Fatal Fury Special

Review

by Kyle Knight

After a year of work, I thought SNK would have something more than an update of Fatal Fury 2. But that's exactly what this game is. Fatal Fury 2 had a good fighting system, and this game inherits that. It also inherits some very nice stage backgrounds from FF2 to add to its own. This game is a very good fighter on its own, but unfortunately it has Fatal Fury 2's shadow hanging over it. What we have here is an update to FF2 when we should have gotten a full sequel.

Fatal Fury Special inherits a polished fighting system. Even though characters such as Terry Bogard and former bosses Geese Howard and Wolfgang Krauser are particularly powerful, overall there's a good balance between all of the characters. Like FF2, the game's controls are very tight and responsive, and pulling off special techniques is pretty easy. Desperation moves are still difficult to do, but they're meant to be difficult. Otherwise players wouldn't be desperate.

The stage backgrounds for returning cast members haven't been improved upon except animation touch-ups here and there. But they have been redone. In Fatal Fury 2 each character's stage had a day and an evening version. When they were brought to Fatal Fury Special the evening version became the first match stage, and a new night version of each stage was created for the second match. It's not something that was necessary, and it's not something that everybody will notice. But the fact that SNK did put in the effort in redoing stages from FF2 shows that they weren't being lazy.

New characters have stages that are at least as impressive as the returning characters' stages. Duck King's stage is psychedelic, and everything in the background seems to be moving at once. Tung Fu Rue's stage on the other hand is very serene, with stunningly beautiful artwork done in the style of Chinese landscape paintings. Music for the new stages shows the same amount of effort, with some of the tunes being good enough to be quite memorable. Tung Fu Rue's stage music in particular had me looking forward to fighting him just so I could listen to the music.

Unfortunately no work was done on the characters themselves. They use the same animations as before, and the character animations are smooth enough in most areas to make character movements look fluid. But where Fatal Fury 2 dropped the ball this game does the same. Throw animations still look more like stop motion frames than actual movements. It's something that could have been improved upon without too much trouble, and the fact that it wasn't improved upon is disappointing.

Fatal Fury Special is a very good game, and fighter fans who haven't played Fatal Fury 2 should get FFS. The decision of whether warrants a purchase is more difficult for fighter fans that have experienced FF2. If you really enjoyed Fatal Fury 2 and can't get enough of the gameplay, then Fatal Fury Special is the perfect game for you. If, however, you're looking for an improvement on the gameplay, Fatal Fury Special doesn't have it.