Final Fight (Arcade)

After Capcom achieved some success with their fighting game Street Fighter, they were quick to get to work on a sequel, but when Double Dragon and its sequel proved to be a hit in arcades with their beat ’em up action, Capcom pivoted away from the fighting game design and instead decided to create their own beat ’em up. Eventually discarding the working title Street Fighter ’89, this new brawler would go on to give Capcom a brand new successful franchise, one who had many characters head over and join later Street Fighter games but still has an identity of its own. This game, Final Fight, would go on to become one of the quintessential beat ’em ups and one whose design still influences new brawlers today even more than the games that influenced it.

The action begins as a new mayor is elected for Metro City. The Mad Gear Gang is used to having their way with the town, previous mayors easily bribed or forced to turn a blind eye to their illegal activities. Mayor Mike Haggar isn’t willing to play ball though, the former street fighter refusing to be intimidated or corrupted. To try and get him to reconsider, the gang kidnaps Haggar’s daughter Jessica, but rather than giving into their demands, Haggar heads off to beat the gang into submission and get his daughter back. Haggar luckily has some help taking an entire gang on, Jessica’s martial artist boyfriend Cody more than willing to join the fight. Cody also just so happens to be friends with a ninja named Guy who is willing to help, and after selecting which of these three characters you wish to play as, you and potentially a second player set off to take down the gang and their leader, the crime lord Belger.

The character you pick to play as in Final Fight does impact how you can fight the many thugs standing between you and saving Jessica. Mike Haggar certainly stands out the most, the musclebound mayor drawing direct inspiration from wrestling moves with the unique attacks he has available. Haggar can grab enemies and leap across the battlefield to piledrive them into other baddies, suplex them, performing a flying splash, and force enemies back with a spinning lariat. The sound design gives every move a hefty feeling and the large detailed sprites being flung back by your strikes certainly makes the brawling even more satisfying, and while Cody and Guy may not be quite as over the top as Mike, they’ve certainly got some fun moves in their kits to draw on. Guy’s ninja skills don’t really manifest as anything over the top, but his spinning kick and ability to leap off of walls certainly makes him seem the most agile of the trio. Cody is found somewhere in between the two, stronger than Guy but faster than Haggar, and while his moves are the closest to what you might actually see in a street fight, an uppercut and a willingness to get up close and personal with the knife weapon still give him some unique skills.

No matter who you go with in the end, most of their moves are pulled off similarly and rely only on a jump button, attack button, and simple directional inputs to execute. All characters have ground combos, aerial attacks, and throw options, the exact manifestation of these moves being the character specific abilities mentioned previously. However, if you find yourself crowded by enemies, all three of them have a pretty similar solution to the problem. By pressing jump and attack in tandem, your character can perform a Megacrush Attack, this ability hitting everyone around you back. It does cost some health to execute, but if it doesn’t hit any enemies when used it thankfully won’t take any health away. There’s a pretty good balance of health and lives to a quarter as well so using this when things are getting out of control is easy enough to justify, and since you can find food by smashing open barrels and trash cans to get health refills, you won’t have to spend too long with that bit of your health missing. Those same barrels can also contain points items or, more importantly, can contribute to the game’s weapon system. Usable items like knives can be found within these containers, but it’s just as likely you’ll find some laying around or be able to pilfer them from an enemy. Pipes and actual swords can be found around Metro City and be picked up for easy high damage hits on enemies. These limit your attack options and can disappear or be stolen if you get knocked around while holding them, but they are also enjoyable for brief power trips where most foes can be easily battered with the item. The game even recognizes the simple catharsis of whaling away with these items, a bonus stage where you can beat up a car with a pipe thrown in for little reason beyond the thrill of simple destruction.

As you move through the six major stages of Final Fight you’ll find yourself in some expected but still stylishly realized versions of city streets, bars, and warehouses, but some of the locations you head to make good use of the urban setting as well, one area having you fight your way through an entire subway train and another taking place in an industrial area with workplace hazards and a packed freight elevator. Belger’s skyscraper caps off the action with a more sophisticated background to the tilted plane you fight your enemies on, and some areas will throw you in a wrestling ring with multiple enemies based on Andre the Giant or a samurai named Sodom who wields two swords at once. Final Fight lands in the sweet spot of beat ’em ups where the enemy variety continues to evolve appropriately as you head through new locations and the opposition is grouped in ways that change how you approach the fight.

While there are some basic enemies like the musclebound thugs and mohawk-having punks who exist mostly to be easy fodder you breeze through, many of Final Fight’s enemies have some trick that makes them a bit dangerous if you don’t deal with them appropriately. The chunky enemies will charge across the battlefield and easily knock you away if you don’t keep them busy, the men in leather jackets will block your attacks at times and leave you open to other approaching enemies, and the ladies called Poison and Roxie will flip around and not linger around like the basic baddies. Some of these are simple enough to handle on their own, but if there are a bunch of regular enemies around they might distract you or keep you away from a tougher foe, meaning the stronger opponent can execute their move uninterrupted. This can be especially challenging when characters like El Gado and Hollywood enter the picture, El Gado throwing knives from the sidelines and Hollywood hurling burning ones that leave damaging fire on the ground. The space you have to fight in Final Fight is easily filled by the large character sprites so it’s not too hard to hit these guys before they do some real damage, but some characters like the many forms of Andore can take many more hits and stick around, complicating the fight but never pushing it into unfair territory. Bosses thankfully follow a similar idea, many having little enemies around to distract you from their more powerful moves. Damnd’s whole thing is calling in backup, corrupt cop Edi.E has a club and pistol he’ll try to use as a range advantage over you, and even Belger calls in assistants to try and make his crossbow fighting style more effective. Some foes like Sodom are fought alone, but his swords mean he hardly needs the backup, and the similarly agile Rolento leaps around and hurls so many grenades that having other thugs present for the fight would be overkill. Final Fight does have its more challenging fights because it knows how to mix together regular enemies and let the stronger ones breathe, but to avoid constant pressure on the player, it sometimes gives you the space to easily tear through some simple enemies before it throws the tough stuff back into the picture.

THE VERDICT: I had no nostalgic attachment to Final Fight going in, and yet I found it contains many of the traits I find important to an enjoyable beat ’em up. The player is given fights that are easy and satisfying power trips between tougher battles with bosses and more dangerous enemy types that are mixed together in intelligent ways. All three characters are distinct in their fighting style and yet pull from an easily understood set of inputs, and moments like the bonus games and the situations where you get weapons give you moments to enjoy raw strength between having to use your skills effectively to survive. It’s no surprise that Final Fight became a quintessential beat ’em up, Capcom’s brawler embodying the best traits that draw people to the genre.

And so, I give Final Fight for arcade machines…

A GREAT rating. It’s easy to see why some would put Final Fight down as the best beat ’em up of all time. Enemy variety both in their capabilities and how they complement each other, unique moves to each member of the playable trio, interesting back drops for the action, and fun little touches like breaking a car to pieces only to watch a man come in and lament the damage give the game personality on top of punchy action. I don’t think I’d quite give it my highest rating mainly because it could clearly benefit from a bit more extra content. Some additional unique attacks for the cast, a few more enemy types, and having stronger identities for bosses like Abigail who is essentially just an Andore could be added without bloating the game, but what is present is still incredibly solid and embodies the appeal of the genre. You do sometimes just whale away on enemies who can’t put up a fight, but at plenty of moments in the game you need to pick your target, avoid attacks, and figure out the tricks of the current battle. You can’t brute force a boss like Rolento unless you want to lose a bunch of quarters, you can’t just press buttons and pray when a battle involves foes like Hollywood whose flaming knives will make mindless fighting backfire, and if you want to avoid trouble with Sodom you need to manage the weapons carefully. Still, there are plenty of moments where you can just enjoy piledriving thugs as the mayor or shanking them as Cody, so an important balance is achieved that keeps the game from losing its appeal.

While the original Double Dragon arcade game introduced the world at large to the beat ’em up formula, Final Fight showed people how to do one effectively. Not constrained by the same technical limitations and free to embrace whatever ideas they had for the action, Capcom created an excellent arcade brawler that is sure to please most fans of the genre.