Fight Fever

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Fight Fever is is a 2D fighting game released by Viccom Co., Ltd. It was first released in arcades in 1994.

The game began with a sequence that featured the mysterious phrase "You Want? Tae Kwon Do Champ Of The World (it is often assumed it is an Engrish phrase). The premise of the game was to become the Tae Kwon Do world champion by defeating seven opponents in a sort of world tournament (it should be noted that most characters are not related to Tae Kwon Do and use other fighting styles).

The game was panned by players by its low-quality graphics, monotonous music, unappealing characters and stages poorly designed. Viccom sought to compete with other fighting games, like Street Fighter, Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, borrowing elements from these games. However, the game was not popular because players felt it was a lame rip-off of other fighting games (this probably stemmed from the fact that some characters were based on some characters from Street Fighter II, but also because the power gauges, time gauge and "victory points" were almost identical as those of Fatal Fury).

The low-quality graphics made the game to look older, which in turn drove potential gamers away. Critics point out that by 1994, Capcom, SNK and other game developers had introduced games with better graphics (Street Fighter II, for example, had superior graphics and sound, in spite it was two years older than Fight Fever). In fact, Fight Fever's graphics are closer to those of the first fighting games. Animation was poor and made characters to look stiff, making forced moves. This was worsened by the use of dull colors and badly drawn backgrounds.

Stages were hastily designed, and they looked simple and unappealing. In some cases (especially the stages of Nick Commando and Rophen Heimer), they were apparently modeled after those of Street Fighter and Fatal Fury. Nick Justice's stage strongly resembles that of Guile; Rophen Heimer's stage looks like that of Richard Meyer). In spite of this apparent "cloned stages", some stages had some degree of originality (i.e. Miyuki's stage, which included the famous Japanese Bullet Train or Kim Hoon's stage, that included the Mexican Teotihuacan's Pyramid).

Although the game never achieved a cult status among gamers, it became a curiosity and is still possible to play the game in some arcade parlors. Nostalgic gamers can even play it in their PCs, because ROMs of Fight Fever are easily available in many videogame emulators.

[edit] Characters

• Han Baedal (Ryu-like main character)
• Kim Hoon (Ken-like character)
• Miyuki (Chun-Li character)
• Chintao (Shura-based character)
• Rophen Heimer (Richard Meyer-like character)
• Golrio (E. Honda-like character)
• Nick Commando (Guile-based character; his stage resembles that of Guile)
• Master Taekuk (the boss game)
• Karate Kenji (Geese Howard-like character)

[edit] Similar games

Dragon Master: a game loosely based on Street Fighter.