Game feature: Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers

It's been a long time since I posted a game feature post.  And heck--I've only done three of them so far anyway--so it's time for another.

SNK released most of the Fatal Fury series on two discs called Fatal Fury Battle Archives.  The first disc had Fatal Fury, Fatal Fury 2, Fatal Fury Special and Fatal Fury 3.  The second disc had the three Real Bout subseries titles, Real Bout Fatal Fury, Real Bout Fatal Fury Special and Real Bout Fatal Fury 2.  Missing from the collection are Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves, Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition, and Real Bout Fatal Fury Special: Dominated Mind.  The last was a special variant Playstation port of Real Bout Fatal Fury Special (actually, kind of obviously) while the other two missing titles can be seen as spin-offs that are not related to the "main" series--the latter being a 3D retelling of the first Fatal Fury story, and the former being a "ten years later" sequel of sorts with an almost completely redone cast and dramatically redone gameplay engine.  Curiously, MotW is only called Fatal Fury in the Dreamcast version; it's otherwise called Garou: Mark of the Wolves, giving at least some credence to the idea that it's not really a Fatal Fury game at all, but really a tangent, spin-off, or simply a related title that SNK hoped to stake a new series on.  Either way, it's not on the Battle Archives disc, but I do have the Dreamcast version.  It's also available as an Xbox Live arcade game in the Classics section.

In any case, removing it from consideration makes picking the "best" game in the Fatal Fury series much easier.  While I do occasionally hear of folks who give a slight edge to RBS--and I can kinda see their point--I give my edge to RB2.  It's the apex of the Fatal Fury series, and the best game in the series, in my opinion.  It's got the best character selection, including most of the characters who have graced the series over the years (minus a few mostly forgettable ones like Michael Max or Axel Hawk.  It's also missing Hwa Jai who has made his triumphant come-back in King of Fighters XIII, though--which proves that some of these older characters certainly can be rehabilitated and modernized.)  The animation is bright, detailed, and reasonably well done, if a bit cartoon-like compared to more modern King of Fighters animation.  In fact, in many ways, it has a similar "feel" graphically to Street Fighter Alpha 2 or 3, which was no doubt the point.

However, in terms of gameplay, it feels very specifically like a Fatal Fury game.  By this I mean that it has a pronounced two-plane arena, which has been tweaked at this point to where it's a nice tactical addition rather than a novelty, or a frustrating "chase each other back and forth from one plane to another" routine.  It has three regular attack buttons instead of four (which in the PS2 controller takes a little getting used to, especially if you're coming off playing a more traditional layout game.  When I played this last night it was right after toying around with King of Fighters XI for a while, for instance.)  Super move charging is also very FF instead of KoF or SF-like; every character has one super move that you can do when your meter is charged.  When your meter is fully charged, it will slowly drain away.  Once it does (or once you activate the super move) you can't do it anymore.  You can also use your supermove at will once your life is lower than 50%.  If you have a charge and less than 50% life, you can actually do a super super move (technically called a P. Power move--the "regular" version is called an S. Power move).  For some characters, this is a more powerful version of their super move, for others, it's actually an all new Super-super move.

With games modes in Capcom like A-ism or C-groove--similar to how super charging works in some King of Fighters games too, for that matter--you have to pay attention to how many charges you have, but in this game, you have to pay a bit more attention to it, because of the fact that the meter drains away fairly quickly, making your supers a use it or lose it proposition.  I don't know that I necessarily like this better (actually, if I could choose, I no doubt would choose something more A-ism like) but it certainly does feel different and very unique--except to other Fatal Fury games, of course.  Heck, if anything, this is a good argument for the inclusion of Mark of the Wolves within the series, because super meters in that game work very similarly to this one.

Presentation-wise, the game is also a little bit hit or miss.  Certainly it looks really nice, and has beautiful backgrounds (although each gets only two slight variations, so it feels like there a little bit of discount usage somehow) but the lack of any kind of meaningful ending, inter-battle demos, or anything like that feels a little bit spartan compared to other games that I'm used to playing.  Especially Street Fighter Alpha 3, the game that most logically this would be compared to.  The music is mostly recycled from RBS, but it's still pretty good stuff, so I don't feel too bad about that.  SNK music in general was always a bit more adventurous; willing to try wildly different genres than what you'd expect, sometimes.  This leads to a hit or miss situation in some ways; stuff that I really really like, and stuff that I think is too bizarre for words, but I do admire their willingness to experiment.

But in spite of a few quibbles where it did things in a way where I'd slightly prefer a different way of doing things, in reality, the game wins me over easily with its colorful character selection, fine control, sufficient yet not too much tactical complexity, and general personality.  It also helps that--although in SNK games I always tend to first gravitate to Terry--that there are plenty of other characters I enjoy playing in this one.  It's one that I find in my player pretty frequently.  It's a lot of fun, it's a good looking game, it's got lots of replayability value, and it's just really quite polished.  Like I said earlier, I really believe it's the apex of the Fatal Fury series, and certainly it is if you count Mark of the Wolves as a spin-off rather than a series entrant proper.

There is a secret boss or alternate character named Alfred in the game.  I guess he's more of a secret character than a boss per se.  He's insanely hard to play against; you can't lose a single round, and even at low difficulty, that's a challenging proposition  That last picture is him and his stage, though.  His stage is somewhere in the American southwest from the looks of it.  So are Terry's and Rick Strowd's (they actually look like the same stage, but at different times of day, and in Terry's there's a big-rig truck that's gone in Rick's.)  This game is technically a "dream match" rather than a canonical game, so I'm not sure if it even matters, but unlike most Fatal Fury games (minus 2/Special) it does look like it takes place in locations other than Southtown and instead has an international flair of sorts to it.  Franco Bash and Joe Higashi also seem to be on a ring or stage in Thailand.  The rest of them could be in Southtown, if you really needed them to be, but there's not necessarily a strong reason for believing that they should.