Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers Review

Get ready for Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers to enter the battle once again. Originally released in 1998 for the Neo Geo, this brawler was developed and published by SNK, and is being re-released for modern gamers to check out. 

Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers offers a few different modes for you to challenge. There is local play where you challenge your opponents on your own in a story mode. You will get to select who you are and which of the other fighters you want to battle first, after that initial fight, the game will select all the other challengers. When you don’t want to play solo, there is local two players versus and a practice mode where you can try out all the 22 different fighters and their special moves to figure out who your favourite is for battle. If you don’t have anyone local to play with, there is also the option to play online with someone else. When you want a break from fighting, the game has a gallery with 59 pieces of key art, showing off all the fighters. 

I have played a lot of different fighting games in the last few years, but none are as fast paced as Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers. Between the different rounds of a fight there is barely a pause; this is still the case when you challenge a new competitor for the next battle. The portrait for your character and your opponent barely flash on the screen before you are tossed in to fight again, it’s quite frantic! You won’t even have time for a sip of water before it starts again. Apparently they don't want you to waste any time at all. 

No matter which of the fighters you select to play as, all the characters can perform a throw, normal commands like punches, kicks, feints, and unique special moves (need the right button combo), super power moves (more complicated input), and a potential power move. Button Mashing can only take you so far, so it’s worth taking a look at your fighters move list and try out some of the different combos at their disposal. I lost multiple times before I figured out the more powerful moves, just using basic punches and kicks wasn’t good enough to secure me the win.

Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers has a unique two lane battle system that lets you avoid incoming attacks and to sneak up on your opponent from behind. It’s a very satisfying feeling to dodge the incoming hit and pop up behind your opponent with a surprise attack to deal some big damage. The health bar is shown at the top of the screen, once the bar is depleted it will be replaced with a flashing red one, once that bar is empty, the fighter is defeated and you will quickly be back for the next battle, whether it be with this opponent or the next one. 

If you get beaten up and lose in battle, you are given the chance to continue. I will warn you to look up the controls before playing to see what button you need to hit to keep going. For the Xbox Controller it's the little menu button, I didn't realise this and hitting the other buttons just made the time go down faster, so I quickly got a Game Over. Which really sucked since I had won against five opponents and now my run was over making me start over from the beginning once again.

When you successfully continue, the game lets you select one from four powerups to give you an advantage when you rechallenge your opponent. Select from: Max Power Gauge filled, your opponent has ¼ power (health), gives you an additional round to defeat them in, or you can just continue on like normal with no perk. These can really give you a step up when you face off against that fighter once again. 

In the game's settings, you can select the length of each battle between two or three rounds, the difficulty level of the computer, and things like if you want to see the hit boxes on while you fight. In the video settings, you can also emulate that retro-feel of the original by turning on scanlines, by enabling the flicker filter, and not smoothing the image. You get to select the frame that is displayed outside of the play area. There are four styles showing art of the different fighters, there is no frame option which is a plain black background, or you can choose to have the play area stretched to take up the full screen. 

Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers is a challenging brawler featuring some of your favourite characters from the series, like Terry or Geese, that fans of Fatal Fury games are sure to enjoy. If you played the original game on the Neo Geo and want to experience it again on a modern console this is a great way to.