When the Super Nintendo gained exclusive rights to Streetfighter 2 by Capcom, Sega snapped up the rights to the next best thing, which was, at the time, SNK's Fatal Fury. The Sega version was decent, if nowhere near the class of SF2, but that didnt matter, because it was only a matter of time before the Sega got its own incarnation of SF2, and the SNES got its own incarnation of Fatal Fury.

Fatal Fury actually featured a story with the occasional cut-scene in between the rounds of combat.While it wasnt anything major, and was just the evil crimelord Geese Howard observing the tournament favourite (you) it was still nice to have.
The story, is that when two brothers, Andy and Terry Bogard, were brothers, their adopted father Jeff was killed by the nefarious Geese Howard, who wanted Jeff to teach him some secret martial arts technique. After going their separate ways for years of martial arts training, the two return with Muay Thai friend Joe Higashi to take part in Geese Howard's King of Fighters tournament held in their hometown of South Town. Amongst the combatants they will have to face in order to reach the man include the odd Mohawk sporting breakdancer Duck King,Balrog clone Michael Max, Old man who transforms into a musclebound warrior Tung Fu Ru, Cafe Owner and Capoeira expert Richard Myer, disgraced wreslter Raiden, and the two fighters who never appeared in the Sega version, Muay Thai master who drinks to gain power mid fight Hwa Jai, and Geese's English born, staff wielding adopted son Billy.
While all the characters are available in Vs. mode, the single player game only allowed you to play as Terry, Andy or Joe.

Graphically, the game isnt all that great.While the sprites and animation are decent for FF's original release, by the time it hit the Snes the were well outdated and games were much more advanced to look at. With that said, they are still competent, and not bad enough to put most retro gamers off playing the game.

The sound is pretty crappy though. While the Snes was better than the Genesis in terms of sound, if you compared Fatal Fury you wouldnt think it. The sound here appears to have been designed for the Nes, not the Snes, with the music being murdered. Some tunes are still cool, such as Geese's theme, which is awesome, but most are just average. Shame on them for changing the great title screen music from the Sega version though.

The controls for the game are fairly simple. Y is Punch, B is kick and A is throw. The rest of the buttons are unused. Special moves are performed the same three ways as Streetfighter. By charging one direction and quickly pressing another, the rolling thumb movement or the rapid tapping of a button. Sadly, the controls arent too great in the way of responisiveness. It seems to take a good 2 seconds or so after you press the buttons to get any sort of a response, and performing the charged special moves has been something I havent been able to do.

Another fault with the game is that the collision detection leaves something to be desired on occasion. And some of the moves are glitchy as hell. Examples being Raiden's powerbomb and Terry's 'Supershot' Kick, which cause them to fly about all over the screen, go through opponents and such nonsense.

One important thing I should point out about the Super Nes version, and one of the first things to strike anyone who has played any other version of Fatal Fury, is that the game does not use the 'lane' system of which the series became well known. The Snes version is just a straight up fighter with no frills. I can't make my mind up if that is a good thing or not, seeing as the lane system was actually quite annoying, but at the same time it did distinguish it from a number of the now hundreds of fighters on the market.

On the whole, Fatal Fury, despite its faults, actually isnt all that bad a fighting game on multiplayer. While nowhere near SF2 in terms of playability,it is a fairly enjoyable experience if you have a few fellow fighting game fans who can handle retro games. While faults are definitely there to be seen, it does at least have a decent engine behind it, unlike a lot of the tripe fighting games released in the 16-Bit era. But the players really have to be fans of fighting games to get into it. The glitches and unresponsive controls will just really annoy everyone else.

The game went on to spawn one sequel on the Snes, one update of the sequel, a few 32-Bit titles and a Dreamcast game. But it is probably best known because several of the characters went on to be in SNK's flagship King of Fighters games.

In fact, King of Fighters fans are probably the only people this game can really be recommended to, just to see where some of the characters began. The game, while better than stuff like Primal Rage, really isnt worth looking at unless you are a fan of the series and the characters. It seems to be one of those rare occasions where the Sega port was actually better than the Snes one.

So, unless you are well into the King of Fighters series, or love fighting games, Fatal Fury is a game that can easily be skipped. With that said, I actually own 3 versions of the Snes game. A Japanese version, and American one, and a PAL one (although to add to the fun, its an Italian PAL one). Because Im a sad KoF fan.

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Fatal Fury for Sega Genesis

Recommended: No