Sega Saturn Real Bout Fatal Fury

The Fatal Fury series started out around the same time that Street Fighter 2 hit the arcades. That must have been in the late 80s when I was still in high school and still a punk with little direction but a lot of time on my hands to play video games. Fatal Fury was an obvious attempt by SNK to capitalize on the fighting game craze that was starting up and a crazed phenomenon that would eventually spawn a thousand clones. I remember the lines that would form around Street Fighter 2 machines as people waited their turn to play and to watch the fighting technique of other players. It was pretty wild back then but I also remember that the Fatal Fury machine would almost never have any crowds around it. It was an okay fighting game but you could only choose from three characters to play, the two Bogards and Joe Higashi, the family friend. The moves were also not that great though they would improve in later versions of the game. I would regard Fatal Fury as the major turning point for the SNK company which focused them into one genre even though Fatal Fury did not do so great under the shadow of Street Fighter. Since that first fighting game venture, SNK has honed and perfected their craft and the Fatal Fury series has gone through Fatal Fury 2, Fatal Fury 3, Fatal Fury Special and now Real Bout Fatal Fury. Real Bout on the cartridge was a very impressive coding job and a great fighting game. The Saturn version comes with an 8 megabit ram cartridge which will be usable for future Saturn games such as Virtua Fighters 3 from Sega and Marvel Super Heroes from Capcom. Real Bout gives you 16 characters to choose from, including the two Bogards and their pal, Higashi. The graphics on the Saturn version are very good but they are not 1:1 to the Neo-Geo version. I did not expect a 1:1 conversion due to the memory limitations of the Saturn so I was not bothered by it. I was impressed with what they were able to do with the sizes of the characters and the amount of detail that was left in the game. The controls are solid and feel close to the Neo-Geo original. The controls might even be identical to the Neo-Geo version because I usually play Real Bout Fatal Fury on the Geo with the old cartridge joystick and I use a MAS Pro-Stick on my Sega Saturn. The controls feel a bit different but that might just be me and my joysticks. It probably is. I wholeheartedly recommend Real Bout for fighting game fans who are burnt out on Street Fighter. Those who never found a reason to buy a Neo-Geo cartridge system with its exhorbitantly priced cartridges or a Neo-CD system with its slow access times can now enjoy the same (well, almost there) games as the Neo-Geo fans. One notable note on Real Bout Fatal Fury is that this is the last game that Geese Howard will appear in. I suppose that this means nothing to most of the general gaming public but this guy Geese has been like a boil on the backside of the Bogards and Joe Higashi through 5 games. He has been taunting, teasing, punching, causing a lot of heartache and pain and now he is gone after this FF. Not exactly as if Darth Vader died but hey, in video games he's up there with M. Bison and um, the Princess in the Mario adventures.

Return to NCS 9/16 page / Return to Whats New page / Return to NCS Front page