The Gamer's Quarter

[dessgeega]

this has been troubling me for quite some time now. i find the game incredibly boring and tedious.

all you do is walk around one-two punching enemies until they fall down, waiting for them to get back up, and then one-two punching them again. make sure they don't get on both sides of you, though! then they'll one-two punch you and then you'll fall down! and then they'll wait for you to get up and one-two punch you again.

and i guess you get to pick up a knife sometimes and throw it at someone? and then back to one-two punching.

i mean, in river city ransom i can knock an enemy down, pick it up and chuck it at its comrades. in double dragon advance i can do a triangle kick off a wall to knock an enemy down and then climb on top of it and punch it in the face. in advance guardian heroes, well, i can fly. and play twenty different characters who control completely differently. even the original guardian heroes is more interesting than this game.

so splain me, thread. why do people like final fight so much? haggar and poison are not acceptable reasons - tell me why i should like the game. violent storm has the game beaten in character design anyway.
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[chompers po pable]

dess, please stop bashing the original GH until you put a descent amount of time into multiplayer/vs. modes. great game.

i agree with you on final fight. guy is a cool character, though. boring game, overall.

hope that answers the question in your thread title.

[player 2]

it's a beat'em up with good graphics and mashy gameplay... that's a good start for me
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[Dracko]

I prefer the Streets of Rage series anyway.

Yes, even the third one.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dessgeega]

so okay, i was worried i was missing something but this thread has pretty much confirmed my perceptions of final fight.

chomp po pa, will it be alright if i limit my bashing of guardian heroes to its boring, needlessly stat-riddled single-player mode?
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[dark steve]

dess go play streets of rage
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[chompers po pable]

[dessgeega]

i just played some streets of rage! it's pretty much what final fight would be if it were pretty, had a decent sense of place and good music, and had combat that was faster and less cheap? except for the bosses. ugh.

it still seems kind of boring though? i mean, there's a bit more grabbing and throwing, but there still don't seem to be many options in combat.
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[Dracko]

3 is actually really good once you look past its gaudy cyberpunk exterior and the ridiculous story elements. Perhaps some of its gameplay is unequal and forced, but it has some good ideas.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[chompers po pable]

some of the moves in the SoR games aren't very intuitive. they're there, though! most of the extra moves are grab variations and DP motion types. good stuff.

just because you can't fly doesn't make SoR a bad game dess ;' ' '(

[Dracko]

I'd kind of suggest playing the second one first as well.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dessgeega]

[chompers po pable]

well, you've pressed all of mine in this thread >: |

dess, have you played SoR 2?

[dessgeega]

no > : |

but i will!
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[chompers po pable]

okay then!

[dessgeega]

okay!
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[dessgeega]

so okay, streets of rage 2 > streets of rage 1 > final fight, though none of them engage me as much as a technos brawler. imho, or whatever qualifier i need to append to keep people from getting angry / de-friending me on livejournal.
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[player 2]

[simplicio]

There is that Final Fight with the big headed characters, which at least has cuteness going for it.

But yeah, pretty lame series in retrospect.

[chompers po pable]

i wouldn't mind playing that crazy "rare" Final Fight for the Saturn.

i also wouldn't mind winning the lottery.

[dessgeega]

mighty final fight is crazy cute.

mostly because of chibi poison and those little bearded fellows with the wooly caps who dance around on their tiptoes.
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[Harveyjames]

There's a Final Fight game on the Saturn which is a 3D one-on-one fighting game. It's rubbish, like much of the rest of the series, but it has two redeeming features:

Rolento's special move is to get in a helicopter and machine-gun the other character to death. Pretty funny the first time you see it, especially when the words 'RUN AWAY!' start flashing on the screen and you're treated to an awkward animation of your character running like a little girl.



And there's another character who is a big burly guy, but his special move is to sing, putting the opponent to sleep. Like Jigglypuff.

[dizzyjosh]

comparing final fight to river city ransom isn't fair, i don't think. river city ransom had the weird roll-kick thing you could do if you had acro circus and the super kick [was it called dragon kick] which might have even been kind of emergent.

final fight really only had ubiquity and a couple of very memorable characters going for it. i mean, i never played it on consoles, just arcades, but i think there's actually a final fight at one of the laudromats by my apt right now; i think that says a lot for its status as a touchstone of brawlers.

streets of rage i completely ignored (i stopped with brawlers and arcades in general until about D&D legend of mystara) but now i'm curious.


shit i should get a river city ransom tattoo. maybe the 'whooped' anim where dude's all panting and his jaw's all low? i need to remember to be more truly lazy in life after all.

[dessgeega]

[dizzyjosh]

[Isfet]

i think the only way to really enjoy Final Fight is in an arcade, playing with someone else. it's a game that was really designed with that in mind, and when it's ported to a home console its flaws really shine through. i think it was essentially supposed to be a more streamlined Double Dragon. it makes the combat a little faster, but there's something inherently more repetitive about it. 3 is really the only one that attempted to introduce some new moves and elements, but they basically make the game extremely easy.

Streetwise almost got it right. it was so close, it's kind of tragic.

[Harveyjames]

Yep, I've played it with a friend 2-player in an arcade and I had a gay old time. I think your standards are kind of lower in that situation, especially when you don't have time to get bored of it. Plus the game already had kitsch value through sites like Old Man Murray and Seanbaby.com, so that probably contributed to our enjoyment of it somewhat.

[OtakupunkX]

So Nekkestu Kohua Kunio-Kun (probably spelled something in that title wrong, I'm sure) is pretty much my all-time favorite game series.

Also, Captain Commando > Streets of Rage 2 > Streets of Rage > Final Fight.

[Harveyjames]

Captain Commando gives you the opportunity to control a baby controlling a robot controlling a bigger robot, which automatically makes it the best game ever in my book.

[friedchicken]

I can't with good conscience defend Final Fight as a 'good' game. As it is I have more of a nostalgia for it than an appreciation for it.

But it's one hell of a time-waster, you have to admit. I know what happens in it, what enemies are coming, and in what order everything will be, but I can still pick it up and play it just for kicks.

[OtakupunkX]

[Harveyjames]

I like how there are pointless constants across all of Capcom's Final Fight-esque games, like the knife-wielding black man.



They redid the graphics from game to game, but didn't mess with the idea, because it doesn't get any better than a black man with tight pants twirling a knife. Also, you can always find a piping hot roast chicken on a plate in the bins, in all these games. Even in Capcom's Aliens Vs. Predator.

Since I'm posting images and all, I may as well dig these suckers out:




What's that Japanese scrolling beat-em-up where you play a Bayou Billy lookalike going through the jungle beating the shit out of hunters and trappers? It's amazing.The game consists of a series of set pieces where you'll come across some people being cruel to animals (say, punching an elephant), and then you have to deal out two-fisted vengeance on behalf of the animals in what some might describe as a disproportionately brutal way. Whoever made this game must have really hated hunters, since you can lift people up off the ground once you've knocked them out and knee them in the face. Also, at one point you get a Bazooka.

[dessgeega]

that game is runark aka growl by taito and it is god damned amazing. mainly because of the obscene amount of people you'll find on one screen at any given time. you can be whipping twenty poachers simultaneously and if beating the shit out of poachers isn't your idea of a good time then i don't know what to tell you.

don't we have a thread on capcom's punisher game around here somewhere, also?
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[player 2]

Am I the only one who thinks that RCR's gameplay is really boring?
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[Harveyjames]

I never got into it either but I still thought there was something really, really neat about the graphics and the way you could go into shops, and the people say Barf. I never found it hard to see the appeal, but no, it's no fun.

[wourme]

I always liked Final Fight in the arcade, but I think my reasons were mainly Haggar and the fact that there wasn't a lot of variety in good 2-player cooperative games at the time.

Renegade was another one that I liked--making that whole crowd run across the subway platform or whatever and then jump-kicking a bunch of them at once. I've heard a lot of people say that the game was actually terrible, so I'll probably keep my positive memories and never play it again.

Bruce Lee for Commodore 64 is probably my favorite fighting game of all time.

[xvs07]

Maybe they don't have a place in this thread, maybe they do, but has anyone else played and loved either Yie Ar Kung Fu or My Hero? I much preferred this era of brawlers, and never connected so strongly to the ones that came after. I think it's because they all stopped being so cute, or maybe because it became all about approaching on a diagonal rather than having good reflexes. Vigilante also fits into the same general category. These games are not technically amazing nor deep, but they have a pure and unforgiving sort of play that appeals to the eight-year-old perfectionist in me.

[wourme]

[Dracko]

What's that other series of sideway brawlers which features on a group of martial artists involved in a tournament?
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Cycle]

I always thought Final Fight was rather over-rated but never bothered to bring it up anywhere. I'm happy to know I'm not the only one who thinks so! I mean, I still ove the game and have a good time with it, but there's better out there.

Streets Of Rage 2 impressed me as a child because it was the first game I played where the chicks breasts animate. It was also a fab game!

Bruce Lee was rad, there is a fantastic (very faithful) remake for XP here:

http://www.planetflibble.com/blitz/

I spent lots of time on Kung Fu on my cousins Atari. You can jump, kick and punch and guys run up to you and touch you and slowly decrease your health, so you just kick them off and send them flying back to russia. I managed to finish it when I was younger, but now I can't even get past the first level.

Has anyone played the International Karate remake for GBA? I keep meaning tp ick that up.

How about Ninja Turtles Arcade! Or Simpsons for that matter. I've noticed most of these games a pretty useless with only one player.

Hey, how about Ninja Golf!

[dessgeega]

[Dracko]

Ah yes, International Karate was the one I was thinking of. Only had a vague recollection, though.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Harveyjames]

When I was a kid I played a side scrolling brawler called International Ninja Rabbits on the Commodore Amiga 500, where you played a rabbit in a karate suit who fought Panda foot soldiers. It was the first game I ever saw which had blood in it, which I thought was just amazing. It was slightly unsettling at the same time, though.

Shadow Warriors (an Amiga port of Ninja Gaiden arcade) got a lot of play, too. It's amazing how your imagination builds these games up to be way better than they are when you're a kid. The first boss is a big fat Yakuza guy, and I remember him reacting accordingly depending on where we hit him, so I would excitedly tell my dad how I kicked the fat man in the nuts so he doubled up and then my friend kicked him in the arse so he fell over. You play these games now, and they're really not like that at all.

[Swimmy]

[TheRumblefish]

Man, I feel out of place posting this here, but I adore Final Fight. I don't know, I just love it to death. I am still trying to write an article about the evoloution of the Beat Em Up genre, and it's still wishy-washy. Well I love Streets of Rage to here, don't get me wrong but Final Fight rocks my socks.

Go Cody, for not being afraid to show his mad knife skills off.
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[dessgeega]

why does final fight rock your socks?
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[TheRumblefish]

[Neal]

Sadly, my experience with the Beat em Up genre is pretty limited, just something I never got into. My friends are way into Final Fight and have forced me to play the GBA versions and I could never truly get into them. They even bought the new 3d Final Fight and enjoyed it.
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[TheRumblefish]

[dessgeega]

shit, why did no one tell me there's a natsume-developed sequel to ninja warriors on the super famicom?

i'm really starting to think natsume is my favorite developer for the console.
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