Fighter's History

It's time to talk about what may be the clone-iest of the Street Fighter Clones. 

Released by Data East in 1993 and ported to the SNES the next year, Fighter's History is the first in a series of games from the early 90's. I can't say I've ever played the others, the second game was only ever released on the Neo Geo CD and the third game never left Japan. Honestly, it would probably be easier and cheaper to fly to Japan to pick up a copy of the third game than it would to find a working Neo Geo CD and a copy of the second. But the first game was relatively easy to acquire and became infamous for taking fighting games to a place they'd never been before...the courtroom.

You see, I'm not the only one that who considers Fighter's History to be the most egregious Street Fighter ripoff. Capcom thought so too. They sued Data East for copyright infringement, claiming they had ripped everything from their characters to their combat straight from their more popular rival. It wasn't hard to see the similarities but in the end, it was determined that those similarities were scenes a faire, basically scenes that were considered almost obligatory to their genre, and thus exempt from copyright law. It was something of a landmark case for the gaming industry, even if it didn't get much mainstream press.

But anyway, back to the actual game. Due to the events surrounding it and it's blatant, egregious aping of Street Fighter, Fighter's History has something of a bad reputation. But honestly, it isn't too bad. It's no SFII, but it does a pretty darn good imitation an it has it's own weird, unexplained charm. Think of it this way: Street Fighter II is like Legos, clearly the best in their field but too expensive for some and obnoxiously ubiquitous. A lot of these clones are like the dollar store version of Legos that break easy or don't stick together, they're clearly a cash grab and never worth your time. Fighter's History is more like Mega Blocks, they aren't Legos but they're a nice budget alternative and you'll never be mad if they are what you have to play with.

Still, it's clearly a ripoff and you can see it right away with the characters. There are nine, all of whom play exactly like one of or a combination of SFII charaters. I swear, every one is an amalgamation of two Street Fighter Characters, Ray is Ken + Guile, Ryoko is Ryu + Zangief, Samshay is Sagat + Balrog, you get the idea. None of their designs are all that inspiring and they rarely make sense. Ray is apparently supposed to be some sort of government official, so why is he fighting in jeans and a tank top. Italian wrestler Marstorious looks more like a Viking than a Roman, Mizoguchi is a generic Japanese fighter (who also screams "tiger!" when he throws his fireball, which I'm sure Capcom's lawyers brought up), Lee is a generic karate guy, you get the picture. Ryoko's design is the closest to inspiring from a gameplay standpoint, it's cool to see one of the power characters take the form of a 17 year old Judo champion rather than another wrestler or whatever, but that doesn't change the fact that she looks like they literally just took Ryu's image from SFII and added feminine features. 

And it's not just that these characters look like Street Fighter characters, they play exactly like them.  You have charge moves and rotation moves and most characters have pretty strong arsenals of moves you will instantly recognize. It's not just that the moves are the same, it's that the move sets are the same.  Matlock, for instance, has two special moves: a sonic boom and a vertical flipping kick. Sounds familiar. I like to think Fighter's History is actually an alternate timeline where Guile decided not to join the army and became a degenerate instead. Anyway, the moves may be ripped straight from SFII, but at least they are responsive. The characters are fairly well balanced and you can't just spam moves over and over to beat the AI. The hit detection is good and your characters move fluidly, which wasn't always the case in these SF clones. You have the same button layout, three kicks and three punches, and if anything the difference it more pronounced here than it is in SFII. The heavy strikes are slow and plodding, but they take off quite a bit of damage. The lighter strikes are weak, but fast and great at disrupting priority. I really don't think they could have done too much better.

The biggest difference (and it's really not that big) is the addition of character weak points. Each character has a spot you can hit to take off extra damage. Hit the opponent enough and they will be dizzied, allowing you a free hit. It's not a huge change, but I kind of like it. It adds an additional element of strategy and causes you to formulate different plans for different characters. I also think they did a good job of balancing these with the characters. Marstorious may be a big, powerful brute, but throw a few kicks at his ankles and you can chop him down.  Lee doesn't have a a lot of special moves, but his weak spot is damn near impossible to hit. They could have really messed that up and they didn't, so good job Data East. I also like that each character has an object or article of clothing that clearly serves as their weak point, it will flash the more you hit it before finally falling off. It's oddly satisfying to kick Matlock's glasses right off his face or punch the lighting bolt off Ray's shirt. 

Graphically, Fighter's History is just okay. Some of the backgrounds look nice but there isn't a lot of detail and the character sprites are kind of small-ish. Not really much to say there, it's the epitome of average graphics for a 16-bit console. I actually like the sound a lot though. The quality isn't the best, but something about these tracks just fits so well in a fighting game. The sound effects when you hit your opponent are great too. It isn't all roses, the voice samples are awful and the announcer definitely needs to lay off the caffeine. I do think it's funny when you lose a round and it screams the name of your character before just matter-of-factly adding "loses." 

I guess my last issue would be with the difficulty. I found the game to be too easy, though I played on normal and there are three higher difficulty levels. It could be that my skills are sharp from playing all these fighting games lately, but I don't know. The bosses are especially disappointing, neither of them are at all challenging. Though if you were one of the three or four people that played "Karnov" on the NES, you might get a little nostalgia kick out of seeing him here. I would rather them skew easy than hard, but still I was able to beat the game on my first playthrough without trying too hard.

Data East may have won in court, but their offering was never going to stand a chance of capturing what Street Fighter II had. Still, it's not a bad game and dare I say, it's actually a good one? I would never recommend playing this over SFII, but it has far more redeeming qualities than most of the endless swarm of clones that came out around the same time. It's not revolutionary or anything, but it's interesting history make it worth playing just for curiosity's sake. Fans of old school 2D fighters may even find something to like.

7.5/10