Final Fight

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The game is set in an American fictional place called Metro City and the story revolves around the kidnapping of the newly-elected Mayor's daughter, Jessica, by a dominant street gang named "Mad Gear"! The gang's members want to take control of the city, so they kidnap the girl to blackmail the Mayor. Mike Haggar (the Mayor), is a former pro wrestler and he refuses without any question to give in to the gang's demands! So he decides to set out to rescue his daughter with the help of her boyfriend, a black belt martial artist named Cody and his friend, a modern-day Bushin Ninja named Guy. At the game's main menu, you can choose one among those three different characters, each with his own pros and cons. Also, the game can be played in two-players mode (like Golden Axe and Double Dragon), which adds more fun! Your main goal is to beat the hell out of every enemy character that appears on screen aiming to stop you, until you finally reach the end of the stage and confront a stronger (and much bigger) boss fighter! Once that boss is knocked out, you will automatically move on to the next stage. Final Fight is a nice beat 'em up game, until the moment you realize that nothing new is going to happen (pretty usual for almost all games of its genre). The fighting moves are rather limited and each major villain can be beaten by using a specific technique! The gameplay is getting gradually tougher, much like the Double Dragon series, but sometimes it might get in your nerves and make you quit! After all, this is a beat 'em up game, so it shouldn't be a "piece of cake" for any player!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The graphics on the Sharp X68000 look good, without any further depth (due to its almost "dull" backdrops). But, in general, this conversion is graphically almost identical to the coin-op original title, with no frame-rate drops and smooth character animations. One of the most impressive features Final Fight offers is the appearance of really large characters on-screen. The Sharp X68000 conversion sports more than 100 colors on screen at once (which is much higher compared to the Atari ST or the Amiga counterpart). The intro music is great and the in-game sound is nicely performed with the original arcade music and a variety of sampled sound effects during gameplay.