Back in my younger days I remember pizza, bumper cars, and arcades machines. Fortunately there was a place in my hometown that had all three called JR's Entertainment. This place was a hotspot for childhood birthday parties, and during one such party I happened across a game that immediately grabbed my attention. This game was called Pit Fighter, and I instantly became mesmerized by its photorealistic graphics and full motion video intro. Now, by today's standards the game looks outdated, but as an 11 year old in 1990, this was really high tech. The game used photographs of actors that were then animated to look like they were fighting each other. One could argue that this had already been done with the introduction of another well-known fighting game called Mortal Kombat. However, Pit Fighter came out in 1990, while Mortal Kombat came out in 1991. History indicates that Pit Fighter was actually the inspiration for Mortal Kombat, which adds to the games significance. I know few people that can say they've played Pit Fighter in its original arcade form. Since this game was the first of its kind to use live actors in costumes to create digitized animation, having played it as a kid feels pretty significant.
GAMEPLAY:
As far as the gameplay is concerned, it's pretty straight forward. You have a punch, kick, and jump button along with various button combinations. Pressing punch and kick together will pick up your opponent while pressing punch, kick and jump together performs a super move. As a kid, I was unaware of these various strategies, so I just mashed all of the buttons and hoped for the best. I'd put in quarters, press buttons, run out of quarters, and then go home. I thought the game was a blast, and even playing it many years later I find it entertaining. There were many releases of this game on many home consoles, but the arcade version was the best by far. Here are some comparisons.
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| The original arcade version. |
ARCADE:
The arcade version was awesome. The machine itself had 3 controllers for up to 3 simultaneous players. Just press punch, kick, and jump until the red life bar of the opponent is gone and move to the next opponent. If you die, just put in more quarters and continue where you fell. When I was playing this as a kid, that's precisely what I did. I just put in money and mashed buttons until I ran out of quarters. The farthest I had ever gotten was the match right before the final boss. You had to fight two guys named Chainman Eddie that looked like they were dressed in just socks and underwear. Under certain conditions I've been knocked out in just one hit during this match. This was the "Cash Grab" stage. In other words, programmers found it necessary to ramp up the difficulty once players progressed through most of the game as a way to ensure that players would continue to put quarters in the machine. Programmers let you get so far into the game that it made you feel too committed to simply quit, so you just kept putting in money. Well, it worked for Pit Fighter because I only made to the stage right before the last boss simply because I ran out of quarters.
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| SNES version of Pit Fighter |
SUPER NINTENDO:
Pit Fighter was ported to every home console system, but the two I'm most familiar with were for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. The SNES version was not even close to as good as the arcade. Back then, the arcades were always superior to the home console versions, and this was no exception. The characters were still the same, but one big problem was the difficulty. The learning curve was too steep, and I would often die at the first match. Along with the ridiculous difficulty, you also retain the remaining life throughout the entire game. You have one life and no option to continue. The game designers took the liberty of making the sound effects, music, and voices sound nothing like the arcade. When you put bad controls, one life, and no continues into the Super Nintendo version of Pit Fighter it starts to become forgettable really fast.
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| Sega Genesis version of Pit Fighter |
SEGA GENESIS:
However, the Sega Genesis version of Pit Fighter was really fun and followed the arcade pretty well. This version was actually playable. The single biggest improvement was that you had multiple lives. This made your inevitable death much easier to stomach. Pound for pound I would say that the Sega Genesis version of Pit Fighter was the closest thing to having the true arcade game in your home. Since I've completed the arcade version many times I noticed that the Genesis version had all of the same characters, sounds and controls. I was actually able to finish the entire game my first time playing through. Aside from the obvious changes to the graphics, the game was true to the arcade in every way.
Pit Fighter haunted my childhood. I threw so many quarters at this arcade game and still never managed to defeat the final boss. Many years later, with the help of modern technology, I was able to download Pit Fighter and finally beat it. I now realize how easy this game actually was, and even though it's a game that was made in 1990 it still remains one of my top favorite beat em ups.
