Final Fight was one of Capcom's most popular series in the 90s. It helped pave the way for some of their other titles such as Street Fighter II, and some of the characters even appeared in Street Fighter themselves. It still remains a fan favorite even now.

For its 20th anniversary this year I decided to do this blog entry that showcases all the games. The Final Fight series deserves another look after all these years.

Final Fight

The first game, Final Fight, was released in December 1989 internationally for the CPS-1 hardware. It was headed by Akira Yasuda (Akiman) and Akira Nishitani (NIN-NIN). The game, while it was still in development, was a Street Fighter sequel entitled "Street Fighter '89."

Street Fighter '89 was kind of different from the Final Fight we know and love now. This game had Joe from SF1, a kickboxer, as the main character, along with an unnamed wrestler (who became Haggar later) and an unnamed Japanese fighter (who became Guy). The promotional art was slightly different as well.

SF'89 was showed off at trade shows, and ultimately got positive feedback, but most people (including some higher-ups at Capcom) thought it couldn't really be called a sequel to Street Fighter because the structure of the game was vastly different than that of SF.

Thus Capcom began some retooling. They changed Joe's name to Cody and gave names to the other two playable characters. They gave the game a different story. The mayor's daughter had been kidnapped by a gang and it was up to the three fighters to save her. The gang was named the Mad Gear gang after a Capcom arcade racing game. The city it took place in was named Metro City and had some parallels to New York City. Capcom also gave the game a new name--Final Fight.

And when it hit arcades in 1989, it was a huge sensation. Sure it wasn't quite as groundbreaking as Double Dragon, but it offered an array of vast improvements over other beat-em-ups at the time, such as an enemy life meter, tighter play control, and more accurate hit detection, among other things.

This story about three fighters scouring Metro City giving bruises and beatdowns to every ruffian within a ten-mile radius ended up being something to write home about.

Final Fight's arcade release had six stages, each with dozens of enemies and a boss at the end of each one. One thing that made the game stand out were the actual designs of the stages. The Subway stage was incredibly well-designed and had the feel of a real urban subway, with thugs and all. The Industrial stage was full of flash and fire. The graphics were vibrant, with large, detailed sprites and backdrops.

The bosses were pretty cool designs too. Sodom is a wannabe-Japanese fighter, and Rolento is a corrupt military general who'll stop at nothing to achieve his goal of total domination.

Sound-wise it pushed the CPS-1 to its limits, which wasn't bad for hardware that hadn't been out very long.

As for gameplay itself, the game had two buttons, an attack button and a jump button. If you pushed both at the same time you could do a room-clearing attack called an "Extra Joy." Both Cody and Guy used spinning kicks while Haggar's was a lariat.

Every character had one combo they could pull off with several presses of the attack button, a throw, and a jump attack. Haggar was the only character in the game to have a jumping throw, which was a piledriver. This allowed for multiple ways to beat down the individual gang members. The game also supported a two-player mode where you could bash heads with a buddy.

Each playable character had his own style. Cody used brutal kickboxing techniques, was the second-fastest character, and was the best with a knife, Guy used speedy karate techniques, and Haggar had his brute strength and stamina to help him through the game, though because of this, he was the slowest character in the game.

Fun Facts:

-The arcade version has a glitch known as the "Infinite Combo Glitch." Pick Cody, punch the opponent three times, turn around, punch once, then turn back and repeat the cycle until dead. This glitch was parodied in Cody's A-ism super in Street
Fighter Alpha 3.

-The enemy "Two.P" was named after the second-player character of another Capcom arcade title, Forgotten Worlds.

-Most enemies in Final Fight are named after bands or singers (like Poison and Roxy, Damnd, Sodom, and in the later SNES port, Billy and Sid, who were named after Billy Idol and Sid Vicious), and one was named after a late pro wrestler (Andore). Abigail was named after an album by King Diamond, and has the same face paint.

Final Fight (SNES)

The success of the arcade game prompted Capcom to release a port of the game for SNES. The game was released as a Super Famicom launch title in Japan in December 1990, a year after the arcade version hit. The US version came out in November 1991, and the European version's release was in 1992.

For its time, it was a decent port. It included most of the enemies, animations, levels, and characters. However, there was quite a bit missing from the port because of the limited amount of space on an SNES cartridge at the time. These missing features are:

-The Industrial Area stage and Rolento (the stage's boss)

-Guy (he replaced Cody in Final Fight Guy, however)

-2-player support was cut down to 1 (to make room for the enemy lifebars as well as not having enough space on the cart)

The US version was edited when it hit due to Nintendo's "family-friendly" policy at the time. Blood was taken out, Poison and Roxy were changed to Billy and Sid to avoid violence against women (even after Capcom Japan explained that Poison was a newhalf and not technically a woman), and the Whiskey and Beer items were changed to Vitamin-E and Root Beer. The thug saying "Oh! My god!" in the bonus stage was changed to a different voice saying "Oh! My car!" Two bosses were renamed as well. Sodom was renamed Katana and Damnd was renamed Thrasher. Also, the Japanese version had Jessica in a bra in the intro, which was painted over for the other releases. This edit stuck with every other non-Japanese release of Final Fight 1 as well.

Some additions were made, however, such as the game having an opening song (whereas the arcade version didn't) and the soundtrack was remixed to accommodate the SNES's sound chip. The difficulty was much higher than the original due to the shortened player lifebar. There were also two options modes added (one default and one secret).

This port went on to be the best-selling one, at 1.56 million copies sold.

Final Fight Guy

Final Fight Guy was an SNES-only port of Final Fight. There are a few key differences between this game and the original Final Fight port:

-Cody has been axed in favor of Guy as a playable character

-The title screen has been changed to read "Final Fight Guy" instead of just "Final Fight"

-The story was changed to say that Cody was in Japan training and that he must save Jessica instead

-The ending was changed to have Jessica catch up to Guy instead of Cody like in the first port. However instead of being kissed he just says good luck to Jessica and walks away.

This port was released in 1992 in Japan and 1994 in America. In America, however, since Final Fight 2 and Mighty Final Fight were already out by the time this game showed up in the US, and were arguably better games, FFG was distributed only through Blockbuster rental stores. As a result, it's an incredibly tough-to-find game and costs for it have skyrocketed.

The game remains largely the same as the other FF1 port in terms of Nintendo-sanctioned edits and gameplay.

Final Fight 2

Final Fight 2 was released on the SNES in 1993. It was part of an exclusive deal Capcom had with Nintendo to continue releasing Final Fight games for their platforms (this was largely due to Sega's rival series, Streets of Rage).

The game takes place several years after the first one. Cody is on vacation with Jessica (later retconned as him being in jail in the Street Fighter Alpha series), and Guy has gone off to train. Mad Gear has fallen under new management, and they
kidnap Guy's master and Guy's fiancee.

Maki, Rena's sister, calls Haggar and tells him what's going on. Carlos, Haggar's friend, comes along with him to meet up with Maki to mutilate the Mad Gear.

The gameplay remains the same in this installment for the most part, but there is now support for 2 players, and Guy and Cody are replaced with Maki (Rena's sister) and Carlos Miyamoto (a half-Hispanic half-Japanese fighter), two fighters with their
own unique styles.

Where this game differs from Final Fight 1 is that it all takes place not in just a huge, sprawling metropolis, but it takes place all over Eurasia, from Hong Kong all the way to Japan. It had a very international feel in this regard. The stages were
Hong Kong, France, Holland, England, Italy, and Japan. The last stage pitted you against the game's last boss, a kabuki karate fighter named Retu. The only returning enemy type from Final Fight 1 were the Andores. Rolento, a boss cut from the SNES version of Final Fight, makes an appearance as "Rolent" in this game as the boss of the Italy stage.

As for the three playable characters in this game, Haggar received some slight improvements here. His priority on attacks has been beefed up, and his jumping piledriver from the first game is now a spinning piledriver. Maki is the female of the group and has the fastest attacks but lowest defense and power (like Guy in the first game) and Carlos was the average character with average speed and attacking power.

The graphics and sound are typical fare for a Capcom game, and stages and music have a less urban feel due to the actual locations you visit throughout.

Like the SNES Final Fight, Final Fight 2 has some edits for American and European audiences due to Nintendo's policies. Wong Wong, the boss of the Hong Kong stage, wielded a meat cleaver in the Japanese version, which was taken out for other releases. Also, the two female enemy types, Eliza and Mary, were changed to male ones named Robert and Leon respectively.

Fun Facts:

-Chun-Li from Street Fighter can be seen in the background of the Hong Kong stage eating what looks like ramen.

-Toshio Fujiwara (Megaman X, Makaimura series) was the producer for this game. He also produced another Final Fight game called Mighty Final Fight.

Mighty Final Fight

Mighty Final Fight was released on Famicom in Japan 3 months after Final Fight 2's release, but in the US a month before the English version of Final Fight 2 hit. It was another Nintendo-exclusive game. It was largely a parody of its big brothers, but added its own flair to make it stand out from the other Final Fight games.

For starters, the story has been changed. In Mighty Final Fight, Jessica is kidnapped by Mad Gear, but it's not for revenge on Haggar. No, this time it's because.....Belger is in love with her! So the trio of Guy, Cody, and Haggar must save her again and stop Belger from trying to take over the world in the process. The intro to the game also has Cody, Guy, and Haggar with highly exaggerated facial expressions (along with Cody being hit by his own punching bag).

Like the SNES port of Final Fight, there is no 2-player mode; MFF is a 1-player game. Also like its big brothers, Mighty Final Fight has two buttons, an attack and a jump. You can pull off the usual Extra Joy attacks and combos here, but they're all kind of exaggerated to fit the game's tongue-in-cheek style.

Where this game differs on the gameplay front are its level-up feature and its new special attacks. The level-up bar at the bottom of the screen has six segments. When you beat up the number of enemies it shows on the bottom right of the screen, your character levels up and can take and dish out more damage. The special attacks are done by pushing forward+attack, then quickly hitting forward again.

Cody's is an uppercut that sends out a wave, Haggar does a body slam, and Guy has a fancy kick. These do not take away HP unlike the Extra Joy attacks and can be done whenever you want. Also, expanding on Cody's knife expertise in the first game, every character has a preference for a certain weapon now. Haggar's preferred weapon is a mallet, Cody's is still the knife, and Guy's preferred weapon is a shuriken.

The characters are still the same power and defense-wise. Haggar is still really slow and powerful (but takes the longest to level up fully), Cody is still the middle fighter (takes the second-least amount of points to level up) and Guy is still the speedy fighter who lacks a little bit of power (takes the shortest amount of time to level up).

The sounds, music, and graphics are very whimsical and upbeat compared to the other Final Fights. All the characters and enemies are rendered in chibi style, and punch and kick with stubby limbs. It was and still is very funny to watch these
little guys beat each other up. The music is very upbeat but still keeps that urban feel, and the stages are designed very
brilliantly.

A lot of the enemy types and bosses from the first game show up here, except for Rolento, Edi E., and Bill Bull. Oddly enough, this game has a female enemy type (Poison Kiss) that was left unedited in all the releases.

Speaking of enemies, some of the bosses have either changed attacks or appearances to reflect the style of the game. Katana has a recurring role, and Thrasher has some funny quotes. Abigail's choke grab now has him kissing you instead of throwing you (hahaha). And the biggest kicker of all is that Belger is a cyborg. Who saw that coming?

This game would go on to become a cult favorite.

Fun Facts:

-Mighty Final Fight was included in Capcom Classic Collection Mini Mix for the Game Boy Advance. It's a port of the NES game but it has more graphical flicker than the original.

Final Fight CD

Final Fight CD was programmed and published by Sega under license from Capcom for the Sega CD. Its release was in 1993. It was an enhanced port of the arcade game. Not only did it include all the features of the arcade game, including 2-player
play, the Industrial stage, and all three playable characters, it also included a new Time Attack mode, voiced cutscenes, and a remixed soundtrack.

The new Time Attack mode gave the player a time limit, and an unlimited wave of enemies. Your goal was simply to top your previous amount of enemies beaten. It provided a nice diversion from the regular game.

Every cutscene had added animation to accommodate the amount of voices and to flesh out the story more. The voices were great for their time but are now considered a mixed bag, especially when it comes to Haggar's voice. The music was remixed, and a couple tracks even had some vocal clips, like the West Side stage's remixed song. Final Fight never looked and sounded this good!

The actual game itself was also enhanced and changed in a few ways. Cody's infinite combo glitch is now near-impossible to pull off, and the difficulty seems slightly harder than the original arcade game (but not quite as hard as the SNES port).

Unlike the Nintendo games, Poison and Roxy were left as females/newhalfs for the releases outside Japan, but their outfits were given digital paint to cover up certain.... *ahem*..... "parts."

Fun Facts:

-Final Fight CD was made by Sega to help draw in customers for the Sega CD and to take a little of the spotlight off Nintendo's console, the Super Nintendo.

-Final Fight CD has redbook audio, meaning the CD's soundtrack can be listened to in a CD player.

In the next entry I'll be covering the rest of the games, from Final Fight 3 all the way to Streetwise, as well as some other stuff.