The Finalest Final Fight Of Them All

Forget the fact that Final Fight was developed in Japan. I maintain that the most American thing possible would be to erect a gigantic titanium statue of Metro City Mayor Mike Haggar, fists in the air, right where the Twin Towers once stood. Below it, men would earn a meager living portraying such classic characters as "Bred" and "Two.P" to keep tourists occupied. Children from around the world would walk up and piledrive these half-assed cosplayers into the dirt again and again, while parents stood back and egged the scene on from behind a chintzy video camera. Nearby, a local street vendor would peddle overpriced, low-quality T-shirts that say "I HEART M.C." and "WHAT WOULD MIKE HAGGAR DO?" The man who spends his days as Bred rides the subway home, where he would ice his neck and self-medicate with a mixture of cheap rum and cheaper painkillers. But the monotony of his soulless existence only becomes clear when he peers into his son's room, where his good-for-nothing spawn sits in front of his godforsaken television set. He would sit there, playing Final Fight: Double Impact for hours on end, laughing to his friends over his headset about how lame Bred is.

And then "Bred" would whip his only son with a belt. Revenge would finally be his. But not Final Fight Revenge. Because that game was total garbage.

The original Final Fight is coming to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network in April as Final Fight: Double Impact. It sits alongside Magic Sword, an entirely unrelated and more-obscure classic from Capcom's past, in a compilation that features easy-to-negotiate online co-op that lets players jump in or out on a whim, save states, remastered music, and a series of graphical effects that will let you stretch the screen out the way you like it, apply a variety of screen filters, and so on. There's also a "vault" section for each game. By completing achievement-like tasks, you'll unlock original concept art, pages from a comic book, modern fan art, and more.

Ryan and I played through the end of Final Fight at a Capcom event last night. The emulation seems completely accurate, and you can pause the game to change the music or display settings on-the-fly, without having to restart the game. The package also has a pretty slick menu that pans from the mean streets of Metro City (where a Final Fight machine is sitting) over to a more medieval spot for Magic Sword.

It's pretty cool. Of course, if you've ever played Final Fight before, you already knew that. For the rest of you, study hard. This will all be on the test after the package comes out next month.