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Behold! The side-scrolling beat-'em-up, one of the true kings of the quarter-slurping
arcade pantheon. A gameplay
style that thrives, literally thrives, on destroying your sanity, will to live, and
hope for the future through a
vicious combination of gang-ups, cheap timing exploits, and outright broken enemies. Yet
somehow, it's difficult to
stop once you've set yourself to the task of smashing through the clone army du jour.
You know it's frustrating, you
know it's a carbon copy of every other side-scrolling beat-'em-up... but you're given a challenge,
and so you keep
playing. And you plunk in another quarter about every two minutes because **** those
****ers with the jumping chain
attacks. Welcome to SNK's vision on the same old brawler: Final... erm, Burning Fight.
In this one, you're... um... thrown into violence with absolutely no context whatsoever. None.
You've got your choice of
three roided-out buff men, who - in true SNK fashion - speak with a maximum of machismo
and a minimum of
intelligibility. They walk to the right, and hurt people with their bare hands and/or whatever
they happen to find on
the ground. That's pretty much the entire size of it. Occasionally there'll be doorways
indicated where you can step
in for a brief bout of beating the **** out of a piano. Then it's back out onto the mean
streets where this jerk and
his three identical cousins care to have a word with you about GUTS. All presented without
a shred of plot. It is
violence for violence's sake, just without blood or other icky stuff. Behold, the state
of your arcade in '91.
The three protagonists, Billy, Ryu, and Duke, only differ in their special attacks and the
interesting sounds they
make when they die. Seriously, SNK knows what the score is here, which is why the medal
achievement for beating the
game on SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 for the Wii is "Complete the game in less than 30
lives." That's nine continues, on
top of your original credit. Two dollars fifty if we're going at the standard arcade rate.
That's what they expect it
to take. I now think differently about today's Madden arcade rigs charging $.50 a quarter.
That almost sounds
reasonable compared to this. It's not like Streets of... erm. Burning Fight is all that
much to write home about either;
it's pretty much exactly the same as every other side-scrolling beat-'em-up of its era,
just with more frustrating
mechanics, like getting knocked down and being completely unable to stand up on the SAME
LIFE. Sure, it takes four
attacks, but those enemies know exactly where they have to be and when to attack to make
sure you get a window of
about zero frames. But what it does offer - above and beyond the mysterious drumcan
chicken that is the industry
standard - is MYSTERIOUS SHIPPING CRATE OKONOMIYAKI. And if that isn't the name of my next Rock
Band, I don't know
what is. Sorry, Burned and Verified Dragons, your time in the spotlight is up. You've been
replaced by an obscure
reference to Dungeons and... erm. Burning Fight.