Fatal Fury Special (Sega CD)

Fatal Fury Special is a 2D fighting game that was released for both the home and arcade versions of the Neo Geo hardware in 1993. The original Fatal Fury was perhaps the earliest competitor to Street Fighter II though it was actually developed at the same time by the original creator of the first Street Fighter game. Fatal Fury Special was the third game in the series though not really a true sequel.

To make an analogy, Fatal Fury Special is to Fatal Fury 2 what Street Fighter II Turbo is to Street Fighter II. In addition to speeding up the game play, Fatal Fury Special tweaked the play mechanics allowing combo attacks among other things. Also, the characters that were only computer controlled in Fatal Fury 2 could now be selectable by the player.

Fatal Fury 2 was well received by both players and critics and was quite popular. In addition to the original Neo Geo versions, it was also ported to a variety of other systems including the Super Nintendo, Sega CD (a review of which appears at the top of this post), Game Gear and PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. These ports received more mixed reviews but were generally positive. The main criticisms typically had to do with graphics and sound compromises that had to be made on less powerful hardware.

There would continue to be Fatal Fury games released throughout the rest of the decade for the Neo Geo. Most fans of 2D fighting games are probably already well familiar with the Neo Geo and the various fighting games available for it. If not, then this game, along with most of the other Fatal Fury games, are definitely ones you should try. While other ports are ok, you probably want to stick to the Neo Geo version or an emulation of it.

Screen shots above are from the Sega CD version of the game.

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