StarSoldier1's Full Review: Final Fight One for Game Boy Advance (GBA)
The popular Super Nintendo, Sega CD, Wii and Arcade fighting game comes to the Gameboy Advance and Capcom did a good job porting their classic to a new generation of gamers; good but not great.
The game starts out with the new Mayor in his office and instead of sitting on his butt like every other Mayor does this guy promises big changes and his first thing on the agenda is to clean up the city. Mayor Hagger should know something about beating up on scum bags because he is a big 6.6 foot muscle head and a former Street Fighter champion (think Jesse Ventura or Arnold Schwarzenegger). Unfortunately, Madgear: the city's toughest gang isn't ready to give up yet and they have just kidnapped Hagger's daughter Jessica. Since your local police force sucks, Hagger must go to the streets himself to get some answers but at least his friends Cody and Guy are there to help out too.
Each fighter have their own style. Hagger is the big pro wrestler-type that may lack speed but his holds are lethal while Cody is weaker but is a bit faster plus he is good with knifes. Guy is the least powerful of the three but he has a lot of technical strikes and quick speed too.
The arcade game play still remains mostly intact; see bad guy, kick his a$$, move on. If you are surrounded by a large group of wacky thugs that range from common street punks to massive Ardre the Giant look-a-likes you can pick up all sorts of weapons and power ups anywhere in the game to help gain a edge. Smacking around these dirt bags in places like subways and dirty streets is actually kind of fun for the first few levels and the game even has some bonus scenes like where you would destroy a car (like in Street Fighter II), however by stage 3 the whole game gets way too repetitive (not too mention cheap) in a hurry and gamers will tire of this one quickly.
At least the game still looks pretty good. Final Fight One is just the arcade title with large and colourful characters plus the background art is very detailed. The animation is still pretty weak though and those scantily clad female cops from the Arcade game are still missing here as well. I guess Capcom wanted to censor this game so it would keep the 'E' rating but I still feel rip-offed. These graphics were definitely a step up from previous fighting games like Double Dragon but the GBA can still do better. Although the graphics weren't perfect, at least it was better then boring music here. The game's various sound effects like broken barrels and grunts help to capture the edgy feel of the fighting but just get that sound dial ready when that horrible soundtrack comes on so you can turn it off.
Capcom added some new secret bonuses and extra story text here to help spice up this old dog but the game play remains the same and if you didn't like it the first time around you won't like here either. Sure the game starts out fun when you're beating up street gangs but the big problem is it gets old. The game is not only filled with the same re-spawning enemies over and over again but it is also filled with bigger guys who can easily take away 50 to 70 percent of your health resulting in a lot of fast and cheap deaths. These GBA games also hold a lot more memory then those older 16-bit carts so Capcom could have easily added parts 2 and 3 to this cart as well but I think they are still mad at me for my last review. Overall the game isn't very balanced compared to other free roaming fighters and it will frustrate casual gamers in no time. If you can find it cheap and you liked the original then this is a decent pick up but if the thing is still 39.99 then forget it.
*Battery back up game
Final Fight overall rating: 61/100
Original creators: Capcom
For 1 to 2 players
Rated (E) for Everyone
graphics: 7/10
sound: 5/10
gameplay: 6/10
replay: 7/10
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