Mighty Final Fight Review

1993 was a big year for the Final Fight series since Final Fight CD, Final Fight 2 and this were all released in this year. Mighty Final Fight was on the ageing and under powered NES, but that didn't stop Capcom releasing a superb little game for the ones who hadn't upgraded there console to something like the SNES.

Anyway Mighty Final Fight looks quite a bit different to the usual games. It has much more cartoon like graphics, with super deformed characters. The game features Guy, Cody and Haggar as playable fighters, all of which have moves of their own including the jump kicks and special attacks.

A lot of the enemies from the first game have been included, including Andore, Two P, El Gado and...Poison! It seems that now it's OK to have this character in the game. There are some new enemies as well like the highly annoying sailor enemy who has a very nasty spin kick.

There are 5 rounds to get through, each made up of three sections, the last one always being a boss fight. Even though some of the rounds share the same name as those found in the arcade version of Final Fight the levels are completely different. Some have some very nice features, such as a fight on a moving lift or one round lets you throw opponents down pits!

At the end of each round you'll have to fight a boss. All the bosses have been in the arcade game of Final Fight, so you'll meet Thrasher, Abigial, Katana and Belger. However some bosses you have to fight multiple times! This can be slightly annoying since some of the boss fights are terrible (Katana, for instance) One cool thing about them is that when you first get to a boss your character will have a chat with the boss! Think of it like in Final Fight One. These conversations are quite funny as they normally involve insult throwing between the two characters.

The main idea of the game is experience points. By knocking out an opponent you will get some experience points. When you get a certain number you will level up and be more powerful. This is a great idea and works quite well. You can get extra experience points by doing other things like simply eating food.

Oh, there are items in the game, too. However in each level there is a part where the action will stop and barrels will roll on screen. You have to break them to reveal the items. Most of them involve food but now and then you can get a weapon like a knife for Cody.

After certain stages you will take part in a bonus game, where you'll have to smash barrels. The more you smash the better the reward, which can range from more experience points to extra lives. There are two of these bonus games which both play in the same way, one after round 2 and one after round 4.

Since this is on the NES you can't expect it to look that great. Graphically it is good for the NES but at the time of release things had moved on. Because of the NES's power you will normally only ever fight up to 2 other enemies on screen at once, and even then there is still quite a bit of flicker.

My problems with this game is that it came out on the NES. It would of been great if it came out on a more powerful console so we could have better graphics and more stages. The only other flaw is the mostly rubbish boss fights, especially against Katana. But apart from this you can't really go wrong with Mighty Final Fight.

If you only own a NES than you really should have this game since it is one of the best scrolling beat 'em ups on the system. However it's quite rare so good luck in finding it.