use these boss characters at all during the single player game.

One of the coolest things about Fatal Fury in the arcade was its unique plain shifting system. With it, characters could fight in both a background and foreground plain. This feature is strangely gone in the SNES version of the game. Why? It seems a little odd that Takara chose to leave out such a major feature. Maybe it had to do with memory constraints. After all, this game was only done on a 12-megabit cart, which isn't really much memory space at all.

Nothing really much for play modes or extras here. You just get a simple arcade mode and can play two players. One thing I found really lame about the 2-player mode was the character selection. You see, while Player 2 can choose any character (even the bosses), Player 1 is restricted to using only the three main characters from the single player mode. Why?

Graphics 7
Graphically, Fatal Fury was pretty good for its day, especially for a SNES game. Character animation is a little on the choppy side, but it's not too bad. The backgrounds looked pretty good and take place on a variety of locales (a beach, a bridge, and an amusement park).

This version looks pretty good, when compared to the original Neo Geo version. Not too many complaints here.

Sound 5
The sound could use some serious work; it has sort of a tiny and muffled sound to it, especially on the voices and sound effects. The music itself ranges from bland and nondescript to a few memorable tunes like Raiden's theme. Also, what's up with the Three Stooges-like ''Wuh wuh wuh'' sound that the characters make when they get beat? This lame and out of place effect wasn't in the original version, and it's beyond me why Takara put it in here.

Control 6
Perhaps one of the worst elements of the SNES version of Fatal Fury is its unresponsive control. Special moves consist mainly of quarter circle D-pad motions like Street Fighter, but they don't happen every time you want them to. Movements have to be dead exact, or your move will not come out, a major pain during heated fights, when you need your specials most. Aside from that, the controls themselves are pretty simple to learn. There's only one punch, one kick, and a throw button.

Overall, Fatal Fury on the SNES was an okay translation. While I feel Takara could have (and should have) spent a little more time polishing up the translation, the end result was decent. Sadly, I can only really recommend this game to either die-hard Fatal Fury fans who must have every game in the series. Others may walk away a little disappointed. If you must have this game, though, then I would have to tell you to go either with the slightly better Genesis translation or better yet, the original Neo Geo game. Unfortunately, the Neo version is well out of reach of most casual gamers. You can, of course, find a good Neo Geo emulator and a ROM for it, but ROMs are mostly illegal and getting pretty tough to find these days.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/12/03, Updated 06/12/03