Introduction

SNK had a fighting game in development in 1989, but it wouldn't be until 1991 when it was actually released. The game was known as Fatal Fury, and it unfortunately came out after the mega hit that was Street Fighter II The World Warrior. And anyone with half a brain could tell which game was better -whilst Fatal Fury had some decent ideas like the planes system and CO-OPERATIVE MULTI PLAYER, it quite simply sucked in every other department compared to Capcom's game.

And even though this was a fact, it didn't seem to stop people from playing it which led to sequels (Which were actually good) and other spin offs, including what we have here: an anime based on it. According to Wikipedia's page for this, it was a TV special originally broadcast very late on in 1992 in Japan, and wasn't dubbed into English for other countries until 1994. It's also the shortest of that Fatal Fury animes, at just under 46 minutes.

Surprisingly though, this isn't actually that bad at all and is certainly superior to the actual game in terms of enjoyment. It's short running time doesn't hamper it from delivering plenty of action and fights, fleshing out the personalities and back stories of the characters and staying pretty faithful to the game's storyline aside from having a new character, Lily, and having her in doesn't ruin it. Almost everything you could want is in place, from Geese being made out as the ruthless man he is to Joe giving Raiden what he deserves. Not sure about Andy's rash behaviour though, but at least that gets changed in the sequel.

I probably enjoyed this more than I should of but it doesn't help that people on the Internet say that it sucks compared to the other two, but I liked it and that's what matters. Whilst not the best video game based anime out there, Fatal Fury is still perfectly decent and since most versions of it also come with the sequel it's a fine watch.