Capcom has so many fantastic franchises under their belt it’s difficult to keep track of them all. From Street Fighter to Mega Man, Devil May Cry to Ghosts ‘n Goblins, there’s so many amazing games to play and enjoy. One series that I’ve sorely neglected is the beat ’em up classic Final Fight.
I’m not a stranger to the genre: to this day I still really enjoy side scrolling beat ’em ups. Heck, on this blog I’ve already written about a few others! But for one reason or another, until rather recently I never really played much of Capcom’s classic.
The action is what you’d expect from a standard side scrolling game: move to the right, beat up bad guys, grab some weapons, destroy some trash cans, eat food you find on the ground, etc. The highlight here is the polish. Characters play differently from one another, stages are bright and colorful, and enemies are varied. There’s a reason Final Fight has stuck around in the back of gamers’ minds all these years, and that is what makes the game fun to play to this day.
Seeing the Final Fight cabinet in an arcade was always exciting for me. The bright colors and unique overlay and marquee made it easily recognizable. Yet my brothers and I never really played it. This was largely due to more nostalgia being tied to Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade games, where we spent more of our quarters. My personal experience with the series ended up started with the re-releases and emulation on our computer.
A piece of trivia that’s fairly well known to many is that Final Fight began life as a sequel to the original Street Fighter. The game ended up being too different than the original SF, so Final Fight became it’s own game series. The connections to Street Fighter don’t end there. Several characters who made their debut in Final Fight made their way to Street Fighter. Guy, Cody, Sodom, and Rolento have all been in the Street Fighter series of games. Hugo/Andor, Poison, and Haggar have also made appearances in the fighting series and its spinoffs as well!
*Played at Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, IL 2019
