Final Streets of Fight

This isn't really a post about one game over the other.

Its a stealth post. It is really about the perception of Genesis vs SNES on newer gamers.

This is the perfect example of what I'm talking about. If you don't know, Final Fight was a Beat'em up by Capcom between Street Fighter and Street Fighter 2. Its graphics are very close to Street Fighter 2's graphics. You take one of 3 characters(in the arcade, 2 characters in the SNES version) and you walk through the game beating up characters. Similar to Double Dragon, River City Rampage, etc. The SNES got its port rights.

Streets of Rage was made by an in house Sega team. It was done in a similar fashion, a beat'em up starring 3 characters as they proceeded to take down a criminal organization. Each character could call in the Police to shoot various cannons and guns at the enemy. It featured multi-path decisions.

Here's the thing.

People that never played these games might go to Youtube and look at videos to compare and contrast these games. Doing this, with today's mentality, its obvious that Final Fight wins. The characters are huge, the graphics are crisp, the characters look like they play different.

And I say this is a falsity. As anyone I know that has PLAYED these games, almost always chooses Streets of Rage, especially when you bring part 2 into the equation. Why? The music of Streets of Rage was done by obvious early techno junkies, and it layed the ground work for other highly acclaimed music tracks. It actually revolutionized game music in Japan. You can hear its influence in the Soul Caliber games even today. Then, especially when you look at Final Fight 2 and Streets of Rage 2, the characters are EXTREMELY varied in Streets of Rage. Lets talk about the small characters... this allows there to be nearly 20 characters on screen at once in Streets of Rage. This allows for vehicles and all sorts of things to fit on the screen. You don't run out of nice looking things and NEW things to see during the game in Streets of Rage. Final Fight pretty much stays the same.

So, Final Fight wins on visuals. There is no doubt. THAT is why it wins today. Youtube and screenshots ARE only visuals. Tiny clips of music doesn't show the audio very well. So you say to someone that's only watched the 2 on Youtube "which was the better game?" and they will always pick Final Fight.

I owned them all, except Final Fight Guy. I had Final Fight, Final Fight 2 and Final Fight 3. Streets of Rage 1, 2 and 3 also. Beat'em ups were good for co-op play where it didn't matter if I owned the game, it didn't give the disadvantage to my friends.

Which did my friends, my family, and myself always seem to pick? I was always asked to hook up the Genesis for Streets of Rage.

Fatal Fury Recap

My write up on Fatal Fury was featured in a couple of fan-sites and forums. Its been many months so I will sum it up here before I get started into Fatal Fury 2 Special.

Basically I felt that Fatal Fury was probably starting out as a Final Fight clone. Evidenced by Japan's love of the Status Quo, and several in game. Fatal Fury - Final Fight - Double F's. Fatal Fury's South Town map is very much like Final Fight's Metro City map. Final Fight has 3 characters to choose from, Fatal Fury has 3 characters to choose from.

Next I talked about how the gameplay was. I described it as Punch Out meets Street Fighter 2. The opponents do not play by the same rules as the player. One even gets to fight while hanging from special ceiling bars. Another gets progressively more drunk as the round goes, taking a time out to get all maniac drunk. You figure out their patterns and you attack as you're supposed to.

I have no desire to spend time with the game in the future. The opponents are so unbalanced that you can not play with them in two player modes. The game is not refined, and the action is pretty slow. Later SNK games are viable alternatives to the Street Fighter 2 dominance, but not yet.

Currently Playing as January ends

Baldur's Gate I

I have owned this game twice, once intentionally. The other came with my old Gateway computer over a decade ago. I just never got around to finishing it. I know the first time was just the general disdain of playing the computer in the living room and my hatred for my first computer.

The second time was destroyed by the monster that was Everquest.

I'm somewhat tainted in that I know the "canoncal" ending party for the game... and my favorite practical characters are not in that group. So I'm switching people in and out constantly so I can at least get some play time with Kivan. It kind of sucks that there has to be a certain group if I want Baldur's Gate 2 to start with making sense.

Fatal Fury Special

Quite a bit ago I decided to work my way Chronologically through some fighting games. I will get around to Street Fighter 2 soon, but that is really my most played fighting game. The SNK fighters were regulated to the arcade for me, so I'm learning them through and through as I go through them. I am surprised by how much I retained while going through Fatal Fury 1 with each of the 3 characters available, so I'm optimistic that working my way through Fatal Fury Special will be fun for me. I skipped 2 because Special is 2 with cleaner combat and a few returning characters that weren't in 1. I don't feel like I'm missing anything. It is kind of like playing Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo and skipping Super Street Fighter 2.

EQ2 Velious Expansion brings back Memories

I played the original EQ shortly before Kunark came out, to the point I can barely remember the update for Kunark. Unlike later MMO's, there was no reason to get expansions in EQ unless you planned to specifically go there, and you can say that about WoW's expacs, but it will not be true. At least not to the extent of original Everquest.

Velious was my first expansion to an MMO that I looked forward to. A big ice continent was all I knew about it. Spoiler sites were more rare back then, so to find out about Velious for the first few months, you relied on people in your local sale zone for stories. It really was a kind of "what's going on in the New World" kind of atmosphere.

"Tell me of far away places and adventure!"

Velious is the prototype for modern MMO's. I know everyone says that MMO's haven't grown since WoW, but the truth is, Velious was the forerunner.

The new continent had living and moving cities, with people walking the roads, NPC's running scripts about talking to each other and visiting different houses. Furthermore the civilizations were in a sort of 3 way war, and you chose which side you were on. A kind of indirect "realm vs realm" went on here between Dwarves, Giants and Dragons. Each side had their own line of quests, allying with one meant being kill on sight by the others. They had their own equipment sets. Even their own raids and "leader" raids much like WoW factions do now.

Speaking of quest lines. What started with Epic quests in Everquest quickly expanded into regular quests here first. Whole story lines connected by threads into other story lines popped up in Velious. Velious was the first real "quest hub" in MMO's. Before you had to stumble upon quests and they all had little to do with each other. Velious' quests would change the landscape. They would determine who ruled which parts of Velious, they even determined what content was in game and what was gone forever.

Not many could forget the Coldain Ring quests, which involved tiny upgrades to a single object, and evolved into a several hour war between giants and dwarves.

Velious was a true marvel of MMO expansions, and it changed the game for the industry like no other expansion to an MMO ever. Though Moria now claims the title as my favorite MMO expansion, its only because Moria is like a Velious redone in "modern" mmo times.