Game Journal: Final Fight (1 Credit Clear, Hardest)

I cleared Final Fight, a 1989 beat 'em up by Capcom, on the hardest difficulty.

This run was played live on my livestream, and you can watch the live commentated footage here.

I started playing this game last summer, but I took a few breaks to play other, easier beat 'em ups and various other arcade games. Last month, after seeing so many other people clear the game this year, I decided to lock in and actually go for the clear.

This is easily my favourite beat 'em up I have played so far, and it's up there with Gun.Smoke (arcade) as one of my favourite games of all time. It's all about controlling crowds and trying to herd enemies, and it's so fun trying to squeeze every last drop out of Haggar's toolkit to achieve this task as effectively as possible. Everything from his suplexes to the nuances of his backward jump (it's faster than his regular walk/jump and it causes his splash to push enemies towards you, but you can't dropkick from it) has to be used to its full potential.

The high difficulty level and the highly dynamic nature of every single combat encounter makes this feel unlike almost any other arcade game I have cleared so far. Usually once I'm good enough to go for full runs of a game, I am confident enough in my skill level and my route that there is a good chance I'll clear it after a few attempts. By this time I reach the final stage I'm feeling pretty relaxed, because all I have to do is execute what I've already practiced.

Final Fight is not like this. All sorts of things can and will go wrong, either because you very slightly mess up your execution or because an enemy happens to decide to behave in a very slightly different way than usual. Maybe an Andore pauses their run at the very earliest moment, a 2P slips through your jab mash, a Hollywood decides to step out of your superjoy range and start poking you with his knife, or a popcorn enemy shakes out of your grab quicker than you expected. When this inevitably happens, you need to quickly improvise a plan that will cut your losses as much as possible, and a huge amount of the game comes down to how well you can do this. So right up until the end of the game, every moment feels tense. It helps that the final stage is so incredibly difficult, of course.

That said, some parts of the game are a little too easy for my taste on repeat plays, such as most of stages 1 and 3 and parts of stage 5, and I'm personally not a fan of the boss fights on stages 2 and 3 either. That said, its difficulty curve is still much more even than pretty every other beat 'em up I have played so far. Even if a few parts of the run stand out as being harder than the rest (stage 2, the second half of stage 4, abigail, stage 6), I still came very close to dying in a lot of the "easier" parts.

I am in awe of how good Final Fight is, especially considering that it was developed so early in the genre's history. If you are even slightly interested in beat 'em ups I highly recommend playing it!