Whiners Begone! - Fatal Fury Series Review.
Developed by SNK/Hamster Corporation(PS4).
Published by SNK/Hamster Corporation(PS4).
NeoGeo[Emulated on PS4].
Released 1991-1999(NeoGeo)/2017-2018(PS4)
Purchased copy.
I Haven’t Had a Real Fight In a While...
The Bloody Roar games reignited my passion for the fighting game genre, and SNK are one of the Masters of 2D, so I decided to dive back into the more hardcore side of things with one of the best in the business.
I will briefly go over all 8 of the main Fatal Fury games, I won’t be covering the spin-offs because they don’t interest me enough to try them out.
Fatal Fury: King of Fighters (1991)
The original Fatal Fury is a very outdated and slow experience, and it shows it’s age in several aspects; the pixel art doesn’t hold up visually the way most of their 1990s output does.
Special moves refuse to work most of the time, and I was left relying solely on normals, and throws to win.
This slow pace somewhat encourages careful, tactical approaches to each fight, with each opponent feeling distinct.
The occasional mini-game adds sets it apart from Street Fighter 2(and its clones), by adding new moves to a fighters arsenal, which gives Fatal Fury an adventure game feel.
Lastly, Fatal fury features a Co-op mode where two players double team the opponent, however both players must fight each other after every match, and two people can’t tag team against the final boss.
Bottom Line:
Fatal Fury might not hold up very well, but it’s novel enough to warrant at least one playthrough.
I can tell that SNK went above-and-beyond to set its self apart from the wildly overrated Street Fighter series; this isn’t Fighter’s History, it’s Fatal Fury: King of Fighters!
Fatal Fury 2 (1992)
Fatal Fury 2 is were I ask myself if SNK was taking its competition seriously; the only improvement is the roster going from 3 playable fighters, to 8, 5 of which are completely new.
The special moves sort-of work, but they’re too inconsistent to be relied upon, so they might as well not be in the game.
Desperation attacks, which were super combos before super combos existed, were also added, but they’re very difficult to pull off in the heat of battle.
The player has to be at “flashing red” health to perform them, so being at low health added with difficulty of pulling one off, makes it a rarely seen part of the game.
Wolfgang Krauser, the final boss, is the worst boss in fighting game history, he has tremendous reach, reads the player’s inputs, then immediately counters, and there’s no safe way to approach him.
What makes Krauser worse than later versions of Geese Howard, Omega Rugal, or Orochi, is that the player has less to work with, which just makes him unreasonable.
Bottom Line:
Fatal Fury 2 is shit, so shit I’m surprised there are any Fatal Fury games after this one.
Fatal Fury 2 is just a stiff gimped version of what would become an excellent fighting system.
Skip this one unless you’re blinded by nostalgia!
Fatal Fury Special (1993)
Fatal Fury Special was intended to be an improvement over Fatal Fury 2, but the only thing that’s been upgrade is the roster, which includes all the bosses from Fatal Fury 2, Geese Howard, and Ryo Sakazaki(from Art of Fighting).
There’s no noticeable speed up of the game’s fighting engine, and the input lag is still present when using special moves.
The A.I. Doesn’t suffer from any of the game’s disadvantages, they can spam their specials back-to-back, they input read like crazy, and they will often cancel out the player’s special with their own.
The hitboxes are absolutely broken; it’s very difficult to tell why my fighter is taking damage, because the hitboxes are too large.
Bottom Line:
Fatal Fury Special is far too slow and clunky to be enjoyed.
The A.I. Is skewed to always counter the player, making the fights unfair, and unenjoyable.
Fatal Fury Special is an incredibly miserable experience from devs who are lucky to have made it this far...
Fatal Fury 3 (1995)
It only took SNK 4 tries, but they finally made a good game in this series.
Fatal Fury 3 has a nice balanced roster of 10 playable fighters, 7 of which I enjoyed playing, with series protagonist Terry Bogard being my top choice.
The fighting is actually good this time, but because special moves still have odd timing, I mostly relied on normals for offense.
Geese Howard is the stand out opponent, boasting the most intense and challenging match of the game.
The series signature “plane-switching mechanic” continues to serve as a poor substitute for a proper rolling/side-step mechanic.
Fighters being located in different planes, often leads to awkward sprite collision visually, making it appear as if the two sprites are right next to each other, but neither can land a hit/grab.
Bottom Line:
Since Fatal Fury 3 is the only game worth playing in the Fatal Fury Battle Archives Vol. 1, I’d recommend just buying the ACA NEO GEO version, where ever it is sold.
1995 had stiff competition for Fatal fury 3, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Virtua Fighter Remix, Street Fighter Alpha, Tekken, Darkstalkers, and Killer Instinct 2, all had hit the hit the scene.
I think Fatal Fury 3 held its own quite nicely, especially considering the in-house competition from other SNK fighters.
Fatal Fury 3 is a solid fighter that completely outclasses the 3 previous games, this is where it starts getting good.
Real Bout Fatal Fury (1995)
Real Bout Fatal Fury retains the plane-switching system from Fatal Fury 3, but a notable improvement is the ability to easily hit the other fighter from a different plane, which is nice.
The far ends of each stage can be destroyed, and fighters can be knocked out of bounds; I don’t like this, as I don’t find ring-outs to be a satisfying way to win, plus there’s no way to turn this feature off.
The entire roster from Fatal Fury 3 returns with some additions, such as a personal favorite of mine, Kim Kaphwan.
The entire roster has more moves and more tools to work with, 2 levels of desperation moves, and even moves that attack all three planes at once!
Fighters now have 2 HP bars, and a super meter, which opens up desperation moves that have more reasonable inputs; these moves can be used when the meter is full or when the HP bar is flashing red.
Special moves have more reasonable inputs and can be done quickly, instead of deliberately, so they have become far more useful.
Real Bout Fatal Fury has the best control-scheme so far, it’s a 3-button fighter with Punches, Kicks, Heavy Strikes, with the 4th button being used for plane-switching or attacking from another plane.
The Fatal Fury Battle Archives Vol. 2 version of this game comes with a training mode, so every mechanic in this game can be experimented with, and makes this the best way to play this game.
Bottom Line:
Real Bout Fatal Fury came out the exact same year as Fatal Fury 3, and it’s astonishing how much better this game turned out to be, that’s how much has improved.
This game is a joy to playthrough, every fighter feels complete, with movesets that would only be watered-down going forward.
Every victory feels earned, and I hope if the reader only picks one Fatal Fury game, it would be this one, don’t skip out on Real Bout Fatal Fury!
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special (1997)
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special is largely the same as the previous Real Bout game with some minor tweaks here & there.
The roster from the previous game returns in full, with some additions from Fatal Fury 2, but I chose to stick with my favorites.
A few of the fighters were tweaked in undesirable ways, such as Andy Bogard's heavy fireball just being a normal projectile instead of a unique one, but one lame version of a fighter doesn’t detract from how great this cast is.
The 3-plane system has been changed to a 2-plane system, being a mix between Real Bout 1 and Fatal Fury Specials plane-system.
The big sticking pile of goop, however, is the unlock method for Geese Howard: The player has to score 850,000+ points in ARCADE, Beat Nightmare Geese, then input a special code after the demo video ends and shows off the ranking screen.
This isn’t just an annoying amount of hoops to jump through, the player has to input the last part of the code which is, “A,B,C”.
Where are the A, B, & C buttons on the PS2/PS4 controller one would be using while playing this game?
I have no clue, so I couldn’t unlock one of my favorite characters in this game, and that brought the whole experience down for me...
Bottom Line:
SNK can go fuck themselves for not allowing me to play as Geese after I beat him in ARCADE mode, but enough said about that.
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special is a great fighting game, that has a few flaws the original Real Bout game doesn’t.
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 (1998)
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 left me with a mostly negative impression, it’s not a bad game, it comes off as a game that preceded the original Real Bout game, instead of a follow-up.
The plane-switching system is still disorienting in a 2D sprite-based fighting game, as it’s still unclear when a fighter is in another lane in the heat of battle.
The entire returning cast feel like watered-down, bitch-made, and butchered versions of themselves; especially Mai Shiranui and Geese Howard, which have at least half of their moves missing!
The old faces don’t feel as good as they should, the lone exception being the hidden super boss, Alfred, who is overpowered as fuck, but fun to play.
One last annoyance is how easily it is to thwart desperation moves has become; by plane-switching, getting hit in the big toe while the animation is in full effect, or sometimes even, by just standing still.
Bottom Line:
While visually stunning, Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 retains all of the flaws of its predecessors, and compounds that even further by adding more people juice for the poor janitor to clean up.
Disgustingly, fighters have been stripped of most of their tools, and as a result aren’t as enjoyable to play.
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 isn’t even fun when playing as my favorite characters, so skip this one unless morbidly curious.
Garou: Mark of the Wolves (1999)
I thought Real Bout 2 was shit, but just as I was done wiping my ass, another turd known Garou Mark of the Wolves reared its ugly head.
Garou Mark of the Wolves was just as ambitious for the Fatal Fury franchise as Tekken 3 was for the Tekken franchise.
Mark of the Wolves is a soft reboot, that largely dispenses with the cast of the previous games, and completely reworking the game mechanics of what came before.
The difference is that Tekken 3 payed off because it was clearly superior to its predecessors, but Mark of the Wolves isn’t even as good as Real Bout 2.
We now have a standard health bar, standard super meter, no plane-switching, KOF’s 2 punches and 2 kicks 4 button control-scheme, simplified super combos, and new feature called the T.O.P. System.
The T.O.P. system allows the player to choose which third of their HP bar this feature will be set in; beginning, middle, or end.
When the TOP system is active the player gradually regenerates health, and gain a useless TOP attack.
There’s really nothing remarkable about it, and I never considered it while I was playing, which says everything that needs to be said about it.
The plane-switching was removed, and I’ve heard legends about being able to use a dodge-roll, but I never found out how to do it.
Again SNK didn’t convert the NEO GEO buttons into the corresponding Console/PC inputs, so any time the I was asked to choose option A,B,C,or D; I didn’t know which button to push, thanks assholes!
Aside from watered-down Terry, I don’t give a shit about any of these characters, and Rock Howard can eat shit for stealing Terry’s rising tackle: There’s probably a reason these guys never show up in more recent King of Fighters games.
Bottom Line:
SNK removed the flaws from the Fatal Fury series, but it came at the cost of the series’ identity; Fatal Fury has been stripped of everything that made these games interesting.
Even if this wasn’t a Fatal Fury game, it would still be a shit game with Terry Bogard in it.
I think people remember this game fondly because it has gorgeous pixel art, and nothing else, if it didn’t look pretty no one would give a shit about this game.
This was my very first SNK fighter and if it weren’t for KOF ‘98 Ultimate Match, I would’ve been completely turned off of their games entirely.
Overview.
The Fatal Fury series has more missteps than triumphs, each of these games are flawed, and the best of them just make their flaws irrelevant.
Real Bout Fatal Fury is my favorite entry by far, it has a great roster, every fighter was at their peak, and the whole game is awesome.
Fatal Fury gave way to King of Fighters but many of the best characters in that series made their debut here, and that’s why these games are worth checking out.