Final Fight

The Good
Final Fight is a classic arcade game in the beat 'em up genre.

It is not terrible complicated story and, it certainly doesn't waste time with ethics or philosophy. It is just you (and a friend) wandering through several urban locations, circa 1989, in order to beat the you-know-what out a dangerous criminals.

Simple? Yes, but still a heck of a lot of fun to play, especially if you are old enough to remember when the premiered at your local video arcade.

Several efforts were made to port the arcade game to the home console systems throughout the 1990s. In some ways the Sega CD edition is the best of the bunch.

Final Fight CD features all of the arcade's playable characters, and allows up to two people to place at the same time. Other cartridge editions of Final Fight had to eliminate some of the playable characters and only allowed for one player.

Final Fight CD also features some cool music, as well as the all of the arcade levels and bonus rounds. It is nice to see such some of the Sega CD's hardware potential being used.

The Bad
Final Fight CD does take a noticeable hit in the graphics department, as the designers had to work with the Sega CD's embarrassingly weak on-screen color and pallet capacities.

Like the Sega Genesis, the "Next Level" Sega CD hardware was limited to 64 colors on screen out of a pallet of 512. This was at a time in the industry, when must computers and even most cartridge and CD-ROM based game systems had better capabilities.

What does this mean for this game?

Basically, Final Fight CD cannot be a perfect port in terms of the graphics, and, arguably, has trouble matching the SNES (capable of 256 colors on screen from a pallet of over 32,000) of Final Fight in this respect.

Sega allowed the Sega CD port of Final Fight to retain the female (technicaly, they are transsexuals) enemies from the original arcade games, albeit with less provocative clothing. Although certain character names (I.e. "Sodom") were still modified.

Frankly, the censorship seems a bit silly, although I can appreciate why such changes were made, especially when this was before the ERSB was created in to rate games (in the U.S. and Canada) for possibly offensive, objectionable or questionable content.

I suppose the biggest complaint, aside from the censorship or hardware limitations, is that the genre that Final Fight helped to build, had since moved on.

None of the playable characters have nearly as many possible offensive and defensive moves as, say Streets Of Rage 2.

The Bottom Line
Final Fight CD is a solid port of the arcade game, with all of the playable characters, bonus leaves and ability to play the game without th a friend. It shows its age, as well as the hardware foilables of the Sega CD, but fans of beat 'em ups will still want to give this one a spin.

The Good
Final Fight cd is often praised for it's good music, extra introduction screens and being close to the arcade conversion. The introduction has spoken dialogues and extra animated screens that aren't in the arcade. The game has also a time attack mode where the object is to defeat as many baddies as you can. This mode has some new locations that fit the game very well.

The Bad
This "good" music are just plain audio tracks, and what is so special about that? Anyone can just record real music and put it on a disc. The audio tracks just fade out and start over and that can be real ugly to listen to especially in the real long levels like the bay area. The game is still heavily censored: there is no blood, roxy and poison's clothes are larger, the liquor is still absent, the thug that discovers his car in a bad condition still says: "oh my car" etc. Most of the stuff is still missing, from the beginning you can tell those barrels are deleted and so it happens many times during play. This is just an incomplete arcade version. The graphics may be close to the real final fight, it's colours are definitely not. Maybe the sega cd couldn't do any better, but I cannot bear to see these washed out colours any longer. There is something wrong with the animation and the hit detection. For some reason I can't explain it simply does not play the same as the arcade version. And finally my real complaint about this conversion: The introduction with spoken words is real nice but why didn't they hire real voice actors?? Haggar doesn't sound like a mighty wrestler but like a wimp! The voice of the villain also sounds like a goof. I am not very happy about that, it is a major disappointment as it just doesn't fit the gorgeous animated introduction.

The Bottom Line
If you want to enjoy the arcade game to it's full glory you still have to stick with the real arcade game. However, if you are a real final fight fan like me, I do recommend you to watch the enhanced intro and to try out the time attack mode.

The Good
The Sega CD version retains many of the features that were cut out from the Super Nintendo ports due to memory limitations. The CD edition has a 2-player mode, the option to play as any of the three urban heroes and includes all the original arcade game levels. Unique to the CD version is an original sound track, voice work during some of the intermission sequences and a special time attack mode.

It remains one of the few side-scrolling, brawler action games for the Sega CD with a 2-player mode. Their are also some nice options such as the ability to adjust the level of difficulty.

The Bad
The severe hardware limitations of the Sega CD, meant that the 1993 CD port can not perfectly recreate the quality of an older arcade game. It could not even match the graphic capabilities of the Super Nintendo.

Final Fight CD, even if it had been a perfect port, suffers from being an 1980's brawler game without many of the improvements seen in subsequent 1990s games in that particular genre. Sega's own Streets of Rage 2 offers playable characters with many more offensive and defense moves, which are much easier to execute them the limited, often more cumbersome controls found in Final Fight CD.

One of the more common problems with early brawler games was the nasty habit of the computer to pull some pretty dirty moves out of its programming. For example, when your character falls down, thugs or even bosses often gather around you, thus ensuring that you will take some serious damage.

Last, but not least, Sega apparently still felt the need to censor the game. The transgender-women thugs were allowed to stay, but with less revealing attire. Certain Mad Gear thugs, such as 'Sodom' were given different names and bits of profanity were also toned down.

The Bottom Line
Final Fight CD is a solid port of a 1980s, brawler arcade game. Of the 16-bit ports it is closer to the original arcade game in terms of the number of playable characters, levels, bonus rounds and overall basic game play, with a few nice little extras, such as a cool sound track and the ability to adjust the level of difficulty.

If you can get past the Sega CD hardware limitations and the petty censorship, then you are left with one of the best games released for the Sega CD and one of the few Sega CD games with a 2-player mode.