Final Fight retrospective: Going it alone | Super NES Works

Capcom arrives half-heartedly on Super NES with a deeply flawed conversion of arcade smash Final Fight. Missing stages, characters, and play options, this 16-bit debut looked nice in magazines, but it didn't play nearly as impressively as Nintendo's own releases.

[@PaddyMcMe]

5:23 *_'Such as when a bunch of Hollywoods drop their flaming dynamite.'_* - An Actual Sentence.

[@ericspratling9252]

Another great one! Jeremy downplays Guy's essence though. He's not just randomly there "for some reason," he's Cody's friend and fellow martial artist. That adds a lot to his appeal, I think (as well as some color to an already quite-colorful game): while both Haggar and Cody have very direct emotional stakes in rescuing Jessica, Guy's there just because he's a good bro.

[@plaidsmock]

I remember excitedly renting this with a friend under the assumption that a brawler like this NEEDED to have 2 player support. I got to experience the same disappointment years later when I rented The Bouncer with the same friend years later.

[@EhrenLoudermilk]

Dude, same. The Bouncer was particularly devastating.

[@heavyalchemy]

I was a fan of Final Fight in arcades, and the advertisements for the SNES version in gaming magazines were killing me! I managed to save up half the cost of a SNES, and one day was surprised when coming home of having one set up under my TV in my bedroom! Of course I got Super Mario World with it (amazing days!!), but the first game I bought for it was Final Fight. Being as I was an only child and didn't have friends come over often back then, I was more than happy with the home experience of Final Fight on SNES!

[@jenningsmills5398]

i don't care what anyone says in October of 92' i played the hell out of final fight on snes & enjoyed every minute of it.

[@SaIzO365]

Damn straight. I loved this game way more then any SOR.

[@davidaitken8503]

It's a testament to just how great the core gameplay is that such a flawed port of the arcade is still such a fantastic game.

[@areaman5959]

We’d never seen the arcade game, and compared to NES Final Fight kicked ass

[@mikedx42]

My exact experience. That slap bass

[@savagedregime8176]

Both Final Fight and Streets of Rage use the same cartridge size. Given that Final Fight was released so close to the debut of the SNES, there was likely a lot of pressure and expectation on Capcom to emphasize the system's graphical leap, so they had to cut back on everything else to fit the larger art assets into the rom's modest memory budget. Had they gone for graphics closer to Streets of Rage they could likely have made a feature complete port, but I imagine Nintendo wouldn't have been too happy with how it compared visually to the arcade version.

[@paulojoffily7444]

Great episode, Jeremy. But I have one correction to make: GBA's Final Fight One does allow coop play, as long as you have 2 GBA and 2 carts

[@willccarroll]

also allowed for dual haggars, making it the defacto best version ever produced.

[@paulojoffily7444]

Great point!

[@TenshiCat]

@@willccarroll Dual Haggars! Now the Mad Gear gang will really regret ever being born!

[@davidaitken8503]

Overtly stupid mistakes like that illustrate how little these guys actually play the games they are talking about. Final Fight One is the best home version of Final Fight by far, not counting emulated versions of the actual arcade. It even gets the screen filled with a bunch of on-screen characters at once.

[@vealchop2490]

I remember my buddy buying Final Fight Guy in a sale bin for used games at blockbuster for like $7, in box with all inserts and manual. I can only imagine what its worth now. I also recommend playing/emulating the Japanese arcade version, they change a lot of the pickup items, and in the US they censored the attract mode intro, which I totally get seeing as for the time it was pretty suggestive.

[@gameguy73]

It's important to understand many early SNES games were affected by the cart memory speed. The SNES CPU has a speed of 1.79 to 3.58. Early SNES carts used a low memory speed that left the CPU running at it's lowest speed (1.79). This is why so many early shooters had such horrific slowdown and I believe that was the reason the co-op was axed from Final Fight. Guy and the missing stage was, as you stated, likely due to the size of the ROM.

[@yellowblanka6058]

That was likely a factor, but even later titles like Final Fight 2 and 3 that likely use faster ROM are still limited to 3/4 enemies onscreen at once - the relatively slow CPU was still an issue.

[@davidaitken8503]

@@yellowblanka6058 Moving larger characters around on screen was definitely a strain on 16-bit home systems back in the day. The SNES always struggled with this and the Genesis didn't even support larger sprite sizes no doubt because it would be strained by it too.

[@nebularain3338]

The SNES should have had something like a 14Mhz 68020 as its main CPU. That way it could have handled fast action games far better. Even a bog standard 7Mhz 68000 would have done the trick. I don't blame Capcom at all. They were hamstrung by ROM memory and a slow CPU, plus I suspect the game was rushed by pressure from Nintendo to try and make a semi-launch status. All in all, it's still a great port which plays well. Compared with the Atari ST port the SNES game is amazing!

[@apollosungod2819]

This was a large part of the factor as to why Final Fight for Super FamiCom and Super Nintendo ended up that way... it was an EARLY game and many people fail to understand this even on the Super Nintendo and just like to believe that the SNES had a slow CPU or some dumb comparison to an entirely different system like the Sega MegaDrive that launched in Japan in 1988 and by 1991 was THREE whole years in manufacturing and also in game devs knowing how it worked. As such even a direct comparison to Sega MegaDrive Bare Knuckle 1 aka Streets of Rage is a bad comparison... as Sega could have used the MegaDrive hardware in arcade form to premiere Bare Knuckle 1 to give the game it's own identity. However by 1992 these limitations were mostly solved and resolved when Capcom's Street Fighter II arrived.

[@Darknight0681]

Final Fight One unless you consider the music inferior was the definitive Nintendo conversion of the game, as it DID have two player coop. Almost all transitions back, up to 6 enemies in screen on the highest difficulty, and it brought back the one stage that was missing. And also, Sodom and Damnd had their names restored, which the Sega CD version didn’t even do. Though admittedly, what I’d like to see happen is a retro release of the arcade game on Switch to finally give us an actual arcade conversion of the title.

[@yellowblanka6058]

And knowing Capcom, they'll charge you $50/60 for a straight port of "Final Fight: Double Impact".

[@Video-Games-Are-Fun]

final fight cd on sega cd

[@Darknight0681]

Thank you Capcom Beat em up Bumdle for giving me my wish!!!

[@fearanarchy]

"That's right, he's gonna be mayor.." - Marty McFly

[@fbeuks]

(FYI, Jesse Ventura's entrance to politics was fairly contemporary: he was elected mayor of Brooklyn Park, MN (major Minneapolis suburb, sixth-largest city in the state) the year after Final Fight was in arcades.)

[@JeremyParish]

Well OK then!

[@fbeuks]

I choose to believe that he was inspired by Haggar's success.

[@gabrieleriva651]

But they never kidnapped his daughter.

[@yellowblanka6058]

And how many punks did HE suplex to secure the position?

[@fbeuks]

He was mayor from 1/91 to 1/95, and Governor from 1/99 to 1/02.

[@maxrage2104]

I find it hard to believe you dont have more subs. Your vids take me back to my childhood so thank you for that!

[@Panzer_the_Merganser]

5:13. Every Zoom meeting for the last five months.

[@Larry]

The weirdest thing about the Industrial Area level on the SNES Final Fight is that it's still in the game's code. It just has no specific graphics for it. If you load it up via an emulator, it's just a garbled mess (though still playable). But it's a bit of a shoddy job all around, especially when compared to the Commodore Amiga port, which had all the stages, three characters and two player co-op, despite running on lesser hardware. (But the programmer Richard Aplin was an insane genius at getting blood out of a stone)

[@captainn2111]

Great and thorough retrospective! Thank you Jeremy!

[@spiderjerusalem100]

I've read that Guy got his name and likeness from the Fugazi singer/guitarist Guy Picciotto because someone on the dev team was a Fugazi fan. I hope that's true because that's really cool.

[@samuelthehobo4441]

I like the guitar in the first stage, I don’t care if I’m alone with that claim

[@NESADDICT]

I got this game for my 12th birthday and I loved it!

[@Video-Games-Are-Fun]

i ended up buying final fight guy in 1996 and loved it. much more fun with guy.

[@portugalw.8945]

When is your birthday? I'd like to know the release day in USA

[@aguilerajohn]

love this! it cool meeting you at the expo last week.

[@Toad64]

I'm glad Konami's arcade conversion of TMNT IV would work out so much better that Capcom's Final Fight! Even if that game was missing a few animation, it more than made up for it. And it kept two player!

[@Video-Games-Are-Fun]

it also had mode 7 scaling when u threw the turtle onto the screen!

[@davidaitken8503]

@@Video-Games-Are-Fun That was faked on the SNES version with just a few frames of animation. The SNES had no sprite scaling, only background scaling.

[@PlatformJunkie]

For someone like myself that would never play the arcade game years later Final Fight on SNES wasn't a let down at all. In fact it had the exact opposite effect on me.

[@Video-Games-Are-Fun]

final fight on the arcade is superior. larger sprites, zero slowdown, and of course 2 players which is always more fun teaming up with a buddy.

[@MaidenHell1977]

Another fantastic retrospective look at an excellent game. Despite all its shortcomings, I still love this game. Graphically it trounced Streets of Rage, music was decent (not as good as SOR) and its not a terrible game. A lot of gamers had no idea it was based on a more superior arcade version.

[@JeremyParish]

Who didn't know it was based on an arcade title? That cabinet was everywhere!

[@MaidenHell1977]

Jeremy Parish not in my neck of the woods.

[@adamking6645]

Excellent work. You were spot on about everything. You even remembered to mention Streets of Rage, which as you said was everything Final Fight should have been and another reason Sega dominated the first few years of the 16-bit wars.

[@x977]

Oh boy! I love this series! time to enjoy this one!

[@delaorden]

Final Fight was the game that made me realise I needed a SNES but not with that game. Great looking game for selling consoles but too much was lost to make it fun

[@Video-Games-Are-Fun]

final fight on sega cd is amazing

[@davidaitken8503]

@@Video-Games-Are-Fun No, it's not. The collisions and animations are all staggered making the game move way too slow.

[@Video-Games-Are-Fun]

@@davidaitken8503 i see

[@LanIost]

Dammit, I gotta go to work but I want to watch this now!

[@Nuclearlandlord]

Hah. Watching this at work now.

[@JeremyParish]

I didn't mean to undermine our nation's GDP in this way.

[@Nuclearlandlord]

The effect is not nearly as bad as you think. I was alt-tabbing between this and my work.

[@danielblake1537]

I always loved Mighty Final Fight especially playing as each character I beat that game Soo many times but it never got old replaying it....I downloaded on my 3ds but some jackass I let hold my handheld for a day when I got it back my SD card was taken out AND my game "The Legend Of Zelda:A Link Between Worlds" and I had a bunch of great games downloaded on my 3ds I had the MegaMan Collection on there Soo many other games stolen smh that bummed me out bad!!

[@arcadeutopia3035]

So glad you mentioned Streets of Rage being that bit better lol

[@gjtrue]

I remember growing up with the SNES version and not knowing who the devil this unknown, 3rd fighter (Guy) was when I played the arcade version many years later... 😅

[@CarozQH]

I once read an old interview with a programmer who worked for Software Creations (a UK developer mostly known for their Nintendo games, such as Tinstar, Super Off Road and Plok on the SNES, and Solstice and Sky Shark on the NES). He said that 16-bit home console and Arcade games from Japanese developers were often programmed in C. And while this was still fine on the Mega Drive, and on the SNES too if the game didn't require too much processing power (RPGs, for example), C compilers simply could not give the same results as programming a game in assembly language (which UK developers like Software Creations and Rare kept using throughout the 16-bit era). I also read an interview with an ex Rare employee who stated that the N64 was a huge shift for most of Rare's programmers, because they had to use C to program games on the N64, something they had never done before. And with these early SNES releases from Japanese developers it's pretty clear that at least most of them were likely programmed in C, because the publishers wanted to have games for the new Super Famicom out as early as possible. Final Fight and Gradius 3 were probably not written in assembly either, so it was probably easy to port the games over by still using C, but cutting out certain aspects so that they would fit on SNES carts and run at a decent speed. And you can see how much better games on the SNES got once games were programmed in Assembly: compare Final Fight to Final Fight 3, Gradius 3 to Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, or Super R-Type (slowdown hell!) to R-Type 3. FF3, Parodius and R-Type 3 would simply not look and play as well as they do if they were programmed using C.

[@JeremyParish]

That's a pretty reasonable explanation for those early games. You wouldn't happen to have a link to that interview, would you?

[@CarozQH]

The interview was from an old gaming mag called Super Play Magazine. I could only find a quote of it on a German site. It's as follows: "As a programmer's machine it (the Super Famicom/SNES)'s quite unusual, however, because of the slow processor - though there are ways of speeding it up. Early games like Super Ghouls n' Ghosts slow down ridiculously easily, and you really have to put most of that down to poor programming. A lot of Japanese programmers use 'C', not machine code which perhaps explains it."

[@221b]

Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius was able to outperform Gradius III because it used the SA1 enhancement chip to get around the SNES deficiencies. It was literally running on different hardware than its predecessor.

[@CarozQH]

Huh, I didn't know that. So basically the stock SNES was just bad to work with.

[@gabrieleriva651]

CarozQH no, it was a machine with a ton of features (audio samples, transparencies, many colors) but with a slowass CPU. But that CPU didn't slow a signle instanceof Donkey Kong Country 2, which has a fuckton of sprites.

[@Levitz9]

Jesse Ventura, huh? Haggar's cover art just makes me think of Freddie Mercury.

[@yellowblanka6058]

Later Final Fight games on the SNES would still feature relatively few onscreen characters. Even with more efficient programming techniques, it was hard getting around that slow CPU without including an expensive add-on chip in the cartridge.

[@davidaitken8503]

Capcom should have just made the characters smaller to be able to run more out there on the screen simultaneously. The lure of larger, flashier, graphics was too great for them, though.

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@davidaitken8503 I think it had more to do with moving/coordinating more objects/the collision checks etc. for those objects than the size of the sprites. If the problem was movement/collison etc. for X amount of characters onscreen, reducing the size of the characters probably wouldn't have done anything. Think about early SNES games that would slow to a crawl when there were too many projectiles on screen and those are small, one/two color objects. Also, sprites were already noticeably downsized on SNES/Genesis etc. vs. the arcade originals, I don't think they wanted to knock them down any further and lose all detail - I'm sure they made them as small as they could while still retaining most of the character detail.

[@davidaitken8503]

@@yellowblanka6058 Possibly, but it seems like the movement and collision checks probably had less to do with it than AI which was probably more of a strain on that type of game. There aren't exactly a lot of collisions taking place compared to a shooter like Contra 3.

[@davidaitken8503]

...then again the collision checks seem to be what is so inconsistent and slow on games like Rival Turf. Final Fight CD staggers all of the collisions and animation in a row, never processing more than one at a time on screen. (Yes, I know that nothing is technically being processed simultaneously.)

[@MISSCHAMPAGNE]

new favorite channel, you are so cool

[@SPac316]

I was disappointed in this port, even back then, because I have played the arcade version before hand and thought it was so awesome at the time, and it still is. So to see Guy and the two player mode removed was a huge letdown. It was too bad because I was looking forward to play Final Fight at home when I finally got the SNES as a kid.

[@natureboykdizzle8182]

Final fight is one of my all-time favorite beat him UPS

[@jacksparechange]

I miss 1up.com :(

[@JeremyParish]

As all right-thinking people should.

[@jacksparechange]

Jeremy Parish you guys felt like family, as a collective you guys were A Cut Above your regular gaming journalist. And the 1up show was the BOMB, the crew was always engaging without becoming narcissist something a lot of gaming Show's forget. Happy to see you still drumming along. Wish you best of luck and I will buy the book.... promise.

[@chepin74]

Bwah-haha, I initially read that as "as alt-right-thinking people should". The times we live in...

[@FernandoMaldonado]

Duarte Massa what book?

[@yellowblanka6058]

Duarte - yeah, 1up.com and this video/series - THAT'S game journalism, well-researched, well-presented, minimal bias/political overtones etc. no ludicrous personalities etc.

[@benkizer9509]

Capcom Belt Collection on Switch gives you the arcade port of the game, which is awesome, except that it's like 20 times harder than the Super Nintendo one, lol.

[@Turbomorph]

So...not sure if you are aware but if you hold up on the D-pad while doing a combo you'll perform a throw instead of the last hit on said combo tossing your enemy behind you. Makes taking on multiple enemies easier.

[@muhanc.a.9299]

If you like Final Fight then you'd love Final Fight LNS 3.0

[@rootbeer_666]

Interesting. I knew about the changes to Poison and Roxy, but not to Damnd. I’ve never played Final Fight, but I remember screenshots in the previews showing Damnd keeping his name and thinking what a weird name it was. Then again, I may have seen this in Electronic Gaming Monthly rather than in Nintendo Power, but I’m not entirely certain, as I believe my subscription to the latter hadn’t quite yet lapsed when the SNES was being hyped up before launch.

[@ColeslawVariant]

I always thought Haggar was based on Don Frye.

[@SaIzO365]

I loved final fight arcade and on the snes. Never found cody boring either. I think final fight on the snes gets a bad rap, i played the hell out of it.

[@MrJWTH]

Does anyone have an idea on how much closer this could gave been to the arcade if Capcom had access to something like the SA1 chip?

[@gabrieleriva651]

Mr. JH no need for a SA1. Just a 1MB (8Mb) rom and better machine knowledge. Later Snes games could be fast even without enhancement chips (DKC for example).

[@yellowblanka6058]

It would still be limited (at least compared to the arcade) by the relatively paltry amount of system RAM, but you'd certainly see more enemies on screen at once, and probably two-player co-op out of the gate. Also, as Gabriele said, expensive cartridge ROMs would be a big problem.

[@gabrieleriva651]

You've finally disappointed me, Parish: you've shown the arcade Final fight with the wrong aspect ratio 😊

[@JeremyParish]

Not my footage. Hence the source credit.

[@Siriuskamikaze]

Final Fight One on GBA does have co-op, but you have to have the cable links and another copy of the game to do it.

[@fazares]

ff one gba has the 2 player mode via link cable ;)

[@LucasKelleher]

Final Fight One actually does have two-player coop if you link up two GBAs. Are you saying it doesn't have "simultaneous play" because this mode requires two GBAs and two copies of the game? This seems like a mistake.🤔

[@PrinceAkkanatan]

Though not visually inspired, the idea of pro-wrestler turned politician lines up with Antonio Inoki who went into Japanese Politics around this same time. Perhaps that had something to do with Hagar's story.

[@jamesmoss3424]

I played the snes version when I was a kid.😀👍🎮

[@aeschafer1]

The Streets of Rage/Final Fight comparison is an interesting one. For much of their respective lives, the Super Nintendo and Genesis followed parallel but divergent tracks in terms of the type of games they featured more heavily. Sega focused on flashy games and arcade-perfect ports, going heavy on racing games and featuring Sonic in all the blast processing marketing material. Nintendo, on the other hand, was the company that made the games that were expansive and interesting and played really well. When it came to these brawlers, though, Sega made the uglier but expansive, really fun game, while Nintendo got the game that looked as close as possible to the arcade, with huge flashy sprites, but which was shorter, missing content, and played like shit. Obviously, Capcom actually developed the game, but it's interesting that in the early days of the SNES we have two of the biggest developers of the day making arcade-perfect (looking) conversions that didn't turn out so well, before eventually moving on to the paradigm much of the Nintendo 16-bit catalogue would feature. Sega, on the other hand, stayed with the arcadey action formula for most of the Genesis years, with a few notable exceptions of course. (Shining Force for the win.)

[@aeschafer1]

Really looking forward to Drakkhen, as well. I bought it when I was a kid, totally obsessed with RPGs, and never could figure out what the hell was supposed to really be going on. It seemed like a really fascinating game, but was so free-form, directionless, and occasionally just inexplicable, that it ended up collecting dust on my shelf.

[@yellowblanka6058]

That's what happens when you compare a game ported from a more powerful system (in this case the CPS1 arcade board), to a game/series designed for a given hardware spec from day one. Also, while the first Streets of Rage was fairly ugly, Streets of Rage 2 and 3 compared favorably to Final Fight with large, colorful (well, for the Genesis anyway) sprites with good animation, and creative stages.

[@Video-Games-Are-Fun]

sadly streets of rage looks like a NES game. wtf seriously. the sprites are TINY compared to final fight.

[@jasonblalock4429]

And yet if Capcom had been willing to scale down the sprites some, they probably could have afforded to keep some or all of the cut content - especially multiplayer. Someone at Capcom very deliberately decided that playability and fun should be sacrificed for the sake of looking more arcade-y. But then, in my experience, that really did tend to exemplify SNES vs Genesis. SNES was about style, Genesis was about substance.

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@Video-Games-Are-Fun - I suggest you go back and look at your average NES game (and the average character sizes) before you make that ludicrous comparison. Also, Streets of Rage could have 7+ enemies on screen at once and not skip a beat while Final Fight maxed out at 3 (and if you compare arcade Final Fight to SNES Final Fight you'll see that the sprites are noticeably smaller on the home port). The color palette they chose for SNES is pretty bad too, giving the game a dingy, washed out look. Far from the color and detail of the original.

[@mavrick45]

Streets of Rage 1 & 2 was streets ahead of this game

[@MarginalSC]

Even the follow up games on snes still suffered from no enemies.

[@kidv2]

At 5:30 It's funny looks like they reused the burning guy sprite in Street Fighter II ?!

[@paraptorkeetcreations434]

I'm so Hardcore I play Final Fight Guy and still pick Haggar.

[@atlekristiansen4975]

Still waiting for "Final Fight: RIP Haggar", which only have Guy and Cody as playable characters...

[@TheT3rr0rMask]

I think it's fun enough but no co-op or Guy Is bullshit.

[@SlyBeast]

I know, you'd think a ROM hack would exist by now that would add Guy back in and enable 2P cooperative play.

[@TheT3rr0rMask]

SlyBeast You'd think. That'd be great for a physical himebrew

[@Fattydeposit]

SlyBeast I think easy Sega CD / CPS-1 emulation might have lowered the demand amongst fans for a 'restored' SNES Final Fight, but of course it'd be incredible if a team of hackers managed to pull it off. They'd probably have to write the missing level and it's BGM from the ground up though as no SNES versions of these exist (and 'pulling' these assets from other versions wouldn't work due to how completely on another planet the SNES is when compared to other machines and arcade boards). There's bound to be a hack that restores the cut content from non-western releases though..

[@bredmond812]

I thought Haggar was based off of Dan Severn. I dont know for sure, but anyway, i heard that once.

[@josephrowley6061]

Have you ever given any thought to roughly pricing out individual cart prices for these game retrospectives? I think cart with box and manual is too expensive too be worth mentioning, but if you could mention a rough price point to give an idea of whether its worth picking up. In a few years it might be fun to see how much the price has gone up! Well maybe more depressing than fun and a great reason to not mention prices. Please ignore my last sentence.

[@JetstreamGW]

"Streets of Rage casts a long, unflattering shadow over this game by basically doing everything Final Fight doesn't..." So what you're telling me is... At that point... Genesis did what Nintendidn't? :D

[@gabriels4862]

Mighty Final Fight is such an nes gem, if only they could've managed simultaneous co op play on it!

[@Video-Games-Are-Fun]

mode 7 scaling title screen!

[@70smebbin]

still bought it still played the fuck out of it but yeah.

[@nebularain3338]

I think the Streets of Rage comparison is a little unfair. The game uses far fewer colours, and the sprites are much, much smaller. Plus, the three SoR characters are pretty much identical bar the graphics. The 2-Player mode is hugely overrated too. Most gamer back then were solo, so the 2 player mode would have been used occasionally at best. Even recently with the 2-Player ROM hack, there have been very few actual 2-Player videos of it. Instead it's typically one player controlling both on screen characters. Personally, I think the Final Fight SNES port was incredible given that it was only a year or so after the arcade game came out, and running on inferior hardware. The Amiga and Atari ST ports were far worse.

[@dudinacas]

It's never fair to compare with Amiga and Atari ST ports, as 95% of the time they were worse (due to the devs, not necessarily the hardware), and the hardware was less capable for game development purposes anyway. Yes, Streets of Rage didn't have the massive sprites of Final Fight on the SNES nor the large colour palette, but it can be argued that they were doing more with the hardware - IMO the neon tones of SoR are a lot more visually appealing than the often rather drab colours of Final Fight, and its music is also far more memorable than SNES Final Fight's reverb-drowned SPC700 tracks. Streets of Rage characters don't play identically - I can never stand playing as Adam - although the differences are certainly more defined in the sequel which IMO polished the formula to near-perfection. Personally I find beat-em-ups incredibly boring singleplayer, so having 2 player is important for me and I'd say a lot of other people too. I certainly wouldn't mind less arcade-perfect graphics in exchange for less slowdown, more enemies on screen, and/or 2-player support.

[@Chadius]

I still like the SNES music though.

[@sammylane21]

I disagree with the tone of this video, FF was still a stellar game that I loved to beat.

[@mrconradfaboluos]

Fisrt stage with Cody on XBOX ONE X with Lord Conrad from Italy, gameplay with italian accent hahaha: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jKjcfH5rZbCai5Y

[@tcbvgames]

6:10 Guy most likely was removed because he was pretty much a Cody clone. Except for the wall-jumping bit, Guy is just as fast and weak as Cody. 6:59 Final Fight was a launch title that wasn't optimized well enough to allow two playable characters on screen without MASSIVE slowdown. You might have noticed that only 3 enemies ever appear on screen. Because that's all the game could handle, and even THEN, it struggles. I think Final Fight works as a somewhat unfair single-player arcade game (especially the quarter-munching Industrial Factory stage), if you accept that it's not very forgiving to sloppy mob management. "Git gud", as they say :-) 7:30 Streets of Rage is a decent game, but it had to use smaller sprites and a slower pace to make everything run. On original hardware, it slows down as much as Final Fight, especially when jugglers show up. Inferior collision detection hurts the combat a bit, too. Also of note: all characters in SoR 1 have the same attack strength and the same moveset. In Final Fight, movesets are unique to each character, and have different priority levels (Cody's grapple knees are much stronger than Haggar's punches, for example. Cody's punches counter most enemy attacks, while Haggar's don't.) 11:30 The SNES sequels are decent, but they are dumb as dirt. AI suffers, and most enemies can't get around your punches.

[@Video-Games-Are-Fun]

final fight 3 is awesome because you can play 2 players with the cpu as the 2nd player helping you! it's a very unique idea that i wish more games would implement today

[@EwanGamingnintendoclubcouk]

Will you release a SNES version of good nintentions. Also when is the next game boy world out.

[@JeremyParish]

This is the Super NES version of Good Nintentions.

[@EwanGamingnintendoclubcouk]

Jeremy Parish I mean the book.

[@JeremyParish]

Sometime next year. Next Game Boy Works probably in 2019.

[@EwanGamingnintendoclubcouk]

Jeremy Parish thank you. PLEASE release the colour edition in the UK!!!

[@EwanGamingnintendoclubcouk]

Poison Ivy I know! I was asking about the book.

[@gbaweekly]

I wish you'd display the arcade game footage at proper aspect ratio - it definitely wasn't mean for 16:9. (It uses non-square pixels and displays the 384x224 with 4:3 AR)

[@Poever]

X-Men arcade did, though. Welcome to die!

[@apollosungod2819]

If the Super Nintendo Final Fight 2 and Final Fight 3 prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that large character sprites, busy screen full of enemies and action with no slow down and two player mode was no sweat for the Super Nintendo hardware, that only tells you, especially the person making this video that at the time the conversion of Final Fight 1 was made for Super FamiCom to release in December 1990 that it was just early launch year software that was promised to secure the early adopter so the disappointment is a bit of an exaggeration here as the typical Nintendo fanboys were toddlers back then while the late teen gamers who did not rely on their parents to buy videogame systems cause they had a job, were fully aware of arcade centers and the different values that the different systems offered even though the information was scarce back then in North America as opposed to Japan and regions close by in Asia. Final Fight conversion on Super Nintendo was basically no different from the fact that Super FamiCom launched in 1990 Japan and Final Fight in December 1990 and because Nintendo of America were not prepared to handle their first even next generation launch, they decided to delay things by an entire year to exploit all the software that came out which most American gamers become so ignorant about as they never truly experienced a global system launch until the Nintendo 64 launched in 1996 a brief months apart from the Japanese launch. There are reasons why many early Super Nintendo launch year games featured some slowdown which was inevitable and there were real reasons why Capcom and even Konami and others chose to have a close alliance with Nintendo... one of those being that for example, the Sega MegaDrive was struggling in Japan by losing out to NEC PC-Engine and the NEC Super CD-ROM2 which are not the fault of Sega Enterprises headquarters in Japan... because in Japan the competition was FIERCE and still not well understood by American gamers who tend to ignore the Japanese market and instead read Sega of America fanboy written books and throw shade at the Japanese companies and gamers. BTW Konami was making games for NEC PC-Engine simply because that system had managed to break over two million before 1989 or so and the Super CD-ROM2 managed a good ramp up in sales but that is a different story... Capcom however as many tend to forget was actually a smaller company compared to Konami and as such did not have the same number of staff to just throw at different hardware which can become very costly if said hardware does not at least feature a minimum of two million to four million systems sold within the first couple of years. And that is the main issue here because although the Super FamiCom was finally Nintendo's first step into a proper next generation war, the very loyal fanbase in Japan ensured that not only was Super Mario World a proper follow up to Super Mario Bros despite the latter not being a launch title but that game alone helped push around 3.5 to over four million Super FamiComs sold from 1990 to before the Super Nintendo launch in North America alone and this should never be ignored. Also the GameBoy Advance is more powerful than a Super Nintendo but was essentially a one player portable system that would require complex network code to enable two players... so no reason to make that two players. Finally as for the censorship... first of all there were lawsuits thrown at Nintendo in the late 80s not only because they were successful but because there were some groups that were trying to ban videogames on religious grounds and political stances... Also Capcom USA was a thing where their back in the day staff acted like they needed to have a lot of input... so Poison/Roxy was never a trans... she was always a real female gang member non different from source American films that influenced Japanese game devs like The Warriors which featured an all female gang and also had a ton of complaints thrown at it that has affected the retail movie version that was sold on DVD and Blu Ray where people who saw the original release in theaters complain that editing and additions make the movie seem like some cartoon. Capcom USA was involved in a lot of the censorship and then you have Nintendo of America but only because they feared more lawsuits and the constant labeling of videogames being some type of toddler toys which was weird and included the fact that when over six million SF2 cardtridges sold in 1992 North America alone, they were not purchased by parents or toddlers but by an age group that Sega and Nintendo of America staff acted like they did not exist.

[@Justin-rv7oy]

The PC Engine may have had a 8-bit CPU, but by the time the Super CD was introduced in 91, it easily surpassed the SNES and non-CD Mega Drive in graphical output (play Lords of Thunder). I don't think Capcom ever developed a game for the PC Engine outside of teaming up for the hucard Street Fighter 2, everything else was reprogrammed, mostly by NEC, just like Sega did until 1993 with all of the Capcom titles.

[@gabrieleriva651]

Snazzy Crowd1212 stock Snes could do Donkey Kong Country 2.

[@Justin-rv7oy]

Gabriele Riva PC-Engine, Mega Drive, Neo Geo, all had games with pre-rendered graphics (Sapphire, Vectorman, Pulstar, etc), it was about the capabilities of the workstation used to make the game, and not the native hardware.

[@yellowblanka6058]

+Gabriele - while a fine looking game, the fact that the graphics were pre-rendered didn't make them any more intensive to display. Also, as somebody else pointed out, the game typically only had a handful of actual sprites to keep track of at any given time.

[@goldenage]

Many people think that "Turtles In Time" is the best beat em' up (or Brawler as they used to be called) on the SNES. That honor, IMHO, has always gone to "Ninja Warriors Again". Traversing a flat plane, blocks, dodges, and a throw mechanic that ultimatley becomes integral to beating the game. The game stands several notches above the rest. Please do it justice when you get to it Jeremy. Its never received the credit it deserves

[@retrosoul8770]

Yeah skip pass this and play Ninja Warriors Again (JP version). Best SNES best em up imo.

[@garfieldepicmoments]

too bad Sega came out with one of the best beat-em-ups ever, Streets of Rage 2. It felt like Capcom was always trying to play catch-up with the Final Fight series

[@gabrieleriva651]

Shicky256 Arcade Final Fight came out way before SoR.

[@johnbelmont455]

With many fast opponents cramming the screen in arcade FF, you've little time to think about moves and fancy ways to take enemies down. Capcom kept the moveset minimal. Golden Axe and DD have a few moderate sized sprites on screen, and are fleshed out with moves or there would be nothing much to do. SOR series has high enemy count and many moves, but for all the complexity they're still slower and easier than arcade FF.

[@josephD32]

7:37 - Translation: Genesis does what Nintendon't...

[@TanookiSuit]

And as a tragic comedy, the NES game has all 3 players. Go figure. I really like both, but prefer the NES game, and then the GBA port (JAPANESE) since it's not hacked with stickboys and blood removed.

[@stepheng8061]

I liked final fight on snes because it was easier than arcade but as a retro game in 2019 it's not great. Sega cd version is way better. Back in the day we had lower standards for sure. Streets of rage is way better and later capcom SNES beat em ups were far stronger

[@eld460]

That is what I like a bit of revisionist history, no console games back then we're arcade perfect. And saying that Sega published Streets of Rage a few months before Final Fight arrived in the US, is a bit missleading, as the game was first released in Japan, a full 8 months before SoR, and just a month after the Super Famicom launch and was by far the best best 'em up available at the time. And probably the best arcade conversion at the time. And so, it may not of aged well, but it was still Streets (pun intended) ahead of what Sega or anyone else had to offer in 1990. So was it arcade perfect, no. Was it more arcade perfect than anything else at the time, yes. And looking back on it 27 years later, I think those are two points you should consider. Sorry for the rant.

[@JeremyParish]

I found Final Fight for Super NES incredibly disappointing and not-fun even at the time, but whatever works for you, I suppose.

[@Video-Games-Are-Fun]

i think ghouls n ghosts on super grafx was an arcade perfect port.

[@johnbelmont455]

In 1990 there were already many arcade ports that brought the arcade experience home, which SNES FF didn't with a max of 3 enemies on screen. All round the Golden Axe port on MD was more impressive.

[@retrosoul8770]

Yeah, the Gen had a few respectable arcade ports on it's own imo. A few I can think of off my head are Fire Shark, Hellfire, Vapor Trail, Atomic Runner, Grind Stormer, Mercs. All shooters but it's a great genre.

[@AlexRN]

For the longest time I thought Cody was the main character of Final Fight and didn’t know who the hell Guy was and I have this SNES version to blame for. If only I knew back then how mediocre this game was....

[@ActionGamerAaron]

9:26 Poison wasn't ever transgender/transsexual for any creative reason. People need to accept that she was always intended to a woman and was considered anything like it only after the fact. Capcom was afraid of offending women's rights groups and so they labeled her a 'newhalf' something both or between the male/female sexes. She would never have been called such or given this quirk if not for financial fears political correctness would have. Thus they tainted their original design to accommodate those fears by simply moving a few words around for Japan and straight up modifying the sprites for the US to show men. The character was originally created by people not so upset that bad video game women get might get hit, but they felt they had to modify her to accommodate reducing the chances of a public outcry.

[@nimaiiikun]

that gba remake was damn lazy. the street fighter alpha sprite is the wrong size and a totally different art style

[@johnbelmont455]

You're calling it lazy for the bonus content? Oh the irony. My only gripe is that it lacks the stage 4 music