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Mike Haggar wasn’t finished in the streets fighting crime as Mayor of Metro City so, in 1996, Capcom released Final Fight 3 for the Super Nintendo. Final Fight 3 comes with four playable characters and a new gang to beat up. Would the third installment of the series honor the previous games or would this truly be the “Final Fight”? Read my Final Fight 3 review to find out!
Final Fight 3 Plot:
Our favorite crime-fighting mayor, Mike Haggar has finally wiped out the Mad Gear gang after rallying against them during the first two Final Fights. The streets were clean for a while but the stragglers and street fighters formed a new gang called the “Skull Cross”. Such a sinister-sounding gang!
The Skull Cross gang begins to riot in the streets turning over police cars and burning buildings. Mayor Mike Haggar is sitting in his office when all of a sudden the door bursts open and detective Lucia comes in and asks for his help against the Skull Cross. Haggar joins Lucia and his old pal Guy from the first game tags along too. The quartet is complete when Dean teams up with them. Dean’s family is a victim of the violence from the Skull Cross as they murdered his entire family! Now the four of them set off to once and for all clean the streets of crime in the final fight!
Final Fight 3 Gameplay:
Looking at Haggar, he looked ROIDED out of his mind during my Final Fight 3 review. He is juicing more than A-Rod was during his career. It looks crazy but that’s not the biggest change to Haggar’s appearance. He now has a super long ponytail that looks a bit ridiculous. Maybe he had it in the second Final Fight but I certainly don’t remember that. In the first two Final Fights, I played as Haggar so I continued the trend and picked the mayor. He controlled better than the second game but not as well as the first game. He had a move that cleared the area around him as he spun around with his fists. This was helpful but I rarely needed to use it. Again, the most enemies you’ll face on the screen are three at a time.
After beating level one, there was a cut scene that I appreciated during my Final Fight 3 review. I’m always down for better presentation in games or anything that adds to the story. It didn’t happen after every level but there were a few. Final Fight 3 felt the shortest of the series and that didn’t bode well since the entire game felt cheap and a money-grab for a beat ’em up with the title “Final Fight” in it. The reason I say it felt like a money-grab is because the fighters you face don’t bring anything new to the formula. This felt like a step backward and some of them look less detailed than previous games like the big giants named Andore who are obvious rip-offs of Andre the Giant.
Enemy movements looked awkward as they walked a very straight line throughout the screen and were easily avoidable. You’ll face typical fighters that are familiar opponents. You have the fat guys named “Arby and “Fat Jack” who get in a football stance before charging at you. You’ll have grenade tossers named “Fritz” and even a few female fighters return from the original. The new fighters are small long-haired guys who look like they ran away from the circus. I wish they would have put new fighters into the game instead of keeping the typical rotation. I’ll give an example of the lack of detail in some characters. In stage one, you fight a boss named “Dave” who is dressed as a cop but just a few stages later you’ll fight a boss named “Drake” who is a sailor but looks exactly like Dave. Same skin tone, same body, same head. How boring and cheap!
The original Final Fight was beatable but tough. The second Final Fight was difficult but the third was the easiest. I didn’t have any trouble making my way through the main meat of the game during my Final Fight 3 review. The bosses were tough, don’t get me wrong but I felt like the fight to get to them was mainly a cakewalk. As you make your way through the levels you’ll notice details like windows break, switches on the wall fall off, and lights shatter. I liked that detail and wish they would of put more effort into the overall detail of the game. The final boss fight was the best part of the game. The leader of the Skull Cross gang jumps from a helicopter and you fight him on the roof before throwing him into an electric box electrocuting him to death.
One thing I just read about the game is that the path to the final boss and ending change depending on the character you select. That’s pretty cool and I’ll give them credit by adding replayability to the game. I wonder what the other endings are?
Like the other games, you’ll have the chance at picking up weapons to use against enemies but I found that my fists worked better in my Final Fight 3 review as it’s a pain to bend over and grab the weapons. There are health boosts like chocolate and chicken if you’re running low on health but you’ll need to look for them in barrels. The mini-games return but they were my least favorite. One has you running to the end of a section and jumping over barrels and another has you smashing a bulldozer before it pushes you off a dock.
Memories:
This was my first time playing Final Fight 3 but I was a bit disappointed in the way the series ends on the Super Nintendo.
Final Fight 3 Review Score:
Final Fight 3 was the last Final Fight on the Super Nintendo but the series ends on a sour note. I felt the game wasn’t an improvement from either of the first two games with the enemies feeling repetitive and some of the bosses being reskinned. Final Fight 3 feels like a lazy attempt at a cash grab from Capcom.
Final Fight 3 scores a 6.6 out of 10.
What would you write in your Final Fight 3 review? Do you remember when Final Fight 3 first came out? Which fighter did you choose? Did you get the same ending as me and did you know the game came with different endings? Did you feel like this game was a cash-grab or am I wrong about it? Let me know your memories and thoughts, I’d love to read the comments!
Tiger Chainsaw 