Developed by Capcom and published by Sega in 1993
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Whilst side-scrolling beat-em ups existed prior to Final Fight, it was Capcom's seminal side-scroller that really perfected the template and set the standard for genre. Boasting super-smooth scrolling, brilliant graphics and a fighting system that was super-easy to pick up and play, Final Fight was the mainstay of any decent arcade in the late 80's and early 90's.
Capcom ported the game to the SNES in 1990, but it lacked much of what made the arcade version so great. Not only did it lack a 2-player mode, Guy was absent from the game altogether, as was the entirety of the fourth level. Needless to say, many players felt that Capcom could have handled the conversion a lot better.
Capcom would later release a version of the game for Sega's CD add-on for the popular Mega Drive/Genesis platform in 1993. Boasting a full CD soundtrack, I thought it would be interesting to play through this version of the game and see how it compares to the arcade, as well as the lacklustre SNES conversion.
The most significant upgrade that the CD format brings to the table is the fully mastered CD soundtrack and, I have to say, it's seriously impressive. Not only has all of the in-game music been recreated to a high standard with proper instruments and synths, Capcom also recorded voice-overs for the intro and ending sequences; it's pretty cheesy (as you'd probably expect for early 90's), but it's still a cool feature given that FM synthesis and scratchy speech samples were still the norm for console games at the time.
On the subject of the intro, I noticed that there are a couple of new scenes added to this version not present in the original arcade version; I'm unsure as to whether these are exclusive to this port or whether it's present on other conversions, but it's a small, if neat addition.
In addition to the Red Book CD soundtrack, all of the digitised effects samples from the original arcade board feature in this version as well, and they sound excellent. I don't have any information to hand, but I suspect that Capcom made use of the Ricoh PCM chip in the Sega CD unit to play these samples; the quality is far too good to be using the base console's sound chip.
Of course, fancy graphics and audio would be for nought if the gameplay wasn't any good. As you might expect from Capcom, the game plays just as well as the arcade version - everything from the controls to the fighting action feels absolutely spot-on; some of the enemy AI behaviour felt slightly different to that of the arcade, but this is just an observation, not a complaint.
The game features excellent graphics and include all of the animation from the arcade version; watch Guy's walking animation and it appears to be just as fluid and features as many frames as the arcade.
If I have one complaint, it's that the colours of most of the sprites have been altered to accommodate the console's hardware; the end result is the game looks a little washed-out compared to other editions with many of the characters featuring a slightly sepia hue.
In fact, Capcom have put a lot more work into conversion than you might first realise - in a side-by-side comparison it's evident that Capcom has actually redrawn all of the artwork and sprite assets to fit the console's screen resolution/aspect ratio (which is different to the arcade). The comparison also reveals other differences, such as the way the scrolling backdrop from the elevator section during round 4 is completely absent in the CD version.
Comparisons aside, there's no denying that this is an absolutely brilliant port of Final Fight, arguably better in every department when compared to the SNES version (and subsequent sequels). If you want as near-perfect a conversion for a home system (excluding the Sharp X68000), this is definitely the version to go for.
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