Even those that dislike Streetwise usually admit it has a pretty rock solid soundtrack, with several great lesser-known hip-hop acts along with some great rock and metal from the likes of Slipknot, Opeth, Soulfly, Shadows Fall, etc.
The arranged soundtrack on Double Impact captured the gritty nature of the CPS-1 chip while sounding more modern.
Complete Monster: Streetwise: Blades, real name Dino, is a sadistic assassin who gets pleasure from carving up his targets. Working with crime boss Vito Bracca as his pet hitman, Blades tries to help instigate a war between Vito and Japantown by decapitating a man and using his head as a bomb to try and kill both Guy and protagonist Kyle Travers. Secretly working with Father Bella in his plan to distribute GLOW and cause havoc across half the country, Blades casually offs Vito once Bella finds no use in him anymore. Later resurrected by Bella as his own Horseman Famine, the mutated Blades then uses his new powers to slaughter Sgt. Sims's squad of cops, even dismembering Sims himself limb by limb.
Fanon: There is official artwork of Lucia doing aerobics with Chun-Li. Both are police officers, and Lucia's kick is similar to Chun-Li's signature Hyakuretsukyaku. This has led to speculation that Lucia may be friends with Chun-Li or, at the very least, trained in her fighting style.
Fanon Discontinuity: Streetwise, an attempt to capitalize on the Grand Theft Auto craze, was poorly received by fans and critics, and the series was discontinued itself. This, however, did not stop fans from using Cody's full name from said game (Cody Travers). Streetwise has since become Canon Discontinuity as of Street Fighter V, with only Kyle and possibly Vanessa (who's only mentioned in Kyle's bio as "his girlfriend") being acknowledged, along with the brothers' last name being mentioned in Cody's gameplay trailer.
First Installment Wins: Although Final Fight did become a series that introduced new characters with each installment, the very first game is the only one that Capcom seems to pay any attention to these days:
The Mad Gear Gang is supposedly large enough to operate internationally and have at least two different sets of thugs, but only the first incarnation's members had been seen or referenced outside of the trilogy prior to Street Fighter 6. The Skull Cross Gang appears to have been forgotten completely, as have the enemies from Streetwise to an even greater extent.
The first installment is the only part of the trilogy that has ever been ported to multiple consoles, including one handheld system and several microcomputers. It was remade in a Super-Deformed style for the NES under the name Mighty Final Fight (itself also ported to the GBA), and its cast was reused for Revenge. The later two sequels have remained exclusive to the SNES and the Virtual Console. Streetwisewas released for only the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.
The end of the car smashing minigame, where the owner of the car (Bred, one of the Mad Gear grunts) comes back to see what is left and then falls to his knees exclaiming "Oh, my God!" In the overseas SNES versions, the line was changed to "Oh, my car!" Notably, to coincide with Cody and Guy's inclusion in Super Street Fighter IV, this same sequence was brought back as part of the classic "Car Crusher" Bonus Stage, complete with Bred walking into the scene and agonizingly uttering the same line if cleared by any of the Final Fight characters.
At the end of the game, when Jessica runs up to Cody and cries out his name, Guy jumps in front of Cody and proceeds to kick his butt to the ground before leaping out of frame, just to ensure Cody pays attention to her.
Some of the side missions in Streetwise are quite amusing. Most notably, one guy asks you for a bat, and once you give it to him... he knocks you out and steals a stereo from a store, with Kyle snarking in his journal entry that he should've seen that coming.
Stun-locking was a common trick in the original Final Fight. While all three playable characters could trap enemies into self-resetting combos that could whittle their health bar without giving them a chance to retaliate, Cody was the most infamous because later appearances gave him references to his ability to do this (hitting an enemy with two jabs then turning around and jabbing would reset the combo), most notably the Level 3 version of his Final Destruction Super Combo in Street Fighter Alpha 3.
Any console port of Final Fight that has the Rapid Punch cheat. This means Final Fight CD, Capcom Classics Collection Vol.1, Final Fight One, and the Beat'Em Up Bundle turn the trick into an even bigger game-breaker.
Final Fight One has the Street Fighter Alpha versions of Guy and Cody as unlockable characters. While not that much different, their stats are tweaked compared to the originals. Alpha Guy still has the same speed and attack power, but takes far less damage from most attacks. Alpha Cody, on the other hand, while having the same speed, takes a bit less damage than normal and dishes out far more damage. Either one will make the game pretty trivial.
Good Bad Bugs: You can force Edi. E to go it alone in the original by not scrolling to the end of the stage in Round 3. Makes the fight with him almost too easy.
One of the common enemies in the first game is named Axl, is blond, has a headband and a strong special attack. Kinda like the main hero of a big competitor of the series.
In 2018, Kane was elected mayor of Knox County, Tennessee.
There's also the fact that Haggar in early materials was explicitly referred to being "a former street fighter." In the years since, nine characters from Final Fight and its sequels have appeared in official Street Fighter games. Haggar is not one of them.note Guy, Cody, Sodom, and Rolento all appeared in Street Fighter Alpha, with Maki (borrowed from Capcom vs. SNK 2) being added to later ports of Alpha 3; Andore/Hugo in Street Fighter III; Poison as an official fighter in Ultra Street Fighter IV; and Abigail and Lucia in Street Fighter V. Haggar has only appeared in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.
The Super Nintendo version of the first game was a notorious Porting Disaster, enough so that Sega was able to release Streets of Rage to steal Nintendo's thunder on the beat-em-up genre scene. Two years later in 1993, Capcom then proceeded to release Final Fight CD, with all of the content intact plus a few extras, on the Sega CD add-on, while the SNES exclusively got the improved yet less beloved direct sequels.
Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Although Guy is canonically married to Rena, he's been paired with Maki (Rena's younger sister and Guy's rival for the Bushinryu succession), Rose, and Ibuki, among others.
Magnificent Bastard: Streetwise: Father Bella, the true mastermind behind Glow’s creation and distribution, seeks to use the drug to rid the world of sinners with help from his Four Horsemen army. Disguising his operation to the public, Bella kills one of his henchmen, crime boss Vito Bracca, by taking advantage of his strong religious beliefs, later killing three officers about to storm his church in one fell swoop by luring them into a trap. Revealed to be the brother of the criminal Belger, Bella gets his brother’s killer Cody Travers addicted to GLOW in an attempt to kill him, later having him take the late Stiff's spot as his Horseman of Death when he’s killed by Kyle and pitting the two against each other as his final act of revenge.
Narm: The Sega CD version of the first game features voice acting in the cutscenes. And being that it's an early 90s game, if you guessed that this means that Japanese version contains high-quality (if slightly hammy) voice acting, while the English version contains incredibly stilted voice acting performed by some random Sega of America employee, you'd be absolutely correct.
Most versions of the first game have an image of Jessica on Mike Haggar's screen when he turns it on. The U.S./World arcade versions, however, replace the image of Jessica with a shot of Damnd while Jessica is heard screaming in the background. This change actually makes the scene MORE creepy.
Pestilence in Streetwise as well as the GLOW-mutated Blades' two forms.
Then there's Cody as Death, who is hopped up on so much GLOW that they resemble a cross between a zombie and a radioactive mutant, complete with Glowing Eyes of Doom. Kyle is understandably horrified to see his brother in such a state. Thankfully, Cody gets better by the end.
Once Original, Now Common: Final Fight may not have been the first major Beat 'em Up thanks to being preceded by other genre definers, but it was the game that codified the genre's standards and tropes for everything to follow, even in Capcom's own later titles, and helped explode the genre into popularity as it's recognized today. However, it's also downright raw, with basic attacks, Guy and Haggar getting wall and grapple specialties respectively, and a couple super moves that clear crowds at the cost of health. Everything in the genre released after has taken this formula and expanded it so much that by the time Final Fight 3 added full running and dash attacks, the rest of the industry already did it first. It wasn't helped by a miserable home console experience, allowing the competition like Streets of Rage to up the ante by iterating on Final Fight's own design. The original game is totally playable, but held as one of the grandfathers of the genre by today's standards.
One-Scene Wonder: F. Andore G. Andore, and U. Andore from the first game. They only appear in one area of the game (the wrestling ring in Round 3), but are memorable for how large their lifebars are for regular baddies.
The X68000 version is very close to the arcade version, and includes Poison and Roxy.
The Sega CD version is very well done, with a new game mode and a CD soundtrack. It also includes Poison and Roxy, albeit with slightly more conservative outfits.
Final Fight One for the Game Boy Advance corrects virtually all of the problems the SNES version had, with the exception of Poison and Roxy. It also has unlockables, such as alternate outfits for Cody and Guy and a stage select, among others. The only thing that isn't good about the game is its soundtrack.
Final Fight: Double Impact is virtually identical to the arcade, has both the original soundtrack and a remixed one, has various graphic filters, and has online play.
The SNES version, compared to the polished ports above and especially to what Final Fight 3 managed on the same system five years later. In some fairness, it was a launch title and it's pretty clear that Capcom had yet to master the SNES's capabilities, but nevertheless, among the offenses:
No Guy. He was eventually made playable in Final Fight Guy, but in that game, Cody was missing as a tradeoff.
No 2-player mode in either of the two SNES releases.
The Industrial stage and Rolento were missing entirely. Strangely, the elevator portion's music can still be heard in the sound test.
No scene transitions (i.e. punching down doors and walking through them). This includes the famous "Damnd laughs and walks away carrying Jessica" Round 1 opening.
Due to the SNES's slower CPU, only three enemies were allowed on-screen at one time.
Slowdown, especially notable when barrels rolled into view.
Not as many voice bytes; for example, Haggar's "ROOOOOHHHH!!!" when performing his swinging arms move is absent, as is his "RUUUIO!" when performing his belly flop attack, and his "HIL HIL!" when performing a piledriver.
While the music is a mixed opinion thing, it doesn't try to replicate the CPS-1 sound of the arcade.
The version found in Final Fight: Streetwise was poorly emulated.
The various early 90s microcomputer versions suffer from missing music, slowdown, one-button gameplay, garish colors, flickering, and choppy animation. The Amiga version does feature an exclusive musical track heard in no other version of the game, and it's pretty sweet.
Sequelitis: Streetwise. Some fans also consider Final Fight 2 to be this.
Some consider Final Fight 2 to be a Mission-Pack Sequel, instead of a new game. Plus, there was not much change in the gameplay compared to its competition Streets of Rage 2, which had numerous more improvements and changes compared to its predecessor.
Some also see Streetwise as this, as while its attempts to be more like GTA made it a bit awkward, at the very least it was trying to deviate from the normal Final Fight formula and has a surprisingly in-depth combat system.
Abigail from the first game thanks to his special moves. His dash punch (telegraphed when Abigail turns red and screams) has a tendency to be at a higher priority than many of your moves. The more dangerous move Abigail has is his tendency to grab you even if you're attacking with a weapon. If he catches you, you will be thrown for heavy damage. Both special moves are also knockdown moves so if you're holding a weapon, you will lose it should you get hit.
Phillipe from the second game thanks to his instant sliding attack having a tendency to break your combos and keeping you at bay. Also not helping is Phillipe's saber having a longer reach than you and his tendency to grab you to smack you with the saber's hilt making it hard to get close to attack.
Stray from the third game due to being able to block and counterattack your moves. Like Abigail from the first game, Stray's dash punch can cause good damage to you and can be a multi-hit move. Stray can also do a leaping punch out of nowhere to surprise you.
Streetwise has a few:
The first Death boss you fight can be a pain as his moves do ridiculous amounts of damage and as his health goes down rats will appear which he can chow down on and restore his health. Destroying the rats before he eats them is quite difficult as they run fast and it's hard to multi-task and focus on stomping them and dodging Death's attacks at the same time.
Famine is quite possibly the toughest boss in the game, as he's rarely open to attack and his attacks have a deceptively long reach and they all do significant damage. Plus most of the pickups are grenades and it's difficult to get them to hit the boss with him constantly moving around, there's only one gun pickup and physically attacking him is risky as it usually means taking damage yourself.
Pestilence's first form is pretty easy, but the second can be annoying as you have to wait for him to try to hit you with benches to get the health and gun pickups and like Famine he's not often open to attacks and his moves can do lots of damage if you aren't careful.
The Woobie: Vanessa, after her brother is killed and her bar goes up in flames.
Values Dissonance: During the development of the first game, Capcom offhandedly described Poison and Roxy as transgender females. Their rationale was that if Poison and Roxy were transgender, then they were "not really women", and thus physically attacking them was acceptable. However, Nintendo did not approve of this reasoning, hence why Poison and Roxy were replaced by cisgendered males in the non-Japanese releases of the SNES and GBA ports of the game. Capcom's reasoning would not work in The New '10s, but with Poison's later appearances portraying her as more heroic, most fans who care were willing to overlook the controversy as a remnant of the past.
Viewer Gender Confusion: Much of the confusion concerning Poison's gender is due to the following reasons:
Final Fight Revenge, which was developed in the United States, presented Poison as a cisgender female, but the Japanese localization described her as a transgender female, as this was how she was described in the first game.
For those who view her as transgender, there is the ambiguity over whether Poison is pre-op or post-op in terms of gender reassignment surgery. Word of God claimed that she's pre-op in Japan and post-op overseas.
Final Fight 3 didn't exactly get bad reviews on initial release, but many reviewers felt the game was more of the same. It didn't help that it came out towards the end of SNES's lifespan, at a time when people were more focused on the PlayStation and Saturn. Nowadays, it gets more love and appreciation as a solid beat-em-up. Some even declare it the best Final Fight game on SNES.
Streetwise also gets this to a lesser extent, as explained below:
While back in the day it was viewed as a poor attempt to pander to the Grand Theft Auto crowd, re-evaluations many years later led to Streetwise being a bit more accepted by fans and seen as an interesting attempt at freshening up the Final Fight formula, something that a number of fans had started to see as stale by the third entry (despite its quality and many improvements upon the preceding games). The game also features very well-regarded updates of classic FF and SF designs that managed to stay true to the originals while working in the urban, gritty aesthetic of Streetwise (though some, like Poison and Sodom, never made it past the conceptual stage). Mentions of Cody's "prison jacket + FF1 outfit" combo and Cammy's pit fighter attire tend to surface from time to time whenever there are discussions about potential alternate costumes for the latest Street Fighter entry.
For that matter, Capcom themselves would eventually make a successor of sorts to the series with Street Fighter 6's World Tour mode, which — aside of being set in Metro City — borrows heavily from the open-world structure of Streetwise, but with a fully customizable Avatar as the main character and the series' tried and true 2D fighter formula.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Final Fight One, which is a GBA port of the original title, has no blood or gore. However, there are still a lot of references to death as well as quite a few innuendos in the dialogue. Additionally, the first two bosses (Damnd and Sodom), whose names had been censored in the SNES version, retained their original names in both the European and U.S. releases of the GBA version. In spite of all this, Final Fight One received an "E" rating.
from 3, probably the most memorable song from the 16-bit games.