Final Fight One (Game Boy Advance) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
265A playthrough of Capcom's 2001 beat 'em up for the Game Boy Advance, Final Fight One.
In this video I play through the game on each of the five difficulty levels, each with a different character. This is to not just show the differences between them, but also to unlock all of the bonus content in the game.
Here are the timestamps:
3:41 Haggar (Normal)
55:15 Guy (Very Easy)
1:33:36 Cody (Easy)
2:22:26 Alpha Guy (Hard)
3:22:30 Alpha Cody (Very Hard)
4:10:00 Finishing the final unlock (Very Hard)
Final Fight One is a great arcade conversion. There might be some purists out there that decry it for not being "arcade perfect," but I'm not one of them. If it matters to you, though, be warned that most of the localization changes made for the SNES version of the game are still in place here. You still don't get to see Jessica's bra, and Poison and Roxy are still MIA. I personally couldn't care less on either point, but I know some people have strong feelings on that topic.
The graphics and enemy layouts are based on the Super Nintendo ports of Final Fight, but virtually everything wrong with those games was fixed here. The stage transitions and the fourth level are back in, several enemies can fill the screen without any signs of slowdown, two player simultaneous play is possible via the link cable, and now, not only are all three of the original characters playable, but two "new" ones can be unlocked with successive playthroughs.
Alpha Guy and Alpha Cody are super beefed up versions of their 1989 counterparts with sprites taken from Street Fighter Alpha 3, and the addition of these two make the game feel surprisingly fresh. They're overpowered, but it's so much fun to take on a crowd of six guys and come away unscathed. They're good at making you feel like you're a Final Fight pro. More games should provide fun incentives like that!
There are also new dialog screens that appear before and after each boss, and they're different for all five characters. It's nothing substantial, but they are a fun little bit of extra fluff.
One thing that I really appreciate about this version is that, instead of cramming everything meant for a much larger screen onto a blurry tiny square, everything has been scaled and many things redrawn - I'd guess that this is the reason it's based on the SNES game rather than the much higher resolution arcade original. It's all surprisingly faithful given the constraints, and though the scale of the screen and the UI have been adapted, it feels like a natural fit. The music is also well remixed considering how few of the system's resources are apparently being used for audio. It sounds pretty distinctly old-school in its quality, like a beefed-up TurboGrafx-16 synth.
It plays well, too. It's much faster than its 16-bit counterpart, and the larger numbers of enemies on-screen at a time make for a much more engaging game. The controls are as simple and as sharp as always, and the difficulty level has a good curve, though it can get cheap on the higher levels - something definitely inherited from its quarter-munching granddaddy. The unlocked bonuses help to even the playing field a bit, though, so even if you're terrible at the game, you are still given a fighting chance at seeing the ending if you put in some time.
Personally, I'd rank Fight Fight One right up there with the excellent Sega CD version of the game. It really is that good.
Between this, Double Dragon, River City Ransom, and Jackie Chan, the GBA had a really good line-up of belt-scrolling brawlers, wouldn't you say?
If you'd like to see more about Final Fight, here are links to some related games I've made videos for:
Final Fight (Arcade): https://youtu.be/p8gYGfL_p2o
Final Fight (SNES): https://youtu.be/2a1YGGNxx9s
Final Fight Guy (SNES): https://youtu.be/mBULNsgdTfQ
Final Fight CD (Sega CD): https://youtu.be/gPdeTEuA82A
Mighty Final Fight (NES): https://youtu.be/as22LRnVDK4
Final Fight Revenge (Saturn): https://youtu.be/hnJuZ5rcbBc
Final Fight 2 (SNES): https://youtu.be/EHk5JJ56v2Q
Final Fight 3 (SNES): https://youtu.be/Iif-xSOkC2Y
*This video was recorded using a shader from Retroarch to mimic the look of the original hardware*
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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