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Mighty Final Fight originally released by Capcom for Famicom/NES in 1993 as an 'alternative' version of their 1989 arcade classic Final Fight. Instead of the gritty realistic look of the original, Mighty Final Fight goes for a hyper stylized, 'chibi' aesthetic that is built around the consoles strengths. In fact with its big heads and animations that are full of character and expression the title looks more like an 8-Bit version of Double Dragon/River City Ransom. The original NES game was quite an impressive looking title for the system, so it's interesting to see Sanchez Crew attempt to port the game to the Spectrum. How did it turn out? Let's take a look.

Mighty Final Fight, and by extension the original Final Fight, concerns itself with the takeover of Metro City by a brutal gang known as Mad Gear. They own the government, the police and are now attempting to blackmail the city mayor, Mike Haggar, into falling in line with their demands, courtesy of kidnapping his daughter, Jessica. Unfortunately for them, Mike is an ex-street fighter and wrestler, who has no issue of taking the fight to the streets one broken face at a time. Oh, and he has brought his mates too!

Mighty Final Fight is a scrolling fighter - a genre made popular in the late 80's by titles such as Renegade and Double Dragon. Choosing from one of three characters, players move from left to right beating up the various thugs that get in the way of using their fists, feet and the occasional weapon. Enemies can also be thrown into other enemies, which is a fairly effective way of damaging multiple foes at once and giving yourself some room. A couple of changes have been made to the gameplay here to accommodate the Spectrum's single fire button, but the game still manages to feature pretty much all of the characters moves and abilities. Instead of pressing the attack button repeatedly to punch enemies, here you hold the attack button down to start your combo, and jumping moves can be accomplished by pressing directions during this animation. It works surprisingly well, and double tapping attack activates your devastating special move in moments of crisis.

The first thing that hits you upon loading this up is how utterly incredible the graphics are for a Spectrum title. All of the stages, characters, animations and enemies have made it into the port intact. The game even goes one step beyond the original NES title by allowing more than 3 characters on screen at once! The game continues to impress by being fast and fluid to play, moving at a speed that closely matches the original game. Taking on the various enemies is satisfying and fun, and the game features an interesting cast of unique enemies and bosses that are all parodies of characters from the original Final Fight. The port also features the entire NES soundtrack, and sounds hugely impressive for the system.

Unlike the original game, your character has a single life-bar and no lives. Death means game over, but you can continue immediately on the stage you died on an indefinite number of times. This may be a system limitation design choice, but considering how cheap some of the bosses can be this could quickly lead to frustration - especially later on in the game. The grappling mechanic is also a bit hit and miss, with the player character often walking straight through an enemy only to get promptly pummelled from behind.

Mighty Final Fight is an astonishing achievement that somehow manages to cram pretty much all the content from the 8-Bit console game onto the Spectrum relatively intact. Despite a few minor missteps it looks great, sounds great, and for the most part plays just as well as the game on which it is based. Some of the enemies can be rather cheap in their attacks, and the game is quite difficult, but any fans of this genre owe it to themselves to check it out!