Final Fight CD (Sega CD, 1993)

If you didn't already know, Final Fight was released between Street Figther I (a game few people probably played) and Street Fighter II (perhaps the most modded & rehashed OFFICIAL game ever released in the history of console & arcade gaming). Why? Because at the time side-scrolling "beat-em-ups" had been popluair for years since the release of such games as "Double Dragon" and "Golden Axe." SF I might not have been as well-received as Capcom had hoped, so out came this classic franchise.

Oddly enough even though the game features Guy (the third playable char from the original arcade game who wasn't accessible from the original Super Nintendo port of the game), for some reason the names of many of the enemy chars still are censored. The first boss isn't named "Damnd." And the katana wielding boss isn't "Sodom." Plus, having been released on Sega CD, the game suffers from a slightly deficent color palatte owing to core system (Sega Genesis) only being able to produce 63 colors. Although a good bonus is that the beginning cinema sequence is much better animated whereas in previous versions they were a series of still pictures.

If you've played only the SNES version, bear in mind that one of the female punks from the arcade game was changed into a skinny male punk for that version. I guess Nintendo didn't think having even one female char beatup was a no-no. There's also an extra level with the a boss char named "Rolento" to contend with.

A nice addittion to the game which I'm not sure had been featured elsewhere is a time attack or survival mode where you plunked into a special stage and must beat the living crud out of as many punks as you can possibly can before your life bar runs out. I'm sure you won't find this in the compilation pack recently released for PS2 (Capcom Classics Collection volume 1).

Final Fight CD is a rare game to find. You should check it out if you're curious what kinda games came out in the days when the CD-ROM format (popularized by PSOne and replaced by DVD on PS2) was still considered new. Otherwise if you just want to have a straight port of the arcade, then hit up the game Capcom Classics Collection volume 1 I mentioned earlier.