Witness the debut of SNK’s very first fighting game!!! It's also marks the rivalry between a wolf and a geese. Hehehe...
Overview
Getting dropped off by a taxi, driven by G-Mantle, in the middle of Southtown, you have to ask yourself this…why I am looking a large poster for a fighting game that has two boxers on it.
Okay, skip that one and now ask yourself a real question. Are you prepared with what challenges await you in the tournament you are entering? Yes, says Terry and Andy Bogard, two brothers who have waited several years to hone their skills and confront the man behind the King of Fighters contest, Geese Howard. He is the one that killed their adopted father and his former classmate, Jeff Bogard. With your friend, Joe Higashi, will all your training pay off to avenge your father’s death!?!?!
Graphics 6/10
The backgrounds where the scuffles take place are probably the greatest part of Fatal Fury. Little detail of when day turns into night or when it’s raining are incredible to see back in 1991. Although, figuring out that the sprites of the people watching in the back in most stages where mostly the same and unconvincingly looking from afar was sort of annoying and sometimes took away from the stages.
The pictures of the characters’ faces were not that good and most of the fighters’ standing or moving sometimes came across as low budget. Richard Myer was the biggest culprit of this scandal. Special move animations were okay and tolerable. Even back when I was young, I always founded the fireball sprites of Terry and Geese were purely too blah, but the hurricane projectiles were accurate.
Gameplay/Controls 6/10
Fatal Fury debuted tons of very thought provoking systems for a fighting game. The first thing you’ll find is that in the fights there are two planes to walk around. This puts in good tactics for the player and their opponent to use to their advantage. So no longer do you have to block and take clip damage from a special move, just jump onto the other side and have it miss you all together! Want to go back onto the same playing field as your enemy? Roll over there or take a risk, jumping to hit them from the side.
The enemy AI do not back down in any fight, as it does a good job planning and hitting you when you make a wrong move or think nothing going to happen to you. It’s very devilish of them to do so and I like it. Any inexperience person would get easily knock over fast by them so it going to take lots of practice to get use to the way this game acts. This holds true when you deal with opponents who have invulnerable counters or gain dangerous damaging moves when they lose a certain amount of life. Tung Fu Rue turning from an old geezer to an old geezer ripped with giant muscles and not able to hit Billy Kane when he loses his pole is just some of the problems you will be confronted with. Bonus rounds, in the style of an arm wrestling match also give a nice little test of button tapping to see if your don’t tired out.
Only the first three buttons are functional. Pressing A lets out a punch, B unleashes a kick, and C represent the throwing command. Trust me when I say you’ll be spending a lot of time using the throwing technique as it takes a chuck of energy off your rival. Special moves are not impossible to do, but they aren’t as responsive to pull off most of the time you try to do them. The setting in which you can switch planes will take plenty of minutes to getting use to.
Sound/Music 7/10
I know technology was limited back then, but the need to reuse a death moan and an evil laugh for almost everybody was maybe a little too generic for my taste. The calling out of special moves’ names was all right and the hitting sound bites weren’t too cheesy. The music didn’t really capture my attention, except anything that had a Geese’s appearance, whether in cut scenes or his stage music. They settle down quite okay after awhile as the entire soundtrack didn't need to be change. The announcer’s voice was good as well and sounded, in a funny way, professional, but to hear him in the exact voice user when Terry yells out for a “Burning Knuckle”, I wasn’t down with it.
Replay Value 5/10
Three fighters are available for you to choose from: Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard, and Joe Higashi. That’s it here for the one player mode. All the people you have fought with? Not selectable. The three main heroes have two of the exact special moves showings, but they all come out with different ending animations and also possess exclusive attacks by themselves. However, once you figure out the patterns of each foe and beat the game with all three, there’s really nothing to fall back on.
The two player versus is something I never seen done back then and help save the life span for this. If a second player comes in, he can only pick one of the two remaining active fighters, since the game doesn’t allow both players to pick the same fighter. From there, you then get to select two different modes. You can do the regular 1P versus 2P route or become a team and try to demolish one of the enemies. By doing this, the main idea is see if two forces have what it take to overthrow the CPU. If you guys manage to beat him, you’ll revert to the regular versus match to see who gets to stay and who has to go, extending your time to play. Without these details, the value to play this again would have been a 3.
Overall 6/10
This game had its equal share of the good and the bad. Though, the replaying factor maybe short living, the game still brought out some fascinating tactics and details that many rival fighting games which to have invented. This was SNK’s first attempt to create a fighting game with enough exposure to be recognized and spawn countless spinoffs. If you’re not going to ever buy or rent it, at least play it once to know how far we have gotten since 1991. It may had been average, but it was still the one that started it all to put SNK on the map.
- By Mr. Boombada
