Fatal Fury 3: Road to the Final Victory playthrough (Neo Geo, 1CC)
19Playthrough with Mai. Fatal Fury 3 was released in 1995, around a year and a half after the previous game. The story is set back in South Town, and features a mix of old and new characters. The sprites and backgrounds are all new and look great, featuring some of the finest pixel art SNK had ever done up to this point. SNK really went all out on the story mode for this, featuring lots of unique dialogue for each character between fights.
In terms of new features, special stage finishing moves were also added. On some backgrounds, it's possible to send the opponent flying into the background by hitting them with certain moves. You can also send the opponent flying off the screen completely by finishing them off with the right attack.
The planes systems has been updated, and there are now you can be in either the lower, middle or upper planes at any time. Hidden desperation moves were also added, but I kind of feel these were implemented in a unnecessarily cryptic manner -you have to use a cheat code just to be able to use them at all! Every character has one but you have to do a specific setup to use the move, making them extremely difficult to use. The next game would get it right in regards to these moves.
Speaking of the next game, despite all of SNK's efforts, and the hype started up by many Japanese gaming mags at the time, this game apparently did poorly in arcades. SNK had to quickly put another sequel into development, which would be released several months later in December 1995: Real Bout Fatal Fury.
I wonder why this game wasn't successful? Some think it doesn't play that well, but I don't know. I'll admit the plane switching in this feels a little over-complicated, and it was made easier to do in the next game. One definite issue is the small cast size, 10 characters is pretty low, especially compared to the previous game. Some of the new characters are good, and fan favorites Yamazaki and Blue Mary made their debuts in this game.
Another element that probably didn't go down well with gamers is, you've guessed it, the difficulty. This game is not as horrendous as Fatal Fury Special, but it's still really hard. I guess SNK realized things were getting too much, as the CPU was really toned down for future sequels. Previously I had beaten this game with Terry, mainly because he has a super easy to do infinite combo. But I really wanted to beat this game with someone else, and finally managed it.
Which is where Mai came in. You can, for the most part, take on the CPU without too much trouble. Keep making use of her strong punch to ryu en bu combos and it's not too hard to make it through most of the game. There are a few opponents who I was having issues with. Hon Fu was the first stumbling block, I eventually managed to beat him by hiding in the corner and doing jumping strong kicks. Geese is just a pain, you can try Mai's dive move and hope he doesn't counter it, otherwise throwing a fan and then doing a HCF+C can work.
This game has multiple endings and bosses depending on how well you do. To get good rankings, you need to beat your opponents quickly. You get a grade ranking for every round you win, if you get poor grades, the game will end after you fight Yamazaki for the second time. If you do better, you'll have to fight Jin Chonshu only for the final boss (beating him will get the ending and credits).
There is a major glitch with the AES version of this game. If you get a certain grade, you'll fight Chonshu on an alternate stage. If you win, Chonrei will appear in a cutscene... and the game will then crash! This glitch happens if the game's text is set to English in the options menu. See my site for more details:
https://rq87.flyingomelette.com/RQ/NG/FF3e/1.html
Anway, if you fight well enough, you'll not only have to fight Chonshu, but you'll the have to fight his brother Jin Chonrei as well, which is what this video shows. Chonshu isn't too difficult usually -beating him is largely the same strat as beating Hon Fu, just back off and use jumping kicks. Chonrei is the one opponent I didn't really have any clear strategy on, other than "getting lucky".
A little-known fact about this game is that the bosses can be unlocked. A lot of places I’ve seen say they’re unplayable, but they can infact be played as. You need to beat the game first and save it to your memory card. Then when you start a game, choose yes when it asks if you want to load, then select new game. Then when you get to the character select screen, highlight each of these characters and press B on each one: Terry, Hon-Fu, Mai, Geese, Bob, Sokaku, Andy, Franco, Joe, Mary. A message will come up on screen and then voila, the bosses will be added.