I don't even believe in blogs

Blogging's not quite in the same area as fucken MySpace in my mind--a strange place for kids and netspeak and cliques I'll never have enough energy to penetrate--but I'll give it a shot. The big problem is it seems every website out there has a blog-space, which means deciding which site should get what efforts.

Everyone's putting together their 2007 Hopefull lists, but I've been too damn sick for that. I'll get to it soon, though. What I will talk about though, is an oldie that I played through again this morning.




Final Fight is often considered really, really fondly--hell, I've always considered myself a fan. It was great in the arcades, and the SNES version was terrific. But Final Fight has never been as good as Double Dragon, a fact which only stood out harsher as I played through the whole game.

It was definitely an arcade game, in that it's all about stealing your quarters away as fast as it possibly can. In the latter half of the levels you can burn through a life in under a minute (that god-damned fire in the factory level, for starters), which is accepted in arcades, and moreso when you're doing it with a friend. But sweet Jesus is it such lazy, pathetic design in retrospect.

It doesn't help that you've barely got any moves at your disposal in the game. It's seriously slim-pickin's going on here, but it's fast, at least. In Double Dragon I had to learn techniques to survive--nothing like luring Abobo in and knocking his bald-ass down with an elbow. And then things like Super Double Dragon really raised the stakes with an actual block/counter move that lead to an infinitely satisfying move-set of grabs. Streets of Rage also featured a fantastic grapple system and deep moves. Final Fight really doesn't stand the test of time like either of those series' can.

I know there's people that'll mention they hope Final Fight gets onto XBLA, but I hope it never does, honestly. While some online co-op will be fun for an hour, the game just doesn't hold up well enough to warrant the efforts. The news/rumour is Double Dragon is hitting XBLA, though, and I'm really, really hoping that's true.

My point to all this? Not much other than I loves me some brawlers, the long-forgotten genre.