 Here's an ambitious title made back in 1992 by Culture Brain for Super Nintendo called Ultimate Fighter. No, this game doesn't have anything to do with UFC, although if it helps you to imagine the main character here as Mark Coleman or Ken Shamrock or whoever, then knock yourself out. This game is part of the Hyro-No-Ken series, which started back in the mid-80s with the arcade game The Shanghai Kid, and continued onto the NES with games like Flying Warriors and Flying Dragon the Secret Scroll. Ultimate Fighter is a really interesting game for a lot of reasons, especially in that it blends together different genres to create one cohesive playthrough. Well, kind of. That's what it tries to do anyway, and Developer Culture Brain has a history of that, dating back to their Super Chinese series, known in the US as Little Ninja Brothers, Ninja Boy and later Super Ninja Boy, which combined typical beat-em-up action with RPG elements. But the gameplay was a bit clunky and the presentation was a tad rough around the edges. Ultimate Fighter is in the same boat. This game sounds awesome on paper. It starts out as a 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up a la Ninja Warriors, before you reach a certain point in the level, and the game transitions to a one-on-one fight. Not only that, but the controls also switch from using A to jump to using up, like most fighting games. So that's cool. In the normal story mode, that's how the game proceeds through its five long levels, but there's another way to play through this one, listed as animation mode for some reason. If you play through the game this way, the side-scrolling action remains the same, but the one-on-one fights are turn-based battles with menus and everything. There's other interesting stuff here too, like being able to duck into these doors to get health replenishments, and you can unlock other characters as you progress through the game, although you can only use them at a certain time. There's also a two-player versus tournament mode featuring eight different characters you can play as, as well as a straight-on one-on-one fighting mode. Plus the guy on the cover looks like Jose Canseco. But as you can see, you can have all the great ideas in the world, but if the execution is sloppy, then those ideas just won't matter. You folks watching can all see the footage here. I mean, the game just plays very sluggishly in every aspect. It's choppy as hell, and the frame rate and sprite animation really struggle. The music and sound design are also pretty uninspired. Here, take a look at Ninja Warriors, another 2D beat-em-up. Look at the difference. I mean, by comparison, Ultimate Fighter feels like you're playing Ninja Warriors on half speed. To be fair, though, the fighting mode really tries, and there's lots of stuff to consider when fighting. For instance, there's a struggle meter that will appear when you're down to give you an opportunity to grapple your opponent as you get back up. There's a rush attack that you can activate if you hit a series of consecutive hits that turns all of your attacks into crazy special attacks, just by pressing Y. And that green meter you see below your health meter is referred to as a KO meter. You fill it by, you know, destroying people, but it also fills up by successfully blocking or dodging enemy attacks. Once the meter is full, you can perform your special move. What that move is depends on what game mode you're in. If you're in the regular side-scrolling mode, you'll shoot fireballs along with your punches, which look suspiciously like Hadoken fireballs. If the KO meter fills up during a one-on-one fight, you can press YB and up all at the same time to do some kind of crazy kick. I also have to mention the story here, because this game is just, I don't even know. A demon named Dargon from the Dark Dimension. Wow, that's a hell of an alliteration. He's hell-bent on destroying the Flying Warriors. That's who this Rick guy is a part of. And somehow this involves a fighting tournament that he has to win to get back some artifacts like a sacred sword and a secret scroll of some kind. And it all takes place in the mystical faraway land of Miami. I wonder if that's Miami, Florida, or Miami, Ohio. Oh, and I should probably mention that in the middle of some levels, you somehow warp into another dimension and turn into a guy that's fighting with air traffic controller lights. I have no idea what's happening here. Maybe it's explained in the manual or in earlier games in the series or something. This is also the only time in the game that you can switch to play as a different character. So yeah, as you can see, Ultimate Fighter is a completely crazy concept with an even crazier story with all sorts of nonsense going on. And I have to admit, I have a bit of a soft spot for this game. I really like that it swung for the fences and tried to do something really ambitious for its time. But the actual gameplay here just feels too sloppy to give it that high of a recommendation. What's even weirder is that culture brain doubled down on this game, producing a turbo version of Ultimate Fighter that stayed in Japan with the aim being to speed up gameplay, but that version just left me even more confused because the difference is marginal. It didn't really make enough of a difference for me to recommend that game either. Still, if you're interested in super ambitious games, then give Ultimate Fighter a try. It's not close in quality to most fighting games or beat'em ups, but it's still a really interesting experiment, if nothing else. Alright, I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.