Retro Game of the Day! Final Fight 2

Retro Game of the Day! Final Fight 2

Final Fight 2 by Capcom, released on the SNES in 1993.

What's that? Got some time to kill this weekend, and an insatiable itch on your X-Button finger? No worry friend, Capcom's got you covered! Simply slide a copy of Final Fight 2 into your SNES Deck and all your troubles will melt away, as you murder thug after thug after thug.

That is correct, part 2 continues where Final Fight number one left off - you've saved the city from the ruthless gang, but apparently they've reformed and now you must travel all over the world to dispatch their legions. 2 of the original cast are out of the picture, you get Carlos and Maki to fill in for Cody and Guy this time around accompanying the big, brutish Hagger.

For those of you who are a little hazy on Final Fight, it's Capcom's break-thru game in the "beat'em-up" genre, where you periodically walk to the right, take out a gang of punks, then continue on to do more of the same until you reach a boss and finish a round. FF2 took a bold step in a good way by introducing 2-player simultaneous play into the mix, whereas the first SNES cartridge only let one player get their beating on (also, you got three selectable characters, rather than merely two).

So now you know the score, but the big question remains - is FF2 worth it? That's not easy to say, because although the first one was such a monumental title, and this sequel is definitely a solid improvement across the board - it's a bit of a yawnfest. The game looks and plays wonderfully as one would expect from a top-tier Capcom product, but the title released a bit late into the game; there were plenty of good-looking beat'em-ups available for all the platforms when this arrived, and they were all trying different themes though with very similar gameplay. The Final Fight world was just not so rich in character that it was that enthralling. The 2P addition was nice, and of course necessary; but they really should have included it in part one, and not expected to sell a whole game on merely this concept dressed up in a new aesthetic. FF2 is a pretty game, and it does everything right - it is just difficult to care about it.

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