Welcome to the new era of wrap-up columns here at Diehard GameFAN! For the past couple of years, we have wrapped up the Virtual Console’s entries and given blurbs on the downloadable entries on WiiWare and DSiWare. This year, we’re doing it different. We’re going to wrap up the Virtual Console’s entries, and give blurbs on the downloadable entries on WiiWare and DSiWare, AND we’re going to give it a different name.
This is truly an evolution for us here at DHGF.
This week, we have one game on the Virtual Console, and a it’s big name title at that. However, I’d be willing to bet most gamers haven’t played this particular title…
Final Fight 3 (AKA: Final Fight Tough)
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Original System: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Original Release Date: 12/21/1995
Price: 800 Wii Points/$8
Alexander Lucard: Ah, Final Fight Tough. It’s a fun little game, and by far the best in the series. It’s definitely a step up from Final Fight 2, which was Haggar and two characters best left forgotten. FF3 brings Guy back (but not poor neglected Cody) and two other characters that were never seen after this game in Dean and Lucia.
The game added several new gameplay twists, which is probably why it is remembered so fondly. You have the Captain Commando dash attacks, grab from behind attacks, a super gauge, and best of all, multiple branching paths that make for an incredible amount of replay value. It’s also worth noting the ending of the game changes based on who you play as, the path of six stages you took and the difficulty setting.
Final Fight 3 is basically a precursor for Capcom’s Dungeons and Dragons arcade games, which remain the best Arcade beat ’em up’s I have ever played, and for eight dollars, this is a pretty nice deal. You can even have a CPU partner to play with if none of your friends are into brawlers.
This is one of the best SNES games on the Virtual Console right now and I’m glad to see it on the system.
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Mark B.: Capcom, having originally set the tone for the beat-em-up genre with Final Fight, spent the next few years trying to add new elements to whatever games they produced in the genre, whether is be something as simple as changing the locale, as with Knights of the Round, or adding in new a different ways to obliterate enemies with The Punisher. A lot of their better beat-em-ups stayed in the arcades, however, and most of Capcom’s console beat-em-ups were less than exciting. Games like Super Double Dragon and the Streets of Rage games were basically better than a lot of the console beat-em-ups Capcom was offering at that point, and of course, Konami had their TMNT games available on multiple consoles, while Capcom was countering with hacked down versions of Final Fight and a home port of Knights of the Round.
Final Fight 3 was essentially one of Capcom’s last major foray’s into the genre, as aside from the Dungeons and Dragons beat-em-ups and Battle Circuit, they were pretty much done with the genre. That said, Final Fight 3 is pretty much the best 16-bit beat-em-up ever made, and if you had to make a list of the best games in the genre ever, it’d probably place fairly high on said list. The gameplay works as well as you’d expect it to, given the name, but Capcom implemented all sorts of neat additions, like dashing, actual special moves, and branching stages that really made Final Fight 3 one of the best games in the series. It’s well worth your money if you’re a fan of the genre, ESPECIALLY since it’s not really available anywhere else, and it’s a whole lot of fun alone or with friends.
Now if only we can get VC ports of Dungeons and Dragons and Aliens versus Predator…
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Christopher Bowen: I’m not really a fan of the beat ’em-up genre. Even Aileen was confused by me saying this to her earlier. “I thought you liked those games!” That’s not true; I like Streets of Rage, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade games, but I can do without the cheap hits and frustrating difficulty of other games. I wasn’t even a fan of the original Final Fight; yes, the arcade game was impressive, with its large sprites and fun (for its time) gameplay, but it wasn’t one of those games that made me want to keep dumping quarters into it.
Final Fight 3 is the last game in the series that made its way to America (I hear people telling me about something called “Streetwise“, but despite the fact that there’s a Wikipedia page for it, I refuse to acknowledge that game ever happened), and it’s actually very good. The difficulty is more akin to a console title, and as Alex mentioned, there are so many changes – the different moves, the Street Fighter-like special moves, the different endings, branching paths, etc. – that make this a good beat ’em-up. It’s surprisingly fun to play, even today, and is much better than its two predecessors.
For $8, even for someone like me who doesn’t typically play many beat ’em-ups, this is a purchase that’s easy to justify.
Over on the WiiWare, we have Fast Draw Showdown, an arcade game from the 90s with the same gameplay as Mad Dog McCree. Alex Lucard will have a review of this game later this week, as Digital Leisure have been kind enough to send us a review copy, though from the looks of it, unless something is horribly wrong, I would have to assume this is at least worth $5. Also for 500 Wii Points is Pub Darts, which at the very least is less expensive than one night out playing darts at a bar’s dartboard. Lastly, there is Heron: Steam Machine, another $5 game that looks to play almost exactly like Pipe Mania, only with a healthy dose of Rocket Mania thrown in for flavour.
On DSiWare, the big name is Hell’s Kitchen Vs., an $8 game that uses Gordon Ramsay’s unfortunately popular show. Though the premise seems interesting, Alex Lucard warns that it’s basically just the multiplayer mode from the full Wii game, only without things like character voices thrown in. Therefore, you’re paying $8 for a small part of a larger game, and losing the privilege of being berated by a pretentious Scottish arse. Buyer beware on that front. In addition is Animal Puzzle Adventure, a $5 puzzle game from Aksys that features fifty stages of puzzle gameplay and was recently released on the iPhone as well; for $5, I’m not sure there’s enough gameplay to justify that cost. Finally, there’s Trajectile, a $5 game also known in the UK as Reflect Missile, which is a JABC: Just Another Breakout Clone.
Overall, it’s a bit of a light week on the downloadable front, especially when compared to the beauties we had last week, but Final Fight 3 is very good, and we’ll be sure to tell you about Fast Draw Showdown later this week.
Until next week, this is Christopher Bowen, who wonders if he’s going to have to get as drunk to play the Wii version of darts as he does to successfully play the bar version.
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