Arcade Archives: Violence Fight

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This week's Arcade Archives release is... Violence Fight (Taito, 1989)

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Only the Japanese ROM is included, although I don't think there's any regional differences anyway beyond the Winners Don't Do Drugs screen, the intro is still in English. No Preference Settings this time!

Rather than explain the plot myself, I will simply give you the game's introductory text verbatim:

In the early part of 1950's in the USA, a game called "Violence Fight"was in vogue among mafia, reckless drivers and general businessmen.
The "Violence Fight" was the game to struggle for "No. 1 Quarreler" with fighters who were gathered from all parts of the USA, speaking boastingly of their strength.
And of course a lot of winning money as well as the honor were given to the "Winner".
Here in a downtown in L.A., a young fighter "Bat" and his manager "Blinks" seek for the winning money eagerly.
As a matter of fact, can Bat take the No. 1 place of the USA?

Did you get all that? Good.

Released a bit before Atari's similar Pit-Fighter, Violence Fight is a one-on-one fighter that adds in scrolling brawler-style movement, letting you move in and out of the screen (well, in the arenas that let you- some are strictly on a 2D plane!) as you and your opponent try to knock seven bells out of each other. There's no rules here, so grab crates and barrels and lob them at your enemy, do whatever it takes to win! You've got three buttons- Punch, Kick and Jump- with mashing P or K for extra attacks, P+J and K+J for even more moves and P+K to duck and avoid your enemy's blows. There's even bonus rounds where you fight a tiger (good luck with that, that tiger's got your number). Can you become the No. 1 Quarreler?!

Violence Fight is a lot. it's not the most graceful video game ever made- movement is odd and stiff, hit boxes are more of a suggestion than anything else, and the computer begins to get real rough with you about three stages in- but it's one of those Taito games that tries to be more 'serious' than their cutesy games but ends up being unintentionally hilarious. The intro is one thing, but you have fighters with names like LICK JOE and BAD BLUE (yes, they spell his name wrong in the intro), comic-style onomatopoeia during the fight that you've never seen like DOGON and GOGOON, post-fight victory screens with goofy music and phrases like SAMMY YOU! and CAMON BOY!... It's very silly and charming. It's also a funny game to play in two-player as you just wail on each other with impunity. It's not a game I'm like a massive fan of- it's from that awkward teething phase of fighting games where the standards hadn't been set just yet- but it has its fans and, a bit like Growl, it's got a lot of personality, and that's not something you can say about every arcade game!

The main thing I have to point out here is that an updated version of this game, Solitary Fighter, has already been out via Arcade Archives for a good while now, and while there are many differences between the two- a completely different UI, a knife lady who can run into the arena to cause problems and more pointed out in the Hamster stream at 3:16:20, plus Solitary Fighter has a Preference Setting to tighten up the controls missing from this version of Violence Fight- I imagine Violence Fight was released for completeness, it's weird to have one and not the other. Also, Solitary Fighter was not officially released in Japanese arcades, and so remained a Western exclusive until the ACA version, so perhaps Hamster wanted to make sure Japanese players could play the Violence Fight they remember from the arcades? As a result, you might want to try that one before you go looking for more quarrels.