Pit-Fighter Longplay (Amiga) [50 FPS]
45Developed by Teque Software and published by Domark in 1991.
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Although Mortal Kombat popularised the use of digitised actors in video games, it wasn't the first. That particular honour goes to Pit-Fighter, an arena-based beat 'em developed for the arcade by Tengen. It proved popular enough to get conversions for pretty much every home console and computer available at the time of release, some of which even replaced the digitised graphics with hand-drawn sprites (which defeated the whole point of the game in the first place!).
The game pits three contenders against all manner of challengers in the murky world of underground fighting; a sport where gambling is everything and anything goes. The goal of the game is rise through ranks, with the aim of having a shot at defeating the reigning champion, The Warrior.
The game has three controllable characters on offer, each of whom possesses certain strengths, weaknesses and special moves. The game is ridiculously unfair whoever you choose, but I generally pick Ty as his special move looks the coolest (in my opinion).
In addition to your fighter's skills, all manner of weapons can be found littering the arena floor. These include knives, throwing stars and heavier items, such as barstools and beer kegs; grab anything lying around and use it on your opponent before they have the chance to use it on you.
After every second fight, you participate in a grudge match. Here, the objective is to be the first to score three knock-downs on your opponent; the first to three wins the match.
You may think that this all sounds quite exciting, but the reality is that this is a really huge pile of rubbish. The game used to be something of a guilty pleasure for me back in the day, but playing it through now has made me see the light...
The enemy fighters will absolutely pulverise you if you try and go toe-to-toe with them. This means that the only option is work out which moves you can perform to score hits without putting yourself at risk. Once you work out that it's possible to grab opponents when positioned above or below them, the game degenerates into a total cheese-fest. It's terribly boring, but the only way to beat the game is to ruthlessly exploit the shortcomings of the AI and game mechanics. Grab your opponent, hoist him/her into the air, throw them down, rinse and repeat; do not even think to deviate from a strategy that works, else you'll get your face smashed in.
Things change when you face off against the dreaded Chainman Eddie, who cannot be thrown. The next best cheesey strategy is to execute the forward roll/somersault towards him and perform either a jump-kick or special move when close to him; for whatever reason, you're pretty much guaranteed to score a hit without getting hurt in return. This strategy works equally well for The Warrior, should you manage to get that far.
Graphically, the game looks somewhat like the arcade version, but the sprites are noticeably lower detail than the original version; hardly surprisingly considering the game had to be packed into the Amiga. Unfortunately, the game is quite sluggish (especially the levels with cars) and this really makes it difficult to execute moves properly.
The game has a decent music accompanying the opening titles, but the in-game music is really quite poor; this really isn't showing Matt Furniss at his best.
I'm sorry to say that having played Pit-Fighter today, it's just a really poor fighting game that makes you rely on lame, cheesy (not to mention repetitious) strategies to win. Instead of betting on the fight, you should take bets on how long it will take before you get bored, or give up in despair.
This is a very poor game.
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