Sentences written about this title, gathered by type from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles (as of 2026-8-30).
It is a technique that could break the game balance, but at the time of the GBA port the development team commented in Famitsu to the effect that "it is not Final Fight without the punch lock".
According to Okamoto, the sales division of Capcom originally requested a Street Fighter sequel, so his team decided to promote Final Fight as a Street Fighter sequel at trade shows (going as far to refer to one of the main characters as a "former Street Fighter").
Capcom believed that "players would feel bad beating up a woman", so they noted in the arcade game's manual that the female opponent Poison was a "newhalf".
Despite this, Sakaguchi is the only composer credited in the game (as "Youkichan's Papa").
Nishitani said that, at the time, the team were not "aware of Streets of Fire, but I've Googled it and there does indeed seem to be something familiar about it" but that "this style of story was very popular back then" and many "fighting games made use of it" so "I guess we were part of that crowd!
Despite these claims, the official interview in the Japanese book "How to Make Capcom Fighting Characters" ( Street Fighter Character Making ) released in 2018 has Nishitani explaining that during development his boss K.Tsujimoto asked him literally to watch "all the movies" by Walter Hill, especially Streets of Fire referred to by fellow developer Akiman (Akira Yasuda) in the same conversation.
The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly declared it a strong conversion of a game with "solid fighting action", though two of them also commented that "the necessity of the CD is questionable at best.
Butter reviewed the SNES version, giving it a generally favorable review, calling it a "classy beat 'em" and praising the "superb" graphics.
In 1995, Total! ranked the game 87th on its list of the "Top 100 SNES Games" saying that "Tragically, it's missing one of the main characters but this was still a stonking conversion.
MegaTech gave the Sega CD port a "Hyper Game" award.
Retro Gamer included it among the top ten Sega CD games, describing it as "arguably the best home console conversion (aside from recent emulated ports)" of "unquestionably the quintessential arcade hit of the late Eighties.
In 2018, Complex ranked Final Fight 87th on their "The Best Super Nintendo Games".
This game took No. 1 in the grand prize category at the "4th Gamest Awards" and was described in the Gamest Mook The Best Game 2 as "a work synonymous with side-scrolling action". It was later ported and remade on various home consoles, and several sequels were made, turning it into a series (#Reception, #Ports, #Sequels). Cumulative sales for the series worldwide are 3,200,000 copies.
Because this game is a re-port of the earlier SFC version, the basic parts that form its base are largely the same, and specifications such as the removal of 2-player simultaneous play and of Round 4, and the limit of 3 enemy characters appearing at once on 1 screen, are also left unchanged.
Its selling point was that it contained every element that had been cut from the earlier SFC version: all the characters that appeared in the arcade version, 2-player simultaneous play, and all rounds including Round 4.
As with the aforementioned Classics, it is not a standalone port; the arcade versions of 7 titles, including this game, are included (see the table above).
In the Gamest Mook The Best Game (1991), a popularity poll by Gamest readers covering every arcade game, it placed 2nd. The magazine's comments called it "a masterpiece standing at the summit of fighting games" and said "the appeal of Final Fight is its characters full of individuality and gameplay you never tire of no matter how many times you play".
In the Gamest Mook The Best Game 2 (1998), it took No. 30 in a popularity poll of Gamest readers covering all arcade games, and the magazine's comment described it as "a work synonymous with side-scrolling action".
In the "Cross Review" feature of the magazine Famitsu,the game scored a total of 29 out of 40. In the "Game Report Card" reader poll run by Family Computer Magazine,it scored 24.61 out of 30, as shown below.
In the "Cross Review" feature of the magazine Famitsu, the game scored a total of 23 out of 40.
In the "Cross Review" feature of the magazine Famitsu,the game scored a total of 22 out of 40. In the "Game Report Card" reader poll run by Family Computer Magazine,it scored 21.7 out of 30, as shown below.
It sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, becoming one of Capcom's best-selling games on the platform.
Poison and Roxy were originally set up as female characters. While the game was running in the United States, a woman who had suffered domestic violence from her husband protested that it "encourages violence against women", and Capcom replied that "in fact they are not she but he, so there is no problem". That reply is what led to them being treated as transgender.
Because it is multi-platform software (on home consoles, the 3 systems PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One), the specifications are basically the same on all 3 systems (release is also planned on Steam, a virtual game platform for the PC).
It originated when Capcom USA, Capcom's American arm, asked for a sequel to the fighting game Street Fighter (1987), which had been a major hit in the United States. It was made under the influence of Double Dragon (1987), a masterpiece of the beat 'em up genre in Japan.
Development initially proceeded under the provisional title "Street Fighter '89", but when the title was announced, voices in Japan and abroad said "this is not Street Fighter", and in the end it was released as a separate work called Final Fight.
Among the game's team of composers, Yoko Shimomura was in charge of consumer titles and took part as help on other titles, and the pieces used in the latter half of the game were originally composed by Shimomura for the location test.
According to Okamoto, the sales division of Capcom originally requested a Street Fighter sequel, so his team decided to promote Final Fight as a Street Fighter sequel at trade shows (going as far to refer to one of the main characters as a "former Street Fighter").
It was the first port in which Haggar, Cody and Guy were all selectable.
This was the first game in which Capcom's original sound logo played at startup.
It is the only port of this period that changed the flying kick at the end of stage 2 to a shout by each character.
The soundtrack was the work of seven sound composers: Manami Matsumae, Yoshihiro Sakaguchi, Harumi Fujita, Junko Tamiya, Yasuaki Fujita (in his first work for Capcom), Hiromitsu Takaoka and Yoko Shimomura.
Despite this, Sakaguchi is the only composer credited in the game (as "Youkichan's Papa").
In June 1994, an American version of the game, featuring the same changes in the localization as in the first game, was released as a rental-only game that was initially available at Blockbuster stores.
It is omnibus software modelled on an amusement arcade where Capcom's classic arcade games can be played, and the software itself is free.
It originated when Capcom USA, Capcom's American arm, asked for a sequel to the fighting game Street Fighter (1987), which had been a major hit in the United States. It was made under the influence of Double Dragon (1987), a masterpiece of the beat 'em up genre in Japan.
In the Gamest Mook The Best Game (1991), a popularity poll by Gamest readers covering every arcade game, it placed 2nd. The magazine's comments called it "a masterpiece standing at the summit of fighting games" and said "the appeal of Final Fight is its characters full of individuality and gameplay you never tire of no matter how many times you play".
The game book Mega Drive Taizen (2004, Ota Publishing) said: "By the time it was finally ported to the Mega CD, its status as a classic meant that countless imitations had been made, and they had gone through evolutions of their own.
It sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, becoming one of Capcom's best-selling games on the platform.
However, the review criticized missing features from the arcade original, including the lack of two-player, missing levels and the missing player character Guy.
Poison and Roxy were originally set up as female characters. While the game was running in the United States, a woman who had suffered domestic violence from her husband protested that it "encourages violence against women", and Capcom replied that "in fact they are not she but he, so there is no problem". That reply is what led to them being treated as transgender.
Like the Super NES version, the Sega CD version was censored for the English localization with many of the same changes.
In Japan, Game Machine listed Final Fight on their January 15, 1990 issue as being the second-most-successful table arcade cabinet of the month.
In the February 1991 issue of the Japanese coin-operated video game magazine Gamest, Final Fight took the No. 1 spot as the Best Game of 1990 in the 4th Annual Grand Prize.
A title for Xbox LIVE Arcade distributed outside Japan in 2010.
In June 1994, an American version of the game, featuring the same changes in the localization as in the first game, was released as a rental-only game that was initially available at Blockbuster stores.
Like the Super NES version, the Sega CD version was censored for the English localization with many of the same changes.
The passages quoted on this page are taken verbatim from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles.Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) — reusable under those terms. They are the work of the people who wrote them.