Play it on: just about anything
Current goal: Bring some justice to the streets
Lately I’ve been on a kick of revisiting Capcom’s incredible beat ‘em ups of the late ‘80s through the mid ‘90s, or in some cases playing through them for the first time. This past week, a friend and I played the company’s excellent pair of licensed Dungeons & Dragons brawlers—Tower of Doom and Shadow over Mystara—via the compilation Chronicles of Mystara, and I was so impressed by their satisfying combat, their bevy of secrets and alternate pathways, and their incorporation of inventory systems and magic items. Now, this weekend, I want to go back to the game that kicked off Capcom’s genre-defining run of beat ‘em ups: 1989’s Final Fight.
When I think of the quintessential beat ‘em up, I think of Final Fight. I remember how incredible it was to see this game in an arcade or at a nearby laundromat or convenience store back then; those massive sprites, those crunchy digitized voice samples, that hard-hitting combat. It was one of those games that you knew instantly would change a genre forever, transforming and refining the core principles established in earlier games like Double Dragon and Renegade into something more immediately accessible, appealing, and unforgettable. I haven’t played Final Fight in many years, and the friend I’ve been playing these games with lately never has. So this weekend, I think it’s time for Metro City Mayor Mike Haggar to once again hit the pavement, pile-drive some members of the Mad Gear gang and, before all is said and done, confront the true source of evil: a wealthy and powerful man, overseeing his criminal empire from the top of a glass tower, far above the dilapidated streets and subway cars that define Final Fight’s incredible depiction of a city on the brink of ruin. — Carolyn Petit
