Mighty Final Fight for the ZX Spectrum is a fantastic, but unofficial port of the NES demake of the original Final Fight game. Featuring the same characters and story as the arcade game, Mighty Final Fight took the hard hitting original and gave everything a NES manageable graphical style, but still retained all the elements which made Final Fight so popular.
Considering that a port of the original game has been on the ZX Spectrum forever, but was seen as slow and something of a let down compared to the other versions, it’s great to play this community developed port of Mighty Final Fight that brings lots more colour and fast and furious gameplay.
Hager, Guy and Cody are on a mission to rescue Jessica and stop the Mad Gear gang, so let’s dig into the unofficial ZX Spectrum port of Mighty Final Fight!
Final Fight is one of the all time classic arcade beat em up games. When it released in the arcades it was a huge hit, and was what Capcom did in between Street Fighter 1 and Street Fighter 2. With it being a hit as a coin op, it didn’t take ling before the game would find its way into the Super NES, Amiga, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amstrad and the ZX Spectrum.
Much like the ZX Spectrum version of Street Fighter 2 which I have previously covered on the channel, the graphics of the official Final Fight port to the ZX Spectrum are just in two colours. Black and another colour to represent light and shade. That version was also so slow with such limited animation and sound. I’ll be covering that port in a later deep dive, but for now, let’s get back to Mighty Final Fight, which absolutely blows the original’s port out of the window.
As you’ll see from the graphics, the stages are dripping in different colours. The characters are just black outline versions of the NES sprites, but with all the colour in the rest of the game’s world, you won’t find this bland to look at. There’s something very nostalgic and comforting about returning to play a game on the ZX Spectrum and see the characters you’re playing as effectively change colour as they walk in front of different coloured background objects.
They’ve done a really good job of making the NES game work and make sense on the ZX Spectrum, but there are of course compromises compared to the NES game. That game has scrolling levels, where this just moves along one screen at a a time like a Dizzy game. The controls on the ZX Spectrum are also harder, as unless someone can correct me in the comments, I believe this is a single fire button based beat em up, where as on the NES it gives you two buttons to jump and attack.
It took me a little while of tinkering with the controls on the Spectrum to figure out the controls, and then I realised I should have gone back and just played the tutorial as there’s actually a surprising amount you can do and pull off move wise in the game.
Perhaps the most jarring control is that you have to press the fire button in tandem with a direction on the joystick to jump. This didn’t feel natural for the entire playthrough, although I got used to it enough. It did mean I’d often make a mistake and either jump or punch when I meant to do the other.
For me, the tips I’d give any new player playing this game is to jump kick opponents if you’re surrounded, and try to get so they’re all in front of you. Then go up the screen and use diagonal down movement towards enemies as this is the easiest way to grab hold of an enemy and once they’re grabbed, just headbutt them to death. It’s easy to pull of a suplex or a throw, but truthfully, you’ll want to headbutt most enemies into oblivion as it’s the quickest way to eat up their energy bars. If of course, an enemy is about to jump you form behind as you’re headbutting away then it’s best to do a suplex and bowl one enemy into another.
A quirk of both the NES and therefore the ZX Spectrum game, is that the enemy life bar just says enemy and doesn’t say who it is you’re fighting against like it does on the arcade original. That’s OK, but since the Final Fight world is connected to the world of Street Fighter, and features many cross over characters it would be cool to get the heads up on who it is you’re beating up if you think you recognise them.
Th chibi style of graphics on Mighty Final Fight add extra personality to the characters in the same way that Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo and Pocket Fighter’s chibi Street Fighter characters enhanced those characters in ways.
An advantage this has over the NES game is that this game doesn’t feature constantly flickering sprites like you get in that game.
I prefer the look of the HUD on the spectrum game too. It shows character portraits with the energy bars, and doesn’t show your character’s experience points and level at the bottom like the NES one does for some reason. Instead you get a fist which shows how hard you’re hitting and you can find power ups by breaking barrels that will roll at you like they came straight out of Pitfall.
It does seem like the game only gives you one life, which I found a bit head scratching. I don’t know why this was the case, and the whole point of the NES version is that it was a more kid friendly and easier take on the arcade game and in that you get plenty of lives and continues. As such I did use save states to get me through the game at the start of new levels and against bosses.
If you like beat em ups and are looking for one to play on your ZX Spectrum this is possibly the best on the system. It does make me want to fire up Double Dragon again and see if that is as I remember or if it’s as scary as I fear.
What other beat em ups games should I check out on the platform? I will cover the official Final Fight port sooner rather than later, but had some freezing issues with it that help up play and turned out to be a blessing in disguise as Mighty Final Fight is a much better game.
I’ll also look to cover the NES game in more detail too, as it follows the trend I’ve had on my channel of being something of an official demake, and with all the deep dives I’ve done recently on oddball and weird Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter games, I’m becoming something of an expert of lesser versions of great games. Maybe I should start playing some of the actual good ones? But probably not yet!
What games would you like to see me cover in future deep dives? I try to respond to every comment, so let me know. I’ve got a few more ZX Spectrum deep dives in the works too, so be sure to look out for those.
What would you rate this game?
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