If you had a fan port of Final Fight coming to the Atari 2600 on your 2025 Bingo card, then you got a well-earned daub. Go ahead, mark that one off your card. It is happening and it is already on its first update. What is interesting is just how much of the aura of Final Fight is already in the game.
Rev Up Your Imagination for This One
Obviously, the Atari 2600 is going to have a few hundred concessions made to get this working. Music and graphics lead the charge here, but skilled programming and game development can get around both, somewhat.
First, there being only one action button limits what you can do quite a bit here. So far in the latest release, Aggar_The_Mayor_MelodyIV.bas.bin, it appears you can jump and perform an attack. Also, you can move around the screen but the up motion is very stilted while the down motion is smooth.
You get one enemy on screen at a time, they are coming from the subway entrance and must take them down. Based on the color choices, I believe it is the leather coat wearing bad guy you encounter early on. It could be an Andore considering the fact they tower over Aggar.
Going for the Feel if Not Graphics
The feel is where it is at with most arcade ports to the Atari 2600, especially anything released after 1985. It seems there was a graphical leap around that time that simply exceeded what the Atari 2600 could replicate with much accuracy.
Final Fight is obviously very much a graphical powerhouse that has no chance of being visually the same on such classic hardware.
The feel and fun factor are key in these ports.
Aggar has that familiar, demake style, Haggar appearance to him with the color choices. Even though the one enemy available right now is hard to place, he could pass for two different characters in Capcom’s brawler. The scene is also familiar, if not visually completely off, it still spurs memories of that section of Final Fight.
Aggar the Mayor is far from perfect but that is not holding it back from being impressive.
Let me know in the comments below, what brawler did you rock back in the day. Do you still play it today?
I am a huge fan of Final Fight but rock Streets of Rage 2 more due to the character hacks that are available.