Fatal Fury is a head-to-head fighting game ported for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in 1993, published by Sega in Japan and by Takara in North America. It was originally known as Fatal Fury: King of Fighters and made and released by SNK in 1991 for the Neo Geo arcade and home platforms.
The damn popularity of Street Fighter II ushered in the golden age of video games in the 1990s. Fatal Fury was one of those few Street Fighter clones that became successful in its own right and went on to spawn the Fatal Fury and King of Fighters series of fighting games that are still popular to this day.
The Story
Are you strong enough for the toughest fighting challenge?
Only the strongest and fiercest will survive the King of Fighters Tournament. Fight through South Town as day turns to night. Use your street-fighting skills to take down your opponents. These fighters are rough - some can change shape, and even throw tornadoes or fireballs at you. And one can even transform shape to increase the challenge. Hit them hard until all have been defeated. For only through skilled martial arts combat can you be crowned the King of Fighters!
The Graphics and Sound
This game had some pretty nice graphics for the time with detailed backgrounds with crowds cheering from a distance. The good things about these backgrounds are the changing climate in every round. So in one round, you get to fight in daylight setting but it then changes to evening the next.
The character design lack a few animations and details but still kept what made them recognizable. Perhaps the only minor issue here was that a lot of the character intro animations from the arcade version were taken out due to some features that were kept. One thing this Genesis version did keep was the good arcade opening intro.
Sounds effects are okay but the Genesis tunes here may hurt your ears sometimes. As for the sounds, they were faithfully reproduced but in mono sound.
The Gameplay
Like most old-school fighting games, there are quite a few characters to play as, but one of them is more central to the game, as the main hero. Two of these central characters - Terry and Andy's father has been killed by the crime boss Mr. Geese. Geese then set up the King of Fighters' tournament, and these kids want to avenge their father by winning it. It all sounds corny but fighting games tend to be like that.
The main 'story mode' which is the tournament is the staple of the whole game. The two hero brothers mentioned above (with a friend called Joe) are the only characters you can use in this tournament mode. And you battle your way through all the fighters until you get to face Geese.
The other mode you can play is a versus mode, where you can fight as any of the characters in the game and play against either a friend or the computer. Both modes are affected by options in the settings.
The fights themselves are quite good. The A, B, and C buttons are a punch, kick and throw move respectively. Plus every character has a few special moves that can be done with certain button combinations. The dual-plane stages add "false 3D" movement in every fight and every enemy character can jump from and out of said planes.
Replay value is not so good. The gameplay is not as addictive and compelling as Street Fighter II.
My Verdict
Fatal Fury is a fun little game to play. Just choose your fighter to face the boss and view the ending. The problem is, even comparing it to other 16-bit fighters, there's still little to do once you finish the game. But it is a cool reminder as the ancestor of the great King of Fighters fighting game series.
Play it on the unforgettable Sega Genesis/Mega Drive or play it on any favorable emulator.
Let's keep on gaming in the free world!
