Game: Fatal Fury First Contact
Genre: Fighting
System: Nintendo Switch
Developer | Publisher: Code Mystics | SNK Corporation
Age Rating: US E10+| EU 7+
Price: US $7.99 | UK £7.19 | EU €7,99
Release Date: December 23rd 2020
Review code used with many thanks to HomeRun PR and SNK Corporation for providing it!
Fatal Fury First Contact is a fighting game by SNK available on the Nintendo Switch. It’s part of the NeoGeo Pocket Color Selection that are comprised of re-releases of games that were on the NeoGeo Pocket Color. The NeoGeo Pocket Color being SNK’s handheld gaming device that came out in 1999. Is this retro re-release worth checking out? Let’s find out!
Retro-handheld style!
Fatal Fury First Contact features a really cute and fun chibi-style aesthetic for the thirteen different fighters available in the cast, two of which need to be unlocked through playing the game featuring many well-known characters like Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui, but also at the time newcomers like Li Xiangfei and Rick Strowd.
The music also sounds pretty good and I also gotta love the fact that the border resembles the NeoGeo Pocket Color design neatly. If you play the game in handheld mode you could even use the buttons and joystick on the screen as a form of touch controls. Pretty neat if a bit of an easter-egg inclusion.
Fatal and Furious Brawling!
Fatal Fury First Contact’s gameplay is rather simple to get into, mainly due to its two-button and joystick/D-Pad setup but it’s also really fun to play. The action is fast and frantic. It definitely goes back to an age where Handheld fighters were pretty simple compared to how they are nowadays in a lot of ways.
There isn’t much in the way of modes in this game. You have the single-player mode which puts you through a gauntlet of eight to nine fighters and a versus mode that, when in hand-held mode, allows you to play the game on one Switch with your friends on the couch. However, that’s just how things were back in the day when it came to fighting games. Nowadays we got a lot more modes and content to go around.
But I still had a fun time playing the game despite these limitations which were par for the course at the time.
Conclusion
Fatal Fury First Contact is a neat and enjoyable little fighting game to play if you want to experience something more Retro. I also gotta admire and like the fact that SNK releases these various classic games from their library of games which is especially good for preservation.
These games may fetch high prices on the original hardware, for 7 or 8 bucks you can play them on the Switch. If you are an SNK fan that is collecting these re-releases digitally. You’re in for a fun time!
Final Rating: I like it!
