Burning Fight (Neo Geo CD)
One of the first and better known Beat ’em Ups for the system
The Neo Geo is a premium fighting console and personally, I find it incredibly impressive that the majority of titles are straight from SNK, this was their console and they were the masters of it.
In saying that, it becomes pretty clear that SNK had it’s strengths when it came to game development, and even though the console was an arcade machine at its core, the genre that suffered the most were the beat em’ ups. Incredibly popular at the time, it’s often chalked up as SNK rushing their beat ’em ups out the door to cash in.
Burning Fight is in no way an original idea. Burning Fight seems to have been developed as a ‘quick win’; a formula that was selling well and something the Neo Geo desperately needed. Unfortunately, the premium price and quality of the console made Burning Fight a bitter pill to swallow at the time. I get the feeling Burning Fight still has a lot of negative stigma attached to it but after seeing so many beat ’em ups modeled after the same games (Double Dragon, Final Fight, Streets of Rage), it’s a little refreshing to play Burning Fight, which borrows so heavily from all those games, but made no effort to conceal or be drastically different. I found Burning Fight fun, it looks great, there’s nothing outstanding but at the same time, nothing that outright fails.
As far as animations go, the main three characters look stiff, SNK wasn’t exactly known for its fluid, lifelike animations, but I found the characters handled really well. It felt really good getting into the fights, knowing when to retreat and when to unleash a special move.
Overall, I feel Burning Fight was under appreciated in its day, against its stiff competition it had some very obvious faults but as far as solid beat ’em ups go I had a lot of fun with this one.