Ultimate Fighter (SNES) Playthrough
390A playthrough of Culture Brain's 1994 beat 'em up game for the Super Nintendo, Ultimate Fighter.
Here are a few timestamps for easier viewing:
0:00 "Story Mode" playthrough
55:50 "Battle Mode" fight w/expert operation mode
58:39 "Animation Mode" playthrough
If you were an NES fan back in the day, you might be familiar with the Flying Warriors (Hiryuu no Ken) series of games. They were story-centered, platforming beat 'em ups that prominently featured RPG and fighting game elements, and they all starred a group of martial artists that could transform into caped superheroes whenever the need arose. Weird, certainly, but also pretty good.
Ultimate Fighter is a localized version of Hiryuu no Ken S: Golden Fighter, the first game in the series to be released for the Super Famicom back in mid-1992.
This time around, the demon Dargan has been resurrected and seeks to eliminate the Flying Warriors. In order to draw them close, his henchmen steal a few relics that are sacred to the Hiryuu no Ken folk, and these relics are being offered as prizes in an upcoming international tournament. Rick, the leader of the Flying Dragons, takes the bait and sets out for the first competition, spin-kicking people in the face whole time.
It sure ain't Shakespeare, but it works.
As he travels from one tournament to the next, Rick will deal with droves of nameless bad guys in 2D beat 'em up segments that remind me *a ton* of Kung Fu (NES) and China Warrior (TG16) but with a better fleshed out move set.
To spice things up, every few screens you'll run into a miniboss fight. These encounters are 1v1 fights, but they play out quite differently depending on which mode you're playing. If you're playing the standard story mode, these sequences play out as your typical versus-fighting game match-ups. If you're playing the game with the "expert operation mode," the game uses the pseudo turn-based format from the NES games. And finally, in animation mode, all of the miniboss and boss fights become menu-based RPG-style battles.
The main bosses and the competition rounds follow this same pattern, though in these fights you are also usually able to transform into your superhero form and are given access to spells.
Like many of Culture Brain's games, Ultimate Fighter is plenty ambitious and plenty janky. There are a lot of great ideas here. The game does a reasonable job of juggling the play styles, the controls are pretty good, and the art style suits the game well. On the other hand, the framerate sucks, the lack of animation frames makes the sprites look unbelievably cheap in motion, and the sound quality is in the toilet.
But somehow, even with its significant flaws the game plays well enough to be fun. The challenge is fair, the special moves can be pulled off reliably, and those superhero segments are so damned cheesy that I can't help but love them. I mean, it's hard to not laugh when your enemies are yelling things like, "Shed tears in your chagrin with my Napalm Wave!" and "Take these 'mega balls!"
If you know and love Culture Brain's games, you'll find this one just as endearing as the rest. If you haven't had the pleasure, do yourself a favor and try it yourself before you judge it too harshly. It plays much better than it looks like it would.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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