Two strange tastes that taste strange together.
Final Fight: Double Impact is an unlikely combination of two arcade releases from the early 90s, bundled together in a nifty little $10 value package. Though it’s hard to not feel like there is a sense of shame in the advertising of this game, like they Capcom marketing team doesn’t want you to know that Magic Sword is included in the bundle. “In this great retro package, you get the legendary FINAL FIGHT and another game, vote Hagger for Mayor!” Odd.
Which is a shame, as I liked Magic Sword. Now, don’t mistake liking for loving Magic Sword. Magic Sword is not an all-time great release. In fact, Magic Sword is forgettable enough to make it exempt from the butterfly effect. If Magic Sword was never released, Tupac and Biggie Smalls would still have died and Sinead O’Connor would’ve still torn a photo of the Pope in two. (Whereas the course of history would have significantly been altered with Final Fight; in particular, the world would’ve been robbed of that great pink Hagger-shark picture.) Platformers and medieval fantasy-based games were more frequent in the early 90s than today. So Magic Sword at least stands out more in 2010, if just for being more far-removed from the days when Conan the Barbarian was a popular entity.
In Magic Sword, you play as Conan’s long lost brother, (for the purposes of this review, lets call him “Phonan”) and you are trying to beat up some demon dude and smash his orb of death. Doing so entails climbing many floors of his overcompensating giant tower, filled with dungeons, fire-themed dungeons, water-themed dungeons and many more dungeons. Phonan will run, jump and pull off slashing attacks, and you can press both buttons simultaneously for an everything-on-the-screen-dies super attack that drains your health and would normally lead to a lighter, quarter-free wallet at the arcades.
Part of my admiration for Magic Sword is that it’s so darned thematically careless; you’ll fight your typical medieval dragons and and orcs, but there are also mummies, samurais and evil heads. Magic Sword’s big, unique hook is that you can use keys found during the game to open dungeons and free a partner that’ll launch projectiles behind Phonan’s back. While these include predictable fantasy types like the thief, the knight and the Amazonian woman, there is also less suspecting characters like the ninja and the Disney Gargoyle.
Then you play the game co-operatively with a friend, and you have two Phonans, with their own partner, flinging projectiles at the giant screen filled with mummies and gargoyles. The action gets hectic at times, and you’ll count your lucky stars this version of Magic Sword has unlimited continues. (Because nothing sucks like running to the change machine for more quarters and finding out the blasted device is jammed.) Magic Sword is also the first arcade game I can think of with a moral choice system; at the end of the game, you get to choice a good or bad ending, and while both lead to a predictable outcome, the bad translation of text is still intact in this Double Impact port. I can also argue that Magic Sword, for better or worse, is longer than most arcade games, and finishing this game will take a stretch of an hour or two. But the action is zany, the bosses are fun, and this version of Magic Sword has all the fun options included in Final Fight port as well.
I should probably talk about Final Fight at some point, eh? Final Fight is an ever-popular beat-em-up that may or may not have been in on its own private joke. In this game, the mayor of , along with his buddies that just happen to be karate experts, take the law in their own hands to beat up hoodlums and rescue his daughter from a crime lord with mighty mutton chops.
Replaying Final Fight brought me both great moments of bliss and sadness. I was overjoyed because Final Fight is still Final Fight. Pounding a single button to repeatedly punch, kick, throw and piledrive enemies is rather cathartic. This game relieves stress. There are still all of the great odd Final Fight-isms. Health-recovering food still comes out of trash bins, thugs still casually walk out of doors into your fist, and you still have all of the wacky “gangster” types. In the 90s, depicting gangsters while avoiding the brand of racism against African-Americans involved such thug archetypes as: the yellow-dressed punk with the radioactive-logo on his jacket, the skinny biker chick with pink hair, a Native American that bleeds knives when hit, and a family of Andre the Giants. There’s a surprising amount of personality in , whether it’s fighting a Shogun warrior in a wrestling ring or gaining health by eating a boss’s chewed-out gum off of the floor. This is a fun kind of weird.
At the same time, my heart sinks because I know that people who didn’t grow up in the time period, playing games like Final Fight are going to be an enigma. And I know that there is now a large percentage of gamers that fit into this category. I was having a conversation with classmates recently, and almost everyone at the table didn’t know who Kurt Cobain was. I imagine THOSE are the kind of people that will have no appreciation for Final Fight. I imagine them asking questions like “why is there only one punch button? Which is weak attack and which is strong attack? Where is the air combo? Why did I just finish this game? Why are all of the main characters dressed like they belong in the Pride parade?” All of the nostalgic charm and simplicity of Final Fight is going to be lost on today’s audience.
And yes, Final Fight is a short game, an average playthrough could take an hour. This game was designed to devour quarters, and having unlimited continues means that finishing the game is a matter of attrition rather than a matter of how much allowance you brought to the arcade. But there is fun to be had in knocking the snot out of the likes of people with named like “Damnd” and “”, especially with an ally in tow. Both Final Fight and Magic Sword have pro-co-op options, allowing a friend or random stranger to hop into your game if you so chose to allow it. And both games are immensely more entertaining if you have a fellow muscular man at your side for which to do the Arnold Predator handshake with.
And there are a few other nice little options too. You can elect to play the game with either the original soundtrack of a funky-fly remixed rendition. The visual options are especially delicious for today’s widescreen, HD generation. Such visual options include playing in full widescreen with smoothed-out visuals or, in the ultimate irony, using your High Definition screen to mimic the phosphorous glow and curving of an arcade CRT monitor, complete with surrounding artwork from the arcade machine. The people whom made this game are very pro-nostalgia.
Finally, there are a few in-game achievements, because every game today needs an achievement system separate from the official console achievement. Though Final Fight at least is short enough that you’ll at least feel inclined to take a stab at most of its achievements. Most of the treats are pieces of artwork, but the centerpiece of the package is an episode of the incredibly cheesy Street Fighter cartoon with the Final Fight cast.
Should you buy Final Fight: Double Impact? Well, if you have a fondness for Final Fight (or if you want to surprise me and say you have a fondness for Magic Sword), then sure. If you’re a product of today’s gaming generation, then you may be a bit baffled as to where the appeal lies in these two 90s fossils. But even then, its $10, a relatively minor investment for a package that ensures at least a good 2 or 3 hours of entertainment.
3 ½ stars
