Fighting Fantasy - Arcade

Nice pixel art, but that's about it.

I wasn't entirely sure of what to expect when I started playing Fighting Fantasy. I was worried initially it was going to be one of those QIX based games where you slowly carve out an arena while the image of a nude woman sits behind a screen that slowly is revealed while you progress through avoiding pointless enemies. Thankfully this isn't one of those games as it is in fact a beat-em-up. Sadly it's not a very good one but it is one of the more creative attempts I've seen from the older sets of games.

Thankfully, no hippos were harmed in the Hippodrome

The premise of Fighting Fantasy is a simple one. You've been chosen as some sort of badass with a sword to take part in interstellar games of gladiatorial combat, where all the other creatures also happen to be from the mythos of the same planet. Not quite sure how that figures out but at least there was an attempt to do something other than "Here's enemies, go crack skulls" which is almost neatly explained in the title sequence after you pump in your cash.

For a particularly non-human enemy, it's well coded.

Controls are simple enough, harkening back to the days of Barbarian on the old early 80s home computers. You've an attack button, a jump button and 8directions of the joystick. Tapping the attack while pushing a direction will result in an attack of some nature while hold back and attack will block (usually) an attack for a short while. Interestingly, after each fight you can purchase weapons and items to keep yourself alive and give different stats. Longer weapons tend to hurt less while short range weapons do the most damage (except against the last enemy where everything does 1 hit point of damage, the cheap bastard).

Just a little bit one-sided in this battle...

Your opponents in Fighting Fantasy are as varied as they are difficult to fight. Each enemy requires a different tactic (Though getting them into a corner and hammering them repeatedly works almost universally well. Ranging from a Lamia (snake woman), Gargoyles, lizard men, scorpion men, dragons, an obligatory twin battle, wizards and the last boss who might as well be God with the health and over prioritised attacks and moves he's got.

Just as unfair as it looks, the 2nd hardest battle in the game.

But the uniqueness in Fighting Fantasy is that each character will fight in a different way. Lamia will use her snake tail to attack at times, Scorpion man will try to poison with the stinger, the twins will do dual-moves, wizard attacks with a huge selection of spells, the Dragon is enormous and more like a boss than a fight and all the fighters have a certain charm to them that shows there's something fairly well developed in this game.

I did not beat this guy, I am ashamed.

Sadly the execution of the game is dross. Fighting Fantasy has the ideas and the ambition but lacks the actual game to pull off what it's attempting to do. While the graphics are impressive for the time and the enemies are clearly and well thought out in their design and performance, the gameplay is the key issue in that it becomes a hammer and button basher very quickly and the idea of using tactics in combat is laughed out the window unless you effectively study this game like you're learning a new language. (And no, not because it's partly in Japanese)

Will kill you unless you fight dirty.

If the combat in Fighting Fantasy (you know, the very CORE of a fighting a game) had been improved and made more accessible and playable, this would have been a solid hit of a game. Unfortunately it's become an unexciting mess punctuated with impressive idea but horrible execution.

One of the MORE infuriatingly cheap enemies. Akin to putting a slingshot against a Howitzer.

Almost fitting that the last two words of my previous paragraph are entirely suitable for what to do with this game.

Battletoads - Arcade, Rare Replay

Or don't and save your cash.

Take the premise of a morning cartoon show. Grab some animals, make them humanoid and muscular, give them attitude and over the top muscle physiques and set them against even bigger and more muscular characters and you've basically gotten every anthropomorphic cartoon you could imagine. Now set it in a video game and you've got Battletoads. Following the lovably named Zitz, Rash and Pimple, the trifecta of getting oneself down to the doctors, we watch as these beefed up toads decide to win a space war against a colourful assortment of characters by punching, kicking, slamming, fly-munching, bulldozing and chainsaw-knee-blading (I wish I was making this up) their way through level after level until the last boss is killed. What probably doesn't help here is that Battletoads became a cartoon show after the first game was made, then the arcade game came later.

Kicked a pig, in the arse.... Wow...

The game switches between styles of play. From the pseudo 3D brawler we expect from games like Final Fight, to a straight up 2D flat affair as if Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat became a platformer with more enemies, rather akin to the Batman Forever game on the SNES and Megadrive. Thankfully there's not nightmare of a level where you're driving constantly to dodge obstacles...

When there's Snow more room in Hell, Bod will play this shit game.

Interestingly, each of the Battletoads has an assortment of situational-dependent attacks. Enemies on both sides? Attack will hit both. Enemy on the ground and weighs a lot? You grow a huge boot and plant it up their backside to launch them into the screen or through the 4th wall. Enemy on the ground? You'll drill/spike/crush them, while charging and attacking will cause your Battletoad to develop a Quarterback Helmet/Bulldozer blades or a big fist to smash the enemies. Leaping and attacking can cause your Battletoad to expose a leg-axe, knee chainsaw or worse. The fighting and action is as cartoony as it is inventive.

Something for the vore fans I guess.

The cohesion between levels jumps back and forth like a cat overdosing on catnip. One moment you're on a battleship punching a bull in the balls (no joke) and the next you're in an ice cave covered with snow while icicles fall upon you, reindeer try to gore you with their antlers and then a giant snake living in a ribcage tries to devour you while it's away from its internet-connection, otherwise I'm at a loss as to how it managed to insult you at the start of the level during the cut scene. Then it's another spaceship with a multi-stage boss, followed by a drop down a long passageway while punching out pigs and spiked-up abominations then finally a palace with a spike pit that looks like the same architects from Double Dragon have been around. The last level changes it up entirely to have the battletoads riding a ship while shooting in 8 directions in a sort of mix between Gradius and that FPS mode in Aliens.

Don't worry, you won't fight her. Not unless you play Battletoads Double Dragon.

Enemies range from rats and bulls to snakes and big, hulked out, larger forms of rats and bulls. The larger enemies tend to take several rounds of beating before being finished in rather "unique" ways (I did mention earlier with the balls...) leading to several comical instances through the game until you realise you'll see it almost EVERY time that you happen upon such an enemy, where upon the novelty quickly wears off, especially when you're punching someone's lights out, stuck in the combat animation while someone else runs up behind you can smacks you over the back of the head with a wrench for 3/4s of your health.

Another poor attempt at humour, punching a giant rat, in the cock.

Musically, I could miss this and not even realise, the problem with the game isn't the music which sounds remarkably suitable for the Megadrive rather than an arcade game. There's a lack of uniqueness in the music but then again it is overruled by the sound effects and biffs pows and slams of melee action and enemies being ball-punched, flattened, slaughtered and annihilated by the sheer fun that is the action. Could have been a lot better in retrospect if there was more focus here.

Another one of those, utterly unfair bullshit modes where you avoid spending more money.

All things being said, this game might as well have a hosepipe planted straight into your pocket and sucking out all of your credits/quarters/coins and what have you. Run out of those it'll happily strip you naked just for a few more moments of gaming with virtually no progression. There's parts of the levels where you'll make good and steady progress and then there's parts that will let you get 1-2 hits in and then kill you almost outright. Health regens are far and few between and regain so very little of the health system back that it's barely worth even trying to eat the flies. It's an unfair game, solely based around completely slaughtering your cash level for a few more minutes and isn't worth the play through just to get to realise you don't fight what is infamously known as the Dark Queen as a final boss, she barely even is seen or mentioned in the game.

Stick to the other games, this one can burn.

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.