While it is fun, Final Fight is little more than a way to play Streets of Rage on the SNES.
In Final Fight, you start by choosing one of the two characters to play as. Cody, or Haggar. Cody's quicker, and Haggar is more powerful, but other than that they place identically. The game has a story, but it's largely just an excuse to send you into battle against dozens of street thugs. The controls are tight and responsive, and beating up enemies is satisfying.
I compare Final Fight to Streets of Rage quite a lot in this review because the games are eerily similar. From the fighting system, to the way turkeys offer your highest form of health regeneration, lots of details of the games are the same. You across destructable barrels (or other objects that work the same way) throughout the game. Break those by punching them, and usually there's an item in it. At any given time you fight against one or more enemies (usually more), and your job is to beat up all of them before moving on to the next wave of enemies. You'll also encounter boss fights throughout the game, which also work nearly identical to Streets of Rage. Their health bar changes color as you attack them, and after their bar changes from green to yellow, then it starts going down like a normal health bar.
Your health also works identical to Streets of Rage. You have a health bar, and it diminishes every time you take a blow. When you run out of health, your character dies, loses a life, and then reappears out of the sky. When you run out of lives, you lose. Simple system. It works.
While the gameplay is pretty much identical to Streets of Rage, it's still very fun and addictive. Also, beating the game is a real challenge. The difficulty ranges from your enemies being complete and total pushovers to being simply impossible to beat. The game is pretty much only easy for the first few levels, though. The difficulty picks up fast and never really looks back.
The graphics in Final Fight are good for the SNES, but it's still not the prettiest SNES game. Graphics didn't matter as much when this was popular, though, and in a classic game it really doesn't matter.
The sound in this game is bad. This is the one aspect of the two games I keep comparing that I'd put Streets of Rage way over. Final Fight's music isn't nearly as catchy or memorable as Streets of Rage's. The sounds of punching, hitting and groans are average but repeat way too often. Final Fight sounds pretty bad overall.
for value, the game doesn't take an incredible amount of time to get bored of, even though the gameplay is solid. The bad sound of the game make it get boring quicker.
Overall, I enjoyed Final Fight because it's just a fun game. If the sound were better, I'd score this one way higher. I know one thing for sure, do not buy the new Final Fight: Streetwise just to play this game, because it's not worth it. Dig up an old SNES copy or find a ROM to play this one. Of Final Fight and Streets of Rage, I'd give the nod to Streets of Rage overall. So if you want to play a classic beat-em-up, go with the Streets of Rage series. In the conclusion, while it is fun, Final Fight is little more than a way to play Streets of Rage on the SNES. Just with worse sound.