By Dr. Cattington, March 14, 2003.
Keep in mind that these are not Game Boy Advance games. I know that now we have nearly arcade-perfect versions of Street Fighter Alpha 3 and whatnot, but these games are far more primitave, far more... How to put this.. Inferior. But some of them are okay. In fact, I've managed to find at least 1 good thing about every GB fighting game I have, except for Mortal Kombat 3, which is probably the shittiest fighting game I've ever played. So, if you're one of those freaks without a GBA, you'll know what to get to quell your lust for violence while you're on the road. But mostly I'm doing this because I've really been in a fighting game mood lately, and this sounded fairly original. I had intended to have screenshots here, but for the life of me, I could NOT find a Gameboy emulator that took screenshots.
The games fall into 4 groups, and then there's Street Fighter 2, which is in a group all alone (NOTE: These are not neccessarily all the games in these groups, just the ones that I own) :
Takara games: Takara seemed to have a strange need to put little characters with gigantic fucking heads in their games. The games in this group are: Samurai Showdown, Battle Arena Toshinden, and World Heroes 2 Jet. Mostly these games are all the same.
The Mortal Kombat games: Being a huge MK fan, I have alot of Game Boy MK games: Mortal Kombat, MKII, MK3, and MK4.
The Psuedo-3D games: These companies tried their damndest to make a 3D game for the GB. They pulled it off pretty well given the technology they had. These games are Primal Rage and Killer Instinct.
Let's start off with the Takara games:
Samurai Showdown: Actually a fairly good conversion, considering that it's a Game Boy game. I never really got into the game, because for one, the original Game Boy screen is the blurriest thing in the world if your eyes are more than an inch away from it. While this is okay in some games, it just doesn't work out in a fighting game. The controls were good, the moves were pretty easy to pull off, even though I didn't know most of them. The graphics, I've always thought were very impressive. The music was really good, but the sound effects weren't all that good. A solid game overall.
Battle Arena Toshinden: What could be a better idea than a Game Boy conversion of a mediocre Playstation fighting game? Perhaps a conversion of a good fighting game, but we won't get after Takara for that. It's not as good as Samurai Showdown but still not terrible. One thing I wish I could've gotten a screenshot of is when you do a combo. If you did a six-hit combo, for example, it says "6 beats!".
World Heroes 2 Jet: I think this one is the best of the Takara fighters. It was very fun, the graphics & sound were good, but most of all, I could actually do some of the special moves. Fairly easily!
Moving along to the Mortal Kombat games:
Mortal Kombat: Ugh. What a lame game. It was choppy, the controls were bad, the moves were hard to pull off, the whole game blew hard. The only thing keeping people from hating this total wad of shit was the Mortal Kombat liscense. "Well, it was based on a good game, so it must be a good game!". Yeah, well it wasn't. If you want a good handheld conversion of the first MK, get the Game Gear version. Godlike compared to the GB version.
Mortal Kombat II: Ahhh, they finally did it right. It runs smoothly, the controls are nice and smooth, without that second-long wait from the time you told your character what to do, to the time he did it, so common in the first one. They left out the blood, and I hate to sound like I play MK games for the wrong reason, but the blood is just what made Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat. Still, an excellent game.
Mortal Kombat III: One of the worst games I have ever had the displeasure of playing. They took a step backwards from the second Game Boy MK and once again made the moves hard to do, and the controls are slow & unresponsive, just like the first one. But, they did make the graphics slightly better, so the complete loss of gameplay made it all worthwhile.
Mortal Kombat 4: Quick rant: If you're gonna have a series using Roman numerals (ie, Motal Kombat II, etc.), be consistent. Keep using Roman numerals through the whole series. I'm so sick of this shit. Mortal Kombat 4, Final Fantasy X-2, Wrestlemania X-8. I hate to see a game (or wrestling event, as the case may be) that used to use Roman numerals in the title quit using them, or mix them with numbers, because they think people are so stupid that they can't read any Roman numeral higher than "III". And they're probably right, it just pisses me off.
But, anyway, the review of MK4: Take MKIII, put it in color, and change some of the characters. Bam, you have MK4.
And finally, the pseudo 3-D games, and Street Fighter 2:
Primal Rage: I never really got into this game because I found it quite boring. If there were any special moves, I couldn't figure them out, so basically it was a game of "punch the other dinosaur until he falls down and stops getting up". Game Boy Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots. Not what I call fun. But, you know, maybe that's my fault for not knowing any of the special moves. At any rate, I didn't like it.
Killer Instinct: The only other really good game on here (Aside from MKII). It was pretty, smooth, controls were responsive, an all-around fun game. One of the things that gave this game a big replay value for a fighting game with no modes other than "Arcade" and "2-Player" was the code to play as the boss, Eyedol. That guy was awesome. With him, a player with little experience could pull of a 20-hit or more combo with ease, and totally kick the computer's ass.
Street Fighter 2: The choppiest game on here. Like so many other GB games, they made a huge sacrifice of about 58 frames per second so they could make the game look better. I wish you could see this game in action, it is really sickening. The controls are pretty good for it to be so choppy and unplayable though.
Well, what are my recommendations? Mortal Kombat II and Killer Instinct. My personal favorites. You can get them off eBay or whatever.