Catalogue No. - T-1249G

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This was one of the last Saturn games to be ever produced in fact I'm pretty sure it was the second to last Saturn game. Release on the 30th March 2000, the Dreamcast was already on sale in Japan and had been for 1 year and 4 months. You have to give Capcom credit for sticking with the Saturn until the very end. Anyway, how is Final Fight Revenge? Is it like the arcade original? The answer is no. Final Fight Revenge was indeed released in the arcades on the Sega STV board which is to a Saturn what the Naomi is to the Dreamcast. Basically it’s the arcade equivalent of a Saturn. The Saturn version as you’d guess is 100% identical to the arcade version bar the CD audio. The game also needs the Saturn’s 4MBIT ram cartridge to function. This is the only 3D fighter on the Saturn that does make use of the 4MBIT cartridge. No idea why it needs it though because the animation isn’t anything special and there aren’t 100’s of moves per character and the polygon models aren’t anything special. In fact the polygon models on pretty much any Saturn 3D fighter look better than this.

The character models used in Final Fight Revenge are extremely blocky with low resolution textures even though the game is running in one of the Saturn’s higher resolutions. The backgrounds are also a bit on the poor side, looking a quite grainy at times. Still, if the game plays well then all graphical faults while not such a big deal (I’m just being picky) can be blown away. Unfortunately the game plays like a stiff bit of card. I don’t know what it is but the whole game just seems stiff. There seems to be a slight delay on moves being pulled off when you are using one of the pick up weapons plus the collision detection at times can be dodgy. Add that the computer controlled characters seem to be able to pull off moves much faster than it’s humanly possible makes this a tedious game to say the least. I found that if you try to play the game properly you’ll have a tough outing but if you cheat by just throwing projectiles you’ll find life much easier. I’ve finished the game on the default level setting only to find that there’s no actual ending. It looks like you have to complete the game on the hardest level setting to get one.

Overall Final Fight Revenge isn’t that good but for a piece of Saturn History it’s probably worth tracking down. I would have expected a lot better from Capcom to be honest but then again this game was produced by Capcom USA who produced northing but crap and canceled games. Makes you wonder why Capcom Japan let Capcom US produce this, doesn’t it.