Pit Fighter - Various

...I'm... just going to have a cry in the corner...

Oh dear God please kill me. No seriously, smite me now for having to put up with this abortion of video gaming. Please someone, take my brain and run it through a bleach-coated cheesegrater on the hope that even in my dying moments that I will NEVER REMEMBER THIS GAME AGAIN. It's Pit-Fighter. (Shit-Fighter, I'll drop this one in now and promise to not use this punchline again).

Words... fail me.

Let's give it some credit though, it's the second fighting game to use filmed actors for animatation, before Mortal Kombat hit the scenes a few years later. The fact that it's the second game to do this should be a huge indicator that this game was never going to be anywhere as polished as it could have been given the almost ground-breaking foray into the field, but Pit-Fighter seems to have lost its way with the game play, and the graphics which is the ultimate irony there.

A shame nobody executed the product staff.

Game wise, Pit-Fighter is for up to 3 players to enter into an underground arena of illegal bareknuckled fighting and combat their way to the top against established pricks of varying magnitude. Join Buzz, Ty and Kato as they take on the underground circuit it a choppily animated and complete lack of flow between frames, fight to the top. Scoring points and cash on the way up by fighting in various styles and winning specific criteria or getting flawless/perfect victories against bosses that take priority with their attacks over your own. Fairness is out of the window from the start and so it's down to who can exploit the AI fastest.

I really wish I hadn't made it.

If you even could! The controls are sluggish and unresponsive at the best of times and Pit-Fighters use of combat is risable at best and downright insulting at worst. Using your mess of a jump, kick and punch, it's down to you to fight and beat multiple boss-like opponents either solo or in a 3vs1 battle with your friends (you will soon lose these friends if you're the one that suggested to play this abysmal game). The joystick lets you move in 8 directions around the arena including moving to the background and foreground while you try to buy some distance and time to learn the moves or pick up some items or just run away and play for a little bit long from the poison challice that is this Pit-Fighter.

It's like a real fight, only pure shit but just as painful.

The graphics in Pit-Fighter, look like people and quite rightly so given the technology used but the flow and style of the animation is horrible to watch and as such the collision detection for the fights are usually "off" from the images that are being shown. There remains some level of detail and colour, if a little pixelated, but for what it's worth, the items and people you see do look like the items and people they're meant to represent. But then a photo of an object should still look like a photo of that object.

Sadly you cannot grab the weapons and bash yourself to death with them.

Annoying, clashing, woefully digitised and barely recognisable. Key words anybody should be using to identify the audio within Pit-Fighter, but perhaps with all the graphics being used in the memory, there wasn't much left in the budget or the game itself, for decent sounds. It's another nail in the coffin here and for those that can find out how to, silence the game before playing it.

And now the background is painful.

There are some interesting aspects of Pit-Fighter though, the crowd can get involved in the fight if the combat strays too close to them, pushing players back into the arena or stepping in and attacking players that get too close, thankfully this includes the bosses of the arenas. Once you've beaten the selection of fighters, you'll end up fighting them all again anyway until you hit level 15 and then you get to fight the last boss and beat the game.

B is for BAD GAME, BLOODY AWFUL and BULLSHIT. Remember this well.

But you can't beat Pit-Fighter. Once you start playing, it has already won. Your money is in its chutes and anything you try from here on will just be a meagre attempt to regain what you've paid, and you will always find yourself coming up short in that regard. Stay away, and if possible, burn any machines you find of this game. I will now be carrying a lighter and aerosol can JUST for this purpose, at all times.