Final Fight CD

Final Fight CD is a conversion of Capcom's famous arcade beat-'em-up, and for Mega-CD owners it represented one of the strongest arguments for buying the add-on at all. While the Super Nintendo version had to sacrifice an entire level and one of the playable characters due to cartridge capacity, and also lost two-player co-op, the Mega-CD port offers all three fighters — Haggar, Cody, and Guy — a complete set of levels, and above all two-player cooperation, which is absolutely essential in this genre.

The principle remains purely arcade: you fight your way through the streets of Metro City through crowds of the Mad Gear gang to rescue Haggar's daughter Jessica. Each character has a different balance of speed, reach, and power; you have throws, desperate special attacks paid for with a chunk of your own health, weapons picked up off the ground, and plenty of breakable crates and barrels hiding food. The design forces players to alternate between attacking and retreating and to keep enemies at a distance, since letting yourself get surrounded means a very quick end. There's also a time-attack mode added for quick replays, plus a difficulty selection. Co-op in particular changes the whole experience: two players can split up the crowd, pin an enemy between them, and pull the other out of an encirclement, so the game feels significantly more approachable played by two than as a solo run.

On a technical level, the port surprisingly nailed the balance between fidelity to the original and what the hardware could do. The characters are large, the animation is smooth, and the action keeps a decent pace, though purists point out small concessions in the number of enemies on screen compared to the arcade cabinet. Its biggest asset is the music from disc — arrangements of the arcade soundtrack that give the grimy streets a noticeably punchier mood — plus digitized voice clips and hit sounds. At the time, the port was praised as one of the best home versions of Final Fight ever, and it's still a great way to play this early-1990s genre the way it was meant to be played: with two players, and no compromises.