Fatal Fury Special

 After a few years of doing this, I've come to realize that what constitutes "off the beaten path" is entirely subjective.

There are certainly video game series' that are part of more general popular culture. I would venture a guess that most people out there have heard of Mario or Sonic, even if they've never picked up a controller in their lives. But by the same token, I'm sure there's also someone out there that's like "Shadow Madness? That's not obscure! You don't know what obscure is until you've played Kaiju No Riho: Gaijin Densetsu Gaiden: Don't Panic! without an English translation patch!" I know I've certainly played my share of games that aren't all that obscure. But some of them are really out there for me. I grew up without a Sega console, so stuff like Phantasy Star and Shining Force were completely foreign to me. And that's true of all of us. Ask an American gamer what their favorite ZX Spectrum game was and all but the most hardcore will look at you confused. But ask the same of someone in the UK and even the most casual gamer could probably give you an answer. A gaming IP that was a household name for you could have been completely off the radar of someone else.

Which brings us to this week's game, Fatal Fury Special for the SNES. Look, anyone that grew up playing fighting games has heard of the Fatal Fury series. It wasn't quite to the level of the big 2, but it was most certainly up there in popularity in the 90's and early 00's. But most of my friends who weren't really into fighting games had never heard of it. I never thought of it as obscure, but I guess if you weren't into 1 on 1 tournament fighters, I could see how it would be. For the uninitiated, Fatal Fury is a series of fighting games created by SNK, a developer that is certainly known for its work in the genre. The series chronicles the rise of Terry Bogard, a resident of the fictitious American city Southtown who is hell bent on winning the local King of Fighter's tournament. But that isn't his only goal. Along with his brother Andy and associate Joe Higashi, Terry seeks to bring down the criminal enterprise of tournament organizer Geese Howard, who essentially rules Southtown with an iron fist. Geese is also the man responsible for the death of Terry and Andy's father, and as such their battle with him is very, very personal. It's not the deepest plot of all time, but it's way more than you usually see in a fighting game. It's firmly entrenched in anime style storytelling, with tons of melodrama and general ridiculousness. Capcom certainly noticed, the created a character just to mock the series (if you ever wondered why they would make a character that sucks as bad as Dan does, this is why). The story does stand out when compared to other fighters of the era, but who's playing a fighting game for the story? I will note here again that I am reviewing the SNES version. I know it's inferior to the arcade and Neo Geo versions, but it's the one I grew up with and I'm sure that's the case for most people.

Fatal Fury Special is actually the third installment of the franchise to land on the 4th gen consoles. It's sort of an update to Fatal Fury 2, with new features added and the boss characters selectable. The first Fatal Fury was available on the SNES, but it left out the two most critical aspects of the game: two-on-one battles and fighting on separate planes. Combine that with the fact you could only select the three main heroes and you have a game that isn't worth playing. Fortunately, the multi-plane battles return in FF Special, though the 2 vs. 1's are still nowhere to be found. That's probably for the best anyway, that was more a gimmick for the arcades and likely wasn't sustainable on console. As for the two-plane fighting, it works surprisingly well and it does a great job of separating FF Special from its seemingly never-ending list of contemporaries. Your controls are pretty simple, each character has a light and heavy punch and kick, as well as a plane switch attack. You can also throw and knock your opponent between planes for extra damage. The special moves are far closer to Street Fighter, with quarter and half circle motions followed by a button press. I didn't play every single character, but I don't even think there are charge moves here, it's all d-pad rotations. New this time are desperation moves, which can be activated when a character has less than 30% of their health. These moves have very complicated inputs but are extremely powerful and can completely change the tide of a match. Combos are also possible for the first time in the series, with certain moves providing a few frames of invincibility on hit, allowing for several attacks to be chained together. The last major difference, and this may not seem like one, but it definitely is, is that you can walk while ducking. Again, seems minor, but it really changes the way you have to approach the game.

Of course, none of that matters if the controls don't work. Fortunately, things are pretty solid here. I found the special moves to be a little stiff, but they did generally work and I think they would have been a little smoother on the arcade version. Regular attacks are generally pretty responsive and character movement is fairly fluid. I think they did a great job with character variety here, they have a good variety of grapplers, speed characters, turtles and any other fighting game character archetype you could think of. I'm actually surprised how different they made all the characters feel, 15 was a lot and not a single one of them feels the same. Some definitely felt a bit more powerful than others, but all of the strategies were viable against the computer and I never felt handicapped because I picked a bad character. A lot of fighting games are frustrating to play against the A.I. because it just cheats like crazy, but everything felt fair here. The bosses were a bit more challenging than the other characters, but that was to be expected. You can also play as said bosses if you want to, so that is cool. Overall, FF Special is just a well-designed fighting game built by a company that knows exactly how to build them the right way. I don't think it's as tight as Street Fighter, but it's definitely solid.

In terms of character design, I've always felt the Fatal Fury series represented both the best and worst of 90's fighting games. On one hand, the Bogart brothers are just straight rip-offs of Ryu and Ken. Terry wears red, is a loud and outspoken blonde who uses fire-based attack. Andy wears white, is more reserved and disciplined and throws a blue fireball that looks suspiciously like a hadouken. However, the secondary characters are among the most interesting of the era. Tung Fu Ru looks like your stereotypical kung fu master, that is until he mutates into a hulkish brute halfway through a round. Businessman Cheng Sinzan looks more like your out of shape uncle than he does a fighting game character, which I actually think is kind of cool. Pro wrestler Big Bear is very obviously based on former NJPW/WCW/WWE standout Vader, who I was always a big fan of. Outside of the three mains, I might argue that Fatal Fury Special (and the series as a whole) might have the most interesting character design of any fighting game, for no other reason than just how purely different they are. I mean, Lawrence Blood is a matador, that's awesome. It's most recognizable character, however, is very likely Mai Shiranui, who is known throughout the fighting game community for her...abilities in combat. Yeah, we'll go with that.

FF Special plays pretty well, but it looks and sounds great too. The characters are extremely detailed and their sprites are very expressive. It obviously can't touch the arcade, and I didn't actually try to calculate, but it felt like there were a lot more frames of animation than you would find in most 4th generation games. The backgrounds also look pretty good as well, the stages are all well designed and fit their characters well. Most of the stages utilize the two-plane gimmick outlined above, but some, mostly the boss stages, do not. Sometimes I felt like there were too many foreground objects obstructing your view, but it was rarely a major problem. I will also say that while there were a lot of great details in the backgrounds, any NPCs in the stages seem to be really pixelated. This stands out in the worst way because everything else is so detailed. Overall though everything looks nice and I like the fact that each background changes slightly between rounds. The sound is good too, the music is above average and the voice samples are pretty good too. The sound effects are a little choppy, but overall, I think it's a good technical effort.

Honestly, the biggest thing that FF Special has going against it is when it was released. There were just so, so many tournament fighters released at this time that it was hard to stand out. Hell, Fatal Fury's developer SNK had five (!) very similar franchises cranking out games in the 90's (Samurai Showdown, World Heroes, Art of Fighting, King of Fighters and FF). I've played titles from about half of those and, I think, had I been playing the best version of FF Special it would have clearly been at the top of my list of. But I have to stick to reviewing the version I played...and it's still probably on the top of the SNK heap. I definitely liked FF Special better than World Heroes Perfect, it was a lot more unique, had better characters and offered something different from other fighting games. The other problem FF Special has, and it's a big problem, is that it isn't Street Fighter. Most casual gamers weren't going to give most other fighting games a second look, unless they were looking for something more like Mortal Kombat. It's a shame too, because Fatal Fury Special is an excellent fighting game in its own right. It has fun combat with unique and interesting characters, good graphics and sound and fair and balanced gameplay. I definitely think Fatal Fury Special is worth checking out for fighting game fans, even if you can only get your hands on the 16-bit version I would check it out. Even folks who don't play a ton of 2D fighters might find something to like.

9/10