The Truth is Elsewhere

Dear readers, welcome to the incredible world of strange. A world in which you'll temporarily forget any notion of rationality. The laws of gravity, mathematical certainties, the course of time, laws of physics... Welcome to the amazing world of Viccom's Fight Fever. Many of Neo Geo connoisseurs think that Legend of Success Joe (Suck-ass Joe, for short) is the worst game ever made for the system. For sure, this one is damn bad. Very, very, very bad. But if I tell you that compared to Fight Fever, this shit is a masterpiece of graphic arts featuring a first-order gameplay? You'll probably think I'm crazy ... until you play it for the first time. When I bought the convert of this game, I was already expecting something catastrophic. Really. But like Le Joueur du Grenier, I love crappy games.

It's my guilty pleasure, this little kitsch sensation when I play, it's something. I am very sensitive to it, and I even take some pleasure playing... But on this one there, what I witnessed was beyond human understanding. The introduction of the game (Do you want Tae Kwon Do?) clearly sets the tone, bluntly. Ridicule is to honor here, and we won't do things by halves at this level. The character selection screen pushes you a little deeper in the atrocity. Different fighters are ridiculous to a point never seen before. It's simple, you wonder if the programmers have done it on purpose. World Heroes' warriors were legends of charisma compared to the various protagonists of Fight Fever. We have constipated versions of Ryu & Ken, an obese and effeminate south-american with a bowl haircut of the eighties, a n after-the-accident Hulk Hogan with a broom in the ass wearing the Jason mask, and a mustache clone of Billy Kane without his stick. There's also a brunette bitch fighting in pajamas, a basketball wanabee player, not to mention the fantastic grandpa Moujot, discount clone of David Carradine in Kung Fu.

You got it, and Viccom got it too, demanding Neo Geo players are rewarded here with a bestiary of madness, yes, that is the word, and the more difficult will still be to choose which way you want to suffer. And it's only when the first fight begins, that you understand we landed in hell by booting this cartridge. The graphics are shabby, the backgrounds designed by a parkinsonian grandmother... Fighters are ultra-stiff, even constipated for some of them... projectiles they launch are as surprising as ridiculous... but rest assured, as the animation is still the feat: it's simply grotesque. I've never seen this before in my whole life of player. It's simple, the first Street Fighter seems almost fluid next to Fight Fever. The melodies, legendary kitsch compositions, are perfectly in tune and at least worthy of a Master System. I turn to the sounds, and there it's really a scandal. Stricly all sounds and effects, and even some vocals,  were ripped from other SNK games (Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, etc.) ...

And then, you're probably thinking that we've already hit the bottom? Nein! The gameplay is simply the pinnacle of nullity, the apotheosis of the assumed mediocrity. The geometry of the stick is crappy to perfection and hyper-hazardous. For example, performing twice the same manipulation won't produce the same result twice! The characters jump in a supernatural way, with contacts and air shocks resulting in irrational moves. By pushing a little my investigation on Fight Fever, I was told that the hitboxes and crash tests were programmed by Ray Charles himself. Priorities? Roll a twenty-sided dice and you'll know... With new characters as pathetic as each other, unpredictable and incomprehensible logics of gaming, we quickly get lost. Even when playing two, past the stage of mockery, one wonders why he is playing this twilight-zone production, while the excellent Legend of Success Joe makes him eyes in his superb box.