ACA NEOGEO Fatal Fury 2

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Fatal Fury 2, not to be confused with Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 (that’s a later game in the series), is a Fighting Game originally released in 1992 in arcades and the NEOGEO home console, and in the years since it has been brought to numerous other consoles (including as a launch title for the NEOGEO CD), with this ACA NEOGEO version releasing on Nintendo Switch in 2017.

After the embarrassingly anemic first game in this series, whose 3-character roster was laughable coming on the heels of Street Fighter II with its 8-character roster, Fatal Fury 2 expands its roster outward to a full 8 here as well, including one of the most well-known female characters in videogame history, Mai Shiranui, who has become a series mainstay and a company mascot ever since. However, this was still arguably too little too late, as Capcom had by this time released Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, with a roster of 12 characters.

Graphically, Fatal Fury 2 looks good, and in many ways it is graphically even more ambitious than its contemporaries, with stages set on moving trains or a raft floating down a roaring river. I would still argue it’s not quite as polished as Street Fighter II, but the game nevertheless features some excellent 2D pixel art character designs along with the imaginative stages. The game also features brief voice clips, and the chiptune music is decent, albeit not especially memorable.

Beyond the expanded (but still lacking) roster, I still feel like this game isn’t anywhere near the quality of Street Fighter II’s gameplay, let alone what we see in more modern games in the genre. The gameplay still feels stiff and clunky (though an improvement over the first game), and the two-lane gameplay system, while interesting, still ultimately seemed to me to be more annoying than practical.

Also, this game has to face the huge hurdle of being compared to its direct successor, Fatal Fury Special, which takes the same core graphics and gameplay and adds new gameplay mechanics and nearly doubles the playable roster of characters. Next to that… why would you want to buy this game at all?

When it comes to the specific features of this port, players are given a decent array of options and features. The game features the Japanese original release, the English original release, and Caravan Mode, a 5 minute score challenge with Online leaderboards. Furthermore, in-game players can access display settings, save states, game settings, and a digital manual. It’s a decent selection of features, though sadly what’s missing is online play, and there’s no art or making-of content to speak of.

Make no mistake, Fatal Fury 2 is a marked improvement over the first game in the series, but it’s still not up to the standards of its main competitor, Street Fighter II, and certainly not up to more modern Fighting Game standards. Unless you’re a collector or a fan of this series specifically, I highly doubt you’ll find this game to be worth the $8 asking price, when you could buy later games in the series instead, and particularly the existence of Fatal Fury Special, there’s just no reason to buy this game.

tl;dr – Fatal Fury 2 is a Fighting Game that improves greatly on the first game in the series, but is still well behind modern standards for the genre. Even worse, there’s no reason to get this game when the expanded version of the game, Fatal Fury Special, is sitting on the same storefronts. Even if you could overlook Fatal Fury 2’s flaws, there’s no good reason not to get that game instead.

Grade: D

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