Fightin' Spirit
Fightin' Spirit, developed by Lightshock Software and published by NEO Software in 1996
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Screenshot |
Player's Review
"At the end of this millennium, the ultimate fight awaits you!
12 fighters with over 30 different moves. Super in-game speech with vocal sound track Story mode, Tag Team, Knock out tournament."
One of the Amiga's better fighter games putting the final word in on the Amigas ability to offer a fighting game and that just maybe Street Fighter II was always possible in the right hands. The game was released for the AGA machines (CD32/A1200/A4000) but in a shock twist, the game was also for the ECS machines (A500+/A600/A3000) and looks suitably impressive here. This game has gone for an art and playstyle looking a lot like a neo geo game.
The game is well presented with long title screen followed by the story intro and a really long fighter bio sequence. Were ten minutes in before an actual fight! Then its onto the character choice and the fight. The fighters have plenty of moves but it's not always easy to find them. The manual tells you the special moves at least and each fighter has four. The game ca be played on one or two button controllers The manual tells you the moves and when to press fire, but when you have two of them, you have to figure out which one it wants you to press! There are plenty subtle moves and throws I occasionally pull off without ever knowing how I did them. A difficult move to pull off is the Super Deform move turning you into a baby and pressing fire reduces the opponents energy., not by anything meaningful and you are locked in for a couple of seconds. This is really annoying to pull off (right-down-left circular movement and then right+fire) but I am able to show it occasionally. Also annoyingly on two buttons, back gets turned into block if the opponent is doing a move making it difficult to pull of some special moves when you want them.
The longplay shows an initial playthrough with the main story fighter Kento. I play on Maniac difficulty with the default time and round settings. Once completed, I show the hidden boss fighters by playing a single round on Normal difficulty, later switching to turbo and deathmatch mode for the final fight. Deathmatch mode turns the energy bar into a tug of war. The only notable differences that I can see verses the AGA release is that there are no animated backgrounds here and maybe each fighter has less frames of animation. Colours seem to be the same.
For this recording, the game is running on a standard A600 2mb with 8mb fastram and has been HD installed to ram and running from there. Loading times are still annoying though as little is kept in ram after decompressing. The game does preload the hd installed disk images to ram before playing if you have enough to spare.
Overall, this is a well presented fighting game on the Amiga with a complete arcade like experience. Game speed is a little bit of an issue with odd little speed jumps which effects input timing but that might just be an emulation issue. My only disappointment is that not all characters seem to have a meaningful ending text and just rolls to the credits. I did wonder if it was related to the difficulty option but I don't think so. It's not going to persuade any console owner or arcade player who is into their fighting games that the Amigas is a good place to play these games but I think it at least shows how close you can get when the effort is put in and not just a quick port to make a quick buck.
If you want to see a full run with every character then check out the Amiga 1200 longplay.
00:00:00 Titles
00:02:58 Intro
00:05:04 Kento (Maniac)
00:40:25 Ending
00:45:22 Credits / Unlock
03:46:31 Shiro (Normal)
01:12:53 Ending
01:15:15 Jenshi (Turbo /Deathmatch)
01:36:56 Ending - Credits
01:45:42 Fighter Bio's
12 fighters with over 30 different moves. Super in-game speech with vocal sound track Story mode, Tag Team, Knock out tournament."
One of the Amiga's better fighter games putting the final word in on the Amigas ability to offer a fighting game and that just maybe Street Fighter II was always possible in the right hands. The game was released for the AGA machines (CD32/A1200/A4000) but in a shock twist, the game was also for the ECS machines (A500+/A600/A3000) and looks suitably impressive here. This game has gone for an art and playstyle looking a lot like a neo geo game.
The game is well presented with long title screen followed by the story intro and a really long fighter bio sequence. Were ten minutes in before an actual fight! Then its onto the character choice and the fight. The fighters have plenty of moves but it's not always easy to find them. The manual tells you the special moves at least and each fighter has four. The game ca be played on one or two button controllers The manual tells you the moves and when to press fire, but when you have two of them, you have to figure out which one it wants you to press! There are plenty subtle moves and throws I occasionally pull off without ever knowing how I did them. A difficult move to pull off is the Super Deform move turning you into a baby and pressing fire reduces the opponents energy., not by anything meaningful and you are locked in for a couple of seconds. This is really annoying to pull off (right-down-left circular movement and then right+fire) but I am able to show it occasionally. Also annoyingly on two buttons, back gets turned into block if the opponent is doing a move making it difficult to pull of some special moves when you want them.
The longplay shows an initial playthrough with the main story fighter Kento. I play on Maniac difficulty with the default time and round settings. Once completed, I show the hidden boss fighters by playing a single round on Normal difficulty, later switching to turbo and deathmatch mode for the final fight. Deathmatch mode turns the energy bar into a tug of war. The only notable differences that I can see verses the AGA release is that there are no animated backgrounds here and maybe each fighter has less frames of animation. Colours seem to be the same.
For this recording, the game is running on a standard A600 2mb with 8mb fastram and has been HD installed to ram and running from there. Loading times are still annoying though as little is kept in ram after decompressing. The game does preload the hd installed disk images to ram before playing if you have enough to spare.
Overall, this is a well presented fighting game on the Amiga with a complete arcade like experience. Game speed is a little bit of an issue with odd little speed jumps which effects input timing but that might just be an emulation issue. My only disappointment is that not all characters seem to have a meaningful ending text and just rolls to the credits. I did wonder if it was related to the difficulty option but I don't think so. It's not going to persuade any console owner or arcade player who is into their fighting games that the Amigas is a good place to play these games but I think it at least shows how close you can get when the effort is put in and not just a quick port to make a quick buck.
If you want to see a full run with every character then check out the Amiga 1200 longplay.
00:00:00 Titles
00:02:58 Intro
00:05:04 Kento (Maniac)
00:40:25 Ending
00:45:22 Credits / Unlock
03:46:31 Shiro (Normal)
01:12:53 Ending
01:15:15 Jenshi (Turbo /Deathmatch)
01:36:56 Ending - Credits
01:45:42 Fighter Bio's
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