Before it was Final Fight, Capcom’s new brawler was Street Fighter ’89. The company took it to a trade show under that name because, in the words of its designer Akira Nishitani, “Street Fighter had such a high name value, we decided to make use of its recognition”. The response was so good that Capcom felt free to give it back its own name. “The only thing we ever changed when testing it as Street Fighter ’89 was the logo,” he said.
What people saw was a scrolling beat-’em-up in the line of Double Dragon, with sprites far bigger than that game’s. Mike Haggar, a former street fighter who had become mayor of Metro City, set out with his friends Cody and Guy to rescue his daughter Jessica from the Mad Gear gang. The Games Machine found it in British arcades in the spring of 1990 and called it “very impressive”: “brilliantly drawn and animated bad guys may beat seven bells out of the hero, but he can give as good as he gets.” Its size became the test for every home version that followed.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Capcom.
- Arcade release: December 1989 in Japan, by Capcom’s own account; in British arcades by April 1990.
- Hardware: Capcom’s CP System board (see arcade hardware).
- Staff: Akira Nishitani was one of its designers; Yoshiki Okamoto produced it.
- Players: one or two at once, choosing from Haggar, Cody and Guy.
- Stages: six areas of Metro City: the Slums, the Subway, the West Side, the Industrial Area, the Bay Area and Uptown.
- Home versions: Super Famicom (1990), U.S. Gold’s Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions (1991), Sega’s Final Fight CD for the Mega-CD (1993) and Final Fight One for the Game Boy Advance (2001).
Street Fighter ’89
The first Street Fighter (1987) had not been a success, but once one-on-one fighting games caught on in America, Capcom’s American office asked for a sequel. Noritaka Funamizu, later the producer of Street Fighter II, told Edge in 2002 that the Americans did not share Capcom’s faith in the brawler it made instead: “when we finished FF they told us we were wrong, that it would never succeed in the US. Final Fight became a huge success.”
Nishitani told Retro Gamer in 2007 that the game had never been meant as a sequel: “Our intention was to develop Final Fight as an original game in its own right — and that’s what we did.” The Street Fighter name went on for the trade show only. Nishitani also remembered travelling to San Francisco to see the game at its first test location, “the first time I’d ever been abroad”.
Building Metro City
Nishitani’s hardest problem, he said, was “the deep, pseudo 3D space, and how the large sprites interacted with it”. An oil drum was enough to cause trouble: “Can the characters climb on the drum? If so, what happens when another character destroys the drum while they’re stood on it? Can we have one drum on top of another?” Because each hero had his own moves, the character design work was three times what a single-hero game would need.
The three heroes played differently. Haggar was the slow, strong one, a wrestler whose special moves included the piledriver and the backdrop. Cody, Jessica’s boyfriend, was a street fighter, and Guy was trained in ninjutsu and could spring off the walls. The magazines could not agree on who was quicker: CRASH gave speed to Guy, while Sinclair User thought Cody the fast one and Guy “Mr Average”. All three punched, kicked and threw the gang, and picked up knives, lead pipes and petrol bombs along the way. Smashing dustbins, crates and telephones turned up food and hidden weapons.
Between levels came bonus rounds: wrecking a parked car against the clock, and later smashing panes of glass. Nishitani said the team had thought of destroying a piano or a house, and that news reports at the time of Japanese cars being smashed in anti-Japanese protests “might have affected our decision, too!”
The gang had its own cast: Bred among the rank and file, the giant Andore, the masked samurai Sodom, Edi. E the corrupt policeman with a gun, and the Mad Gear leader Belger, who fought from an armed wheelchair. Nishitani said Andore was named after a friend nicknamed “Andre”, and that a colleague who loved rock music supplied many of the other names. He also hid a birthday: pick up the chewing gum that Edi. E spits out while your energy is full, and you score 42910 points, his date of birth in the Japanese calendar.
Two of the gang, Poison and Roxy, look like women. Asked about them, Nishitani said: “I suppose Roxy and Poison could be male. We were mildly concerned about getting sued by a feminist group if we beat up women in the game.” He also changed the attract screen for the overseas version “to try and tone down any sexual elements”.
The Super Famicom version
Capcom brought the game to the Super Famicom in December 1990, and its big sprites survived the move. Mean Machines in February 1991 found them “as big and as beautifully drawn and animated as their arcade counterparts”. What had gone was listed plainly: “the third character, Guy, the simultaneous two-player option and the Industrial level”. Capcom sold 1.48 million copies.
When Nintendo’s official British release reached Nintendo Magazine System in October 1992, one more change showed. Poison and Roxy had been “censored out and replaced by Sid and Billy”. The magazine still called the game “a definite classic”, and in a head-to-head with Rival Turf, which did have two players, it judged Final Fight “the clear winner” on play.
Capcom answered the complaint about Guy with Final Fight Guy, a Japanese cartridge in which, as Super Play put it, Cody was “replaced by Guy”. It was on sale in Britain as an import by April 1992, and readers of the new Nintendo Magazine System were soon writing in to ask whether it would be released officially.
The Mega-CD version
Sega published Final Fight CD for the Mega-CD in 1993, and it restored almost everything the cartridge had lost. The American magazine Sega Visions listed the simultaneous two-player mode, all three heroes and all six areas, including the Industrial Area, together with a new CD soundtrack and a Time Attack mode for two players.
The U.S. Gold conversions
In Britain the home computer licence went to U.S. Gold, which gave the work to Creative Materials, a Manchester team. CU Amiga visited in July 1991. Development had begun the previous November. Richard Aplin wrote the Amiga and Atari ST versions, and the team’s head, Nick Vincent, dug through the arcade board’s data to find the maps that held each sprite together, so the graphics could be lifted from the coin-op and retouched rather than drawn again. The Amiga version used the machine’s full 32-colour palette and kept the third hero, but dropped the arcade game’s parallax scrolling.
On the Spectrum, programmed by Alan Butcher, Vincent told Your Sinclair the aim had been to keep “the sprites the same size (proportionally)”, and to compress the sprite data so the game would not slow down. The Amstrad CPC version needed 128K, which Amstrad Action had missed when it reviewed the game.
The reviews split sharply:
- Amiga Action (September 1991) was delighted: “You are certainly going to be amazed at the similarity between the arcade and Amiga versions … Final Fight is the best game so far this year. Miss it at your peril!”
- CU Amiga the same month found the big sprites impressive (87% for graphics) but the fighting “decidedly average”, with too few moves and loose collision detection.
- Computer and Video Games thought the Amiga version “a job well-done”, and pointed out that it kept the two-player mode that the Super Famicom version lacked, though the in-game music had been left out.
- CRASH gave the Spectrum version 88% in October 1991. Nick Roberts marvelled at sprites that filled half the screen, in monochrome, and worked out that finishing the arcade game took about an hour and a half and about £10.50 in coins for two players.
- Amstrad Action gave the CPC version 89%.
- Zzap!64 disliked the Commodore 64 version, complaining of poor collision detection, sluggish controls and a jumping kick that beat every enemy in the game.
Later games
Final Fight 2 (1993) and Final Fight 3 followed on the Super NES, and Capcom counts 1.03 million sales for the second. Mighty Final Fight (1993) came to the NES. Final Fight Revenge turned the cast into a 3D one-on-one fighting game, and Final Fight One (2001) brought the arcade game to the Game Boy Advance. Final Fight: Streetwise came out on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox; Nishitani told Retro Gamer the next year that he had never heard of it until they asked him.
The characters also moved into Capcom’s fighting games. Street Fighter Alpha brought in Guy and Sodom as guest fighters, and Street Fighter Alpha 3 added Cody. By June 2026 Capcom counted 3.2 million sales for the Final Fight series as a whole.
Sources
- Capcom, “Corporate History”, Capcom investor relations (web, secondary): the arcade release in December 1989. https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/company/history.html
- Capcom, “Platinum Titles” (as of 30 June 2026) (web, secondary): the Super NES Final Fight, December 1990, 1.48 million units; Final Fight 2, May 1993, 1.03 million. https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/finance/million.html
- Capcom, “Game Series Sales” (as of 30 June 2026) (web, secondary): 3.2 million for the Final Fight series. https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/finance/salesdata.html
- Retro Gamer issue 37, 2007, pp. 50–53: “The Making of Final Fight”, interview with Akira Nishitani (Street Fighter ’89, the San Francisco test, the pseudo-3D space and the oil drum, the bonus rounds, Andore and the band names, the 42910 bonus, Poison and Roxy, the overseas attract screen, Final Fight: Streetwise).
- Retro Gamer issue 10, 2004: Final Fight feature crediting the game to Yoshiki Okamoto, and dating the Game Boy Advance version to 2001. Okamoto’s producer credit is given by Wikipedia, “Final Fight (video game)” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fight_(video_game)
- Edge issue 108, March 2002, pp. 101–102: Noritaka Funamizu on the first Street Fighter, Capcom’s American office and Final Fight.
- The Games Machine issue 30, May 1990, p. 65: arcade review.
- Mean Machines issue 5, February 1991: the Super Famicom version and what it left out.
- Nintendo Magazine System issue 1, October 1992, pp. 74–75: review of the British Super NES release (Sid and Billy; the missing two-player mode and level), the Rival Turf comparison, and readers’ letters about Final Fight Guy.
- Mean Machines issue 19, April 1992: import advertisement for Final Fight Guy.
- Super Play issue 14, December 1993: import guide entry for Final Fight Guy (Cody “replaced by Guy”).
- Sega Visions, June/July 1993: Final Fight CD preview (two players, three heroes, six areas, Time Attack).
- CU Amiga, July 1991, p. 45: work-in-progress feature on Creative Materials’ conversion (Richard Aplin, Nick Vincent, the sprites, the palette and the parallax).
- Your Sinclair issue 68, August 1991: preview and interview with Nick Vincent; Alan Butcher as Spectrum programmer.
- Amiga Action issue 24, September 1991: Amiga review.
- CU Amiga, September 1991: Amiga review by Mike Pattenden.
- Computer and Video Games issue 119, October 1991: Amiga review.
- CRASH issue 93, October 1991: Spectrum review by Nick Roberts, 88%.
- Amstrad Action issue 76, January 1992: the CPC version’s 89% in issue 74, and the correction that it needs 128K.
- Zzap!64 issue 79, December 1991: Commodore 64 review.
- Nintendo Magazine System issue 13, October 1993: Mighty Final Fight review.
- Edge issue 30, March 1996: Street Fighter Alpha, with Guy and Sodom from Final Fight.
- Gamers’ Republic issue 3, August 1998: Street Fighter Alpha 3, with Cody.
- CRASH issue 93, Amiga Power issue 6 (October 1991) and Sinclair User issue 115 (September 1991): the three heroes’ fighting styles.