Time to save the princess!
Final Fight One starts with a simple enough story. The new mayor of Metro City, Haggar, wishes to clean up the town and take care of the vicious gang Mad Gear. To stop this the gang kidnaps Haggar's daughter Jessica and demands that Haggar co-operate with them. Of course being a former street-fighter himself Haggar rips off his suit and takes matters into his own hands. Joining him are Cody, Jessica's "childhood friend", and his friend Guy.
As is the norm the 3 characters each have different strengths and weaknesses. Haggar is the strongest and has a devastating piledriver move, but is the slowest. Cody and Guy are more average and instead have a special distinguising feature each. Cody can use knives without throwing them (eg by stabbing people) and Guy has a very limited wall jump. Whilst these may seem like rather trivial differences, they are enough to make each character unique in their fighting style.
Crack open a crate, I feel like a Roast Chicken
To spice things up there are a number of items strewn amongst the levels and hidden in breakable objects. They range from life restoring foodstuffs, to cash and valuables worth points and a variety of weapons. Since the weapons include katanas, knives and steel pipes they are a fun addition to the regular gameplay. The bosses are well designed and employ extra grunts, or special weapons to test your skill. Each boss also has a little pre-match discussion with your character which differs depending on who you play as and is a nice break in the gameplay.
One admittedly annoying feature is the continue system. You are allowed 3 continues in the game, however there is a catch. If you wish to continue you need to start back at the beginning of the level. Thankfully the unlockable secrets helps alleviate this frustration a little. The game records how many gang members you have defeated and rewards you with extra options based on that number. For example you can unlock the ability to have 9 lives per continue, a level select and even 2 new characters.
So what's new?
Well not a lot really. There is the unlockable option of choosing between 4 colour schemes for each of your characters, a rapid punch option and of course the two new characters Alpha Cody and Alpha Guy. Unforunately the extra detail and lush animations for these 2 characters really highlight that the entire game could have looked a lot better had some real effort been put into the port.
Final Fight One is stylishly presented and the graphics are clean and just like the original. The dialogue graphics are also nicely drawn. The music is the same old tinny stuff that the original arcade version sported. With a port such as this it can be forgiven as it isn't really all that bad and brings back a lot of memories. The classic grunts, punch sound effects and death cries are all back and suit the game perfectly.
Sadly the multiplayer link-up mode requires 2 copies of the game. It is also a little easy, seeing as though you can continue right where you left off and you have a team mate for help. Still, the Gameboy Advance needs more quality link-up titles and this one is rock solid.
All things taken into consideration, Final Fight One really does succeed at what it attempts to do: It brings the classic Final Fight to the convenient portability of the Gameboy Advance and does the original game justice. However we must ask that for future releases, please give us a new game.
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