Final Fight appears to be selling point of Final Fight: Double Impact. After all, Final Fight is in the game’s title. Magic Sword was tacked on after and picked over Forgotten Worlds and Black Tiger.
But, Magic Sword is probably the game you’ll spend more time with. It takes around an hour to clothesline through Metro City. Magic Sword with 50 floors to climb is longer and has more secrets to discover. When it was a quarter eating arcade game I didn’t spend time searching for shortcuts or invisible treasure chests. With unlimited continues you can calmly (well, as calm as a bear fighting barbarian can be) explore the tower. The reward for hunting all the treasures? Getting your score on the online leaderboards.
There are other bonuses for Capcom fans too. When you play through Magic Sword and Final Fight you unlock concept art, fan art, and an Udon comic where Street Fighter and Final Fight crossover. Achievement-like messages pop up on the bottom of the screen and explain how you can earn these digital goodies. Many goals just require players to get a certain score or complete a level quickly.
Proper Games, developers of Flock, went to great lengths to preserve the feel of playing these games at an arcade. Just look at the virtual arcade cabinet. Don’t worry, it’s optional like the other visual filters.
The best part of Final Fight: Double Impact is the simulated arcade experience. At any time, in either game, a random player can jump in your game over the Internet. It’s reminiscent of a stranger walking up and dropping a quarter in. You can turn this feature off, but it’s a well thought out addition. During the pre-release weeks there weren’t many games to join. The ones I silently logged on to were lag free. This may be because Final Fight: Double Impact uses GGPO netcode or because there weren’t many people on PSN pre-launch. The two games I logged onto today didn’t have any latency issues, though, so the online play looks pretty good.