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Final Fight is a side-scrolling beat-em'-up by Capcom originally released for the arcades during the very end of 1989. As one of the earliest games for Capcom's CPS hardware, Final Fight helped popularized the beat-em'-up genre during the early-to-mid 1990's that was previously established with the likes of Irem's Kung-Fu Master and Technos Japan's Renegade and Double Dragon. It was ported to a variety of gaming platforms such as the SNES (in two different versions), the Sega CD, and the Game Boy Advance among others.

In the original arcade game, the Mad Gear gang kidnaps Jessica, the daughter of Mike Haggar, former pro wrestler and current mayor of Metro City, because Haggar would not turn a blind eye to their dominance of the city's underworld, as the previous mayor had. Haggar teams up with Jessica's martial artist boyfriend Cody, and his sparring partner Guy, a ninjutsu master seeking to test his skills, so that they can save the city and Jessica. The game has life meters not only for the heroes, but also for the villains.

The game's development contains some interesting titbits: the people in charge of Capcom at the time requested a sequel to Street Fighter (remember, this was a year or two before Street Fighter II). As such, the game was originally known as Street Fighter '89, but had its name change before release when the game ended up becoming a side-scrolling beat-'em-up and not a competitive Fighting Game. Ironically, the Final Fight universe was eventually folded over into the Street Fighter canon when characters from Final Fight started to appear in the Street Fighter series beginning with Guy and Sodom's appearance in the first Street Fighter Alpha and up to Cody and Guy's upcoming return in Super Street Fighter IV.

While Capcom produced several beat-'em-ups for the arcade after Final Fight, the game itself was only followed by two straight-to-home console sequels for the SNES before fading out completely. Two failed attempts to revive the series in 3D were made by Capcom's US branch: Final Fight Revenge, a 3D fighting game featuring characters from the original game (including a Zombie version of Belger) for the Sega Titan hardware (which saw a Japan-only home port for the Sega Saturn as Capcom's final game for the system); and Final Fight: Streetwise, a Darker And Edgier attempt to cater to the GTA crowd that is probably better known for its gratuitous use of the "F word" than any genuine quality it might had.

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This game has examples of:

• All There In The Manual - Probably the biggest example is Poison's (and, to a lesser extent, Roxy's) gender (though to be fair Capcom being fairly inconsistent in the issue doesn't help either).
• Authority Equals Asskicking - You think Mayor Haggar will bow down like a whimpering dog as 1) his daughter is held hostage, 2) his friend's fiancé and master are held hostage, or 3) a massive gang war erupts in the middle of his city? Oh boy, have you got another thing coming...
• Badass Mustache - Mike Haggar.
• Bald Of Evil - The final boss Beliger. Stampeding fat mooks G.Oriber, Bill Bull, and Wong Who are all bald.
• Bowdlerise - Several graphics and boss names were changed for the international SNES version, most notably the changing of two female transvestite enemies into just somewhat effeminate punks.
• Canon Immigrant - While most of Final Fight 2 and 3 was ignored when they exported the Final Fight characters to the Street Fighter Alpha series (to the point that the Alpha series gave Guy a different master than the one who appeared in Final Fight 2), an exception was made with Maki, who actually appeared in later Capcom Fighting Games.
• Cloudcuckoolander - Alpha-Guy and Alpha-Cody in the Game Boy Advance version, who act as if they've traveled back in time. There's even a Continuity Nod (or, rather, a Discontinuity Nod), in which Cody is unable to recognize Rolento since according to him, he took a shortcut to the Bayside Area (a nod to Rolento's absence in the SNES version).
• Color Coded For Your Convenience - The original Final Fight (as well as Final Fight 2) had the following three-character hierarchy.
  • Guy (or Maki) - Fragile Speedster
  • Cody (or Carlos) - The Mario
  • Haggar - Mighty Glacier
  • Final Fight 3 deviated a bit from the hierarchy by having four characters instead of three: Guy and Haggar returned, with new characters Lucia and Dean in the middle. Neither, Lucia nor Dean, achieve the completely middle balance that Cody had in the original game, since Lucia tends towards speedy attacks (but not as fast as Guy), while Dean favors powerful attacks (but not as strong as Haggar).
• Combos - In the original game, the player's attacks changes with each consecutive hit after the second one. Final Fight 3 added more varied combos such as dash attacks and super moves.
• Crossover - Eventually folded into the Street Fighter continuity with the release of the SF Alpha series.
• Crowning Music Of Awesome - The soundtrack of Final Fight CD, composed by T's Music.
  • The Industrial Area's BGM, for example.
• Death Trap - In the first game, when you lost the bad guys just tied you up with a bundle of dynamite. In the later games, they get a bit more elaborate.
• Die Chair Die
• Direct To Video - The two immediate sequels, Final Fight 2 and 3, were released exclusively for the SNES without any prior arcade release.
• Dropped A Bridget On Him - Roxy and Poison are actually pre-op shemales. The original designers were told that it was considered a cultural taboo to have a game where a male hero would get to punch female villains, so they established that Roxy and Poison are actually transvestites. This excuse didn't exactly worked out when an American playtester reviewed the content of the SNES port, so even though Poison and Roxy stayed in the arcade version, they got replaced with two similar characters named Billy and Sid for the overseas SNES version.
• Elevator Action Sequence - Ur Example.
• Even The Guys Want Him - The punk "girl" Poison, who is actually a guy in a drag since the original game. Although she may had gotten a sex change operation, depending on which regional version of Final Fight Revenge you're playing.
• Executive Suite Fight - The fight against Belger in the first game.
• Exploding Barrels - The ones that are on fire, anyhow.
• Expy - Cody is based on Tom Cody from Streets Of Fire.
  • Two P. is based on the Player 2 character from Forgotten Worlds (hence his name, Two P. as in "2P").
• Hilarious In Hindsight - A former Pro-Wrestler? Elected mayor? What's next, Governor?
  • The Mayor even looks like the future Minnesota governor.
• Hurricane Kick
• Improvised Weapon
• McNinja - Guy is a Japanese-born naturalized American. Sodom is a McSamurai, as he's really American, but speaks entirely in Gratuitous Japanese (and messes up the pronunciation spectacularly) and dual-wields katanas.
• Mission Pack Sequel - Final Fight 2 was mainly made to make up for the lack of a 2-Player Mode in the original SNES port, as it doesn't really add anything new to the gameplay compared to Final Fight 3. In fact, the only returning boss character from the original Final Fight in Final Fight 2, Rolento, also happens to be the only boss who was left out from the SNES port of the first game.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed
  • Mike Haggar resembles professional wrestler Jessie Ventura, especially since he later became governer.
    • Although some think Mike Haggar's mustache and trim haircut makes him look like Freddie Mercury.
  • The Andore family of enemies are modeled after famed wrestler André the Giant.
  • Axl and Slash of Guns N' Roses also appear as a pair of bikers.
  • And Abigail is a shout out to King Diamond.
  • Poison and Sodom are both named after the bands, as well.
• One Game For The Price Of Two: The Super NES port was missing (among other features) one of the original main characters: Cody and Haggar were still in the game, but Guy was removed due to the lack of ROM capacity. Capcom sort-of remedied this by releasing Final Fight Guy for the SNES, which was pretty much the same game, aside for some minor improvements (including new power-ups and different enemy placement), swapping one character for the other: Guy was brought back, but Cody was gone to make room for him.
• Our Mayor Is Different: He takes more direct approach in reducing the crime rate of his city than most mayors.
• Palette Swap - Most of the enemies in the original game are actually Head Swaps of each other. The few which are purely palette swaps includes Roxy and Poison, the Andore clan, and the red-clad Molotov Cocktail throwing version of Holly Wood.
• Rewarding Vandalism - Hungry? Destroy some trash cans and get a whole roast chicken! ...So Yeah.
• Save The Mayor's Daughter - Jessica.
• Segmented Ending - Final Fight Guy had one, as well as the two SNES sequels.
• Shaggy Dog Story - From the Game Boy Advance remake:
  Alpha Guy: As I thought, Jessica is here.
  Belger: Who are you? You are not listed...
  Alpha Guy: Maybe... I'm not the same person I was back then. I'm wearing new shoes!
  Belger: .....
• Sinister Subway
• Spiritual Successor - Pretty much every CPS beat-em-up Capcom produced afterward is Final Fight with a new theme or popular license (i.e: Knights of the Round is medieval Final Fight, Captain Commando is sci-fi Final Fight, and so on).
• Super Deformed - Mighty Final Fight is essentially the original Final Fight converted to the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System with an experience points system and chibi characters and a more humorous plot.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute - Pretty much everyone in Final Fight 2 who isn't a returning character from the first game is simply a parallel to a previous character. Notably Maki and Carlos have pretty much the same abilities as Guy and Cody, just with different quirks.
• Urban Segregation
• Vice City - Metro City.
• Victory Is Boring - Cody is so addicted to fighting that he shows dark elements of this both in Streetwise and Street Fighter Alpha 3.
  • In Street Fighter Alpha, he is thrown in prison and manages to escape just as everyone starts fighting.
  • In Streetwise, Belger turns him into a fighting monster via drugs.
  • Judging from his line in the Super Street Fighter IV trailer ("Well now. Let's see if we can't do something about my boredom.") , he's still like this. Granted, Streetwise occurs later in the joint timeline than IV.
    • That is if Streetwise will ever "happen", considering the reception Streetwise had and the fact that Capcom never even bothered localizing it to the Japanese market.
• Villainous Crossdresser - Poison in some versions.
• Wrestler In All Of Us - Mike Haggar, the mayor with the lethal piledriver. In the second game, he upgrades it to a spinning piledriver, similar to Zangief's in Street Fighter II.
  • Given who he seems to be based off and Capcom's apparent love for wrestling what do you expect?
  • The English manual for the Super NES version of Street Fighter II claims that Zangief copied his Spinning Clothesline (aka the Double Lariat) from Haggar's.

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Dungeon Fighter Online

Beat Em Up

God Hand