Let’s Talk About…: Fists of Fury

We’re back with our “Let’s Talk About…” series! Check out the previous chats here.

Let’s Talk About…: a fighting game.

Erm… I don’t usually play beat-em-up games. I’ve talked about playing Mortal Combat and Street Fighter with my brother already, and short of talking about the few times I played some fighting games with excellent graphics on my neighbor’s Sega, I’m sadly out of the loop.

Except… Well, we’re just chatting, right? These things have never been about going full-throttle nerd. I mean, when I talked about Sonic I talked about whips and sonic booms, so if that’s possible, anything is, right?

So let’s talk about… the demo for Fighting Force available for the original Playstation.

Image result for fighting force demo

Bet you weren’t expecting that, were you?

This demo… it was so horrible it was good. The characters were brilliantly cartoonish, and the sound effects were as close to comic book “biff”s and “pow”s as one could get. I remember the title screen opened with big block letters proclaiming: “It’s time to end… THE END OF THE WORLD!” followed by a huge explosion.

Second only to Jedi Power Battles, this was the game my dad I played together the most. We’d sit there and alternate between seriously playing and trying to help each other out, and making fun of what was going on, because when a game is so over-the-top and entails you literally destroying the environment to get weapons like wall panels and fire extinguishers, it’s hard to take the plot seriously.

Image result for fighting force demo
I learned punching gates is the best way to break them down.

During one particular battle against scantily-clad women named things like “Vixen” (I’m not even kidding), he quipped that the game should have put a “kiss” button on the controls, because maybe they’d blow a circuit like with Austin Powers. We spent as much time laughing at the game as we did playing it.

It was great.

Don’t get me wrong. The controls were great and what it did, it did well. It just… well fighting games were never really my thing and I couldn’t take this one seriously at all. On top of that, we weren’t very good, although we almost beat the demo a few times. Those vixens were tough ladies, let me tell you. And because it was a demo, there were no save files. So I have quite a lot of experience playing the beginning of the game, at least! I’d play it again with my dad in a heartbeat if I could, let me tell you.

What about you? What was the best bad fighting game you’ve ever played? What do you remember most vividly about it? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll see you soon,
~ Athena

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24 comments

  1. The best “bad” fighting game I ever played was probably C2: Judgement Clay. It was the sequel to Clayfighter, a 2D fighting game on SNES (maybe Genesis too?) where all of the fighters and stages were hand-crafted in clay. There was an Elvis impersonator named Blue Suede Goo and a pumpkin-headed ghost named Ickybod Clay, if that tells you anything. It wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination, but it was one of the few SNES games I owned so I played it quite a bit.

    Just watching the trailer from 1995 made me shudder…

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Clayfighter 63 1/3 was going to be my offering. I’m glad I only ever rented is, because this game is a mess, just sloppy and trying way too hard all around. But I had a lot of fun playing it with friends. It was good for more laughs than anything else.

      Also, Mortal Kombat Deception. For pretty much the same reasons. Was good with friends to poke fun at. Lacked a lot of the good fighting game content otherwise.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Wow. That’s… something else, isn’t it?? That’s actually really impressive that all the figures were made of clay, and I have to say that watching the trailer is like watching some horrifying version of Wallace and Gromit, but I can see how the actual game was… interesting. Thanks for sharing!!

      Like

  2. I had that Fighting Force demo back in the day but never had the full game until recently. Picked it up for $1 not long ago. It’s still pretty decent, surprisingly.

    Street Fighter EX is what I used to play the most back then. The weird 3D Street Fighter made up of mostly new and unfamiliar characters that no one seems to talk about anymore.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. You know, I never looked into the full game, and I’m not sure why. I guess I got my kicks from the demo. Glad to hear it holds up as well as it ever did, though!

      My classmate had Street Fighter EX and had a similar opinion on it…

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  3. I may not have played many fighting games, but I didn’t need to be an expert to know Rise of the Robots was a terrible game when I reviewed it last month.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. I remember this! I had the demo too, but never got around to the full game. It felt kinda streets of rage-y to me, which wasn’t a bad thing, but you’re right that it was OTT! I think … couldn’t one of the characters lift cars?

    As to bad fighting games … I tend to enjoy fighters, so this is a tough one. There are some obscure ones, like Two Crude Dudes on the Mega Drive/Genesis (which featured the same scenery destroying weapon grabbing antics … in fact, I once described it as ‘The Game Where you Can Throw Anything’), but that was objectively quite good. Ah, there was one called ‘Captain America And The Avengers’ – also on the mega Drive/Genesis – that was pretty generic, but it featured some poorly done voice clips that always made me laugh. “Captain America! And the Aven … gers!”

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I love “Games Where You Can Throw Anything”! haha I mean, not usually because those are beat-em-up games, but if I have to beat the stuffing out of someone, I might as well be able to pick up a car and throw it at the opposition, right?

      I’m going to have to check out some of those!

      Liked by 1 person

  5. I wish I had grown up playing games with my parents. I tried time and time again to get their interest, but the age gape between us is larger than most families, and they just never got into it.

    As for bad fighting games… This might not be considered “bad,” although I doubt it’s considered very good, either, but this old Godzilla games on the PS2 were great fun. Not very balanced or deep, but battling two Kaiju from Godzilla films was so over the top and ridiculous that the gameplay itself almost didn’t matter.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Yeah I was lucky. If we were interested in something, our parents did try to get involved. Even my mother would join in for a game of Mario or Tetris or something if we asked. But you’re right that it can be hard when it’s so outside of what a person’s experience is.

      Sometimes fun definitely trumps whether or not the game is any “good,” right? Wrecking stuff as Godzilla definitely has that allure haha

      Liked by 1 person

  6. I haven’t really played many Fighting games, honestly. I used to rent the WWF games when I was a kid (wrestling, not wildlife fund thing… so before it was WWE, haha). They were terrible but I had fun whacking people over the head with chairs, ladders, tire irons, etc. I vaguely remember creating my own wrestler too. Good times!

    It’s so cool that you had so fun with the Fighting Force demo! Even “horrible” games can have something special in them. 🙂 For example, a friend and I made up our own mini game called “catch the awful looking blocky car before it hits the ground” in the super-terrible Superman 64 video game, haha.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. OMG I remember that WWF game. I loved the “fall anywhere” matches… so insane. That was another fun one… I got pretty good at it, too, and I’m not sure if that’s something to be proud of or not haha.

      You’re right that any game can be special if it has good memories attached. I mean, Superman 64 really needs some creativity to love, but it sounds like there’s a fun game hidden in there! 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Yes I agree, I’d have to site one specific game if you’re ever played it, and that is WWF Attitude. Came out for PS1, and N64 I believe. I was a huge wrestling fan, and this was a sequel to warzone. I was sooo hyped, got the game and turned out to be very bad. Animations sucked, gameplay sucked, graphics we weird. There was very little different from the first game besides more wrestlers and moves. But I think that’s what drew me to it and kept me playing it for years. Customizing entrances for your personal wrestler was fun, you could set fireworks, theme songs light colours, all that fun stuff. It was the first step into making things very customizable, despite the core game being very bad.

      Liked by 2 people

  7. IDK if bad is the world I would ascribe to it, but Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. It was funny and over the top in the way that most games in the genre were (and how did the health-restoring food items look nothing like post-apocaliptyc sustenance, anyways?).

    Truly, there were some weird concepts in the beat ’em up genre at the time, but this one was a weird from the source material. Not that I can judge, since I watched the cartoon adaptation every Saturday morning.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs? I just checked that out and *wow* is that a game or what? I have to say, I do have a special place in my heart for games that tried to be Crazy Saturday Morning Cartoons haha. And I think watching the cartoon adaptation pretty much makes you an expert 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      1. It was *very* entertaining, although I was rubbish at it. My dad and sister were always much better at arcade games.

        Perhaps I should have said I am in no position to look down on the concept, since I clearly enjoyed it, weirdness and all. 😛

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