It appears all I had to do was complain about not getting any SNES games. We’ve finally made it.
As the above screenshot suggests, Fatal Fury 2 was first released in 1992 by SNK on their various Neo Geo platforms, and ported a couple of years later to 16-bit consoles. It’s one of several fighting game franchises by SNK, including the sister series Art of Fighting, that eventually all melded into the long-running King of Fighters series. It’s a pretty well-regarded series, though it’s always played second fiddle to the Street Fighters and Mortal Kombats of the world. Is that for good reason? Let’s find out.
The whole cast of ‘90s fighting game stereotypes is here – we’ve got some guy, a guy who’s just like that guy, a larger guy, a girl, and an Asian guy. There are some other guys, too.
We’ve talked before about how I enjoy ludicrous fighting game story lines, but Fatal Fury 2′s is unfortunately pretty reasonable. In short, some new people are taking over “King of Fighters” tournament from the first game to seek out who killed that game’s final boss. That’s pretty much it. Lame, right? At least we still have goofy cutscenes that explain our characters’, uh…motivations?
The gameplay is about what you’d expect from a fighting game of this era – each character has a few special moves, a few strengths/weaknesses, strong attacks that can be deftly countered, and so on. There are a few twists to the formula, including stages with both a foreground and background in which to fight, which can lead to some strategic dodging. The core fighting is well done, and the AI is quite challenging (though not frustratingly so, for the most part). There were so many fighting games around this time, and this is genuinely one of the better ones.
If the bellwether for 16-bit fighting games is Street Fighter II (or perhaps one of its follow-ups), I feel like Fatal Fury 2 is a bit below the gold standard, but still a lot of fun and has enough to stand out from what is a seriously crowded genre. Plus, it has these cutscenes:
Another thing that makes this one stand out, for better or worse, is that it marked the debut of Mai Shiranui, one of the most iconic and infamous characters in fighting game history. If you don’t know why, well, here’s why (if you’re at work, you may not want to scroll down from here):
As I touched on in my article about Dead or Alive 2 a while back, it can be difficult to separate games of this era, especially testosterone-packed fighting games, from their collective tendency to be weird about the female anatomy. Fatal Fury 2 is a pioneering game in that regard, as its original version is the very first video game to have ‘boob physics.’ Fatal Fury’s absurdly proportioned Mai is really the forerunner of this sort of thing. While I certainly understand that sex appeal sells, it just feels so off-putting in this day and age. Thankfully, it seems like much the world has at least begun to move away from this.
…but SNK hasn’t. It appears that in the latest entry in the Fatal Fury/King of Fighters universe, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, even the erstwhile male protagonist Terry Bogard has a huge rack. The world is an interesting place.
Anyway, Fatal Fury 2 is definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of fighting games or just 16-bit games in general. It’s also a fairly cheap pickup on the SNES at around $10. It does pale a bit in comparison to some of its high-profile brethren, but it’s a very enjoyable game on its own. If you enjoy this one, there are a lot of follow-ups under both the Fatal Fury and King of Fighters banners.
Next week is yet another SNES release, and it’s a great example of one of my favorite oddly specific genres. I’ll see you then!