This Week In Retro: Burning Fight (Patreon)

May 20, 1991: Capcom's crosstown neighbor releases "Final Fight Osaka"

by Diamond Feit

This wasn’t planned in the slightest, but this week’s column closely aligns with the latest episode of Retronauts which is dedicated to the Final Fight series. I just so happen to be one of the guests on that show as Final Fight stands as one of my favorite arcade titles, and if there had been more time to cover the topic, I would have loved to dive into the world of unrelated games that owe their existence to Final Fight’s success.

We throw the word “clone” around a lot in the world of gaming, in part because the nature of the medium affords bad actors an advantage which other art forms do not. It is possible to quite literally copy data from a popular game and build a “new” game out of those assets, whereas no matter how derivative a script might be, anyone looking to steal scenes from a hit movie has to at least stage & shoot their own production first.

"Clone" is needlessly pejorative though, and not just because imitation is a sincere form of flattery. It’s possible for two artists to tackle the same subject in completely different ways even using the same material, and there’s no guarantee the one who did it “first” did it best. However, I get the urge to dismiss art that seems too similar to other works because in our hearts, we want to be excited by originality. We want that feeling you get when you see something you’ve never seen before, or better still, something you’ve never even conceived of before.

Perhaps this already sounds like an apology for a company that I hold in high esteem, but the fact is 30 years ago this week, SNK released Burning Fight for the NEO•GEO. Burning Fight blatantly borrows from Final Fight—this is indisputable—but to make that statement and pretend it is the last word on the matter is dishonest. Its inspiration may be obvious but Burning Fight remains a unique creation by virtue of its graphics, its tone, and its setting, although some of those factors just might be “copied” from someplace else.

Let us begin by recounting all of Burning Fight’s sins. It is a beat-em-up with three selectable heroes on a quest to pummel gang members across a sequence of urban environments. One character is a bulky strongman, one is a leaner, faster, fighter, and the third is a middle-of-the-road guy. Each playable character has their own special move that knocks down multiple thugs at the cost of reducing the player's health. The streets are full of objects to destroy, items to collect, weapons to grab, and scattered food to replenish the heroes’ stamina.

On paper and in practice, the resemblances to Final Fight are glaringly obvious, and the fact that Burning Fight arrived in arcades about 18 months later means there was no "parallel thinking" at play either. This is a transparent case of developers seeing a popular product made by a competitor and saying "let's do something like that." However, it should be stressed that Final Fight was created in much the same way: Capcom deliberately sought an entry point into the thriving beat-em-up scene and borrowed ideas from comics, movies and other games. If we are to throw stones at SNK for aping a known property, Capcom would deserve the same level of scorn.

Besides, once we move past stating the obvious, there are things Burning Fight does that Final Fight does not. Since the NEO•GEO has a standard 4-button interface, players have more attack options thanks to dedicated punch and kick buttons. Select storefronts in each stage are open for business, allowing players to enter and smash up the place for bonus items. Enemies can pop into the foreground from the background, or even attack from the rear plane with projectiles.

The biggest difference between the two games is their disparate settings and scenarios. Final Fight was aimed at Americans and takes place in "Metro City," a broad approximation of what the Japanese staff imagined America to be. Burning Fight, however, takes place in Osaka, Japan—SNK's home turf. There's a layer of sensationalism and dramatic license, of course, but there are plenty of recognizable landmarks and authentic locations featured in the game that give it a completely different atmosphere than its American-esque inspiration.

Burning Fight opens on "Main Street," a busy avenue lined with shops which leads to a fight against a truck and a shirtless Yakuza ruffian. This stage is based on the lively downtown Dotonbori area of Osaka, known for its large neon signs and a legacy clown mascot (both seen in-game). Stage 2, "Shopping Center," begins underground before transitioning to a train station where the heroes board an outbound train (as in, they leap atop the roof) where they continue to fight while dodging helicopter fire. The name of the real shopping center, Whity, is shown on screen, though the train station's name is changed from Umeda to "Umida."

Just as they are geographically divergent, Burning Fight and Final Fight tell different stories. Capcom's hit borrowed the old damsel-in-distress chestnut as seen in the film Streets of Fire (among many others), giving all three heroes a personal reason to rescue the abducted Jessica. Burning Fight is a tale of American cops tracking gangsters to Osaka and teaming up with a Japanese police officer; the only shared stakes are their collective sense of justice.

1980s film aficionados might recognize that Burning Fight's story is no more original than Final Fight's, as it closely lines up with the plot of Ridley Scott's Black Rain (1989). That film has a pair of New York detectives extradite a Japanese gangster home to Osaka, teaming with a local cop once their prisoner escapes. In Burning Fight, the lead criminal is a foreign hood named Casterora, and his gang is an international mix of Yakuza, mafioso, and a surprisingly high number of professional wrestlers.

As a youth, I recognized the copycat nature of Burning Fight but still enjoyed it as a beat-em-up option on the NEO•GEO, unaware it took place in a city I would one day call home. Frankly, even though I absolutely saw Black Rain, I never put two and two together until recent developer interviews admitted the connection. In my defense, none of the game characters resemble any of the actors from the motion picture, and the movie lacked the vision to include even a single WWF superstar in the cast.

Like a lot of NEO•GEO exclusives, Burning Fight is easy to play today by legitimate means (or otherwise) but it's no Sengoku. Curious parties should seek it out, but unlike Final Fight, there's no connective tissue to any of SNK's later, greater games. Capcom folded their hit back into Street Fighter continuity, and multiple Final Fight characters (hero and villain alike) have returned to much acclaim. Duke, the ostensible protagonist of Burning Fight, made a few cameos in later NEO•GEO titles but that's that.

As an adult, I can both feel affection for Burning Fight's distinctive qualities and admit that in 2021, this coin-gobbling arcade game has little replay value. Even with separate punch and kick commands, Duke, Ryu, and Billy have less moves than Cody, Guy, and Haggar, and fewer frames of animation to boot. There's less enemy variety in Burning Fight, with multiple bosses returning for a rematch, making the final stage on Casterora's yacht a tedious slog. The story doesn't deliver any real payoff either; the last boss slumps over (no defenestration here) and the credits roll: The End.

It is unfair to talk about Burning Fight and write it off as just another Final Fight wannabe, but that doesn't make it a hidden gem. It is what it is: A commercial piece of art that can be enjoyed today as much as it was 30 years ago, but it pales in comparison to its peers. Burning Fight was once my only window into Osaka but today, I don't have to settle for the 2D version. I can visit the real Umeda and Whity and Dotonbori and see it all for a couple hundred yen, a bargain compared to pumping coins into an arcade cabinet or buying this game outright on modern consoles. Even better, the real Osaka is full of delicious food that isn't stashed inside telephone booths or street signs, and to date not a single organized crime family has interrupted my nights out with armed combat.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.