Final Fight
Final Fight is one of the cornerstones on which the entire beat 'em up genre stands. Capcom conquered the arcades with it in 1989 and in 1991 brought it to the Super Nintendo as one of the console's flagship launch titles. The story is classically straightforward: mayor and former wrestler Mike Haggar, together with Cody and Guy, set out to clean up Metro City from the Mad Gear gang, which has kidnapped Haggar's daughter Jessica.
The game puts a trio of fighters with distinct styles in your hands, the hulking Haggar dishes out suplexes, the nimble ninja Guy lands quick combos, and the balanced Cody is the ideal starting point. You claw your way through streets, the subway and an elevator full of enemies, smashing barrels and phone booths for bonuses, and in the famous bonus round you demolish a car. The SNES conversion had its limitations (the character Guy and two-player co-op were missing, and some enemies were censored), yet it remained extraordinarily popular.
Final Fight's legacy is enormous: from here Guy moved permanently into the world of Street Fighter, and a number of characters and places became interwoven with the Capcom universe. Retro gamers appreciate the punchy feel of the blows, the iconic design of the Mad Gear gang and the raw atmosphere of a crumbling 1980s metropolis. A blueprint the genre learned to walk by.
Game 96 of 154 for Super Nintendo
The same title elsewhere (2)
In arcades, Final Fight ran on Capcom's powerful CPS hardware, offering a full colour count, smooth scrolling and, crucially, simultaneous two-player action. The 1991 Super Nintendo conversion, held back by cartridge space and weaker hardware, had to sacrifice exactly that co-op mode and drop one of the playable fighters, Guy, entirely (he returned only in a later sequel), and it also suffers occasional slowdown when many enemies crowd the screen. The 1992 Sharp X68000 port, on the other hand, ranks among the most faithful home conversions of its era — it kept both remaining heroes' full simultaneous co-op and came remarkably close to the arcade original in both colour and smoothness.
