Battle of the Ports

[Nu-Eclipse]

Battle of the Ports - Pit Fighter

LOL. And to think you kicked up a stink about covering Mortal Kombat? Pit Fighter's a million times worse!

[Yakumo]

Yeah I know. But I knew I could throw this one together quicker than the likes of MK because all the rounds look pretty much the same so I'd only have to playthe first 1 or 2 Total crap feast though. Man, they all play bad but some of them such as the ST, CPC, SNES and Game Boy are trully shocking with the CPC being the worst.

[Asura]

Funnily enough, PitFighter is a weird game for me.

Battle of the Ports reminds me of back when I was a kid, because like all young children I wasn't very discerning. I had long since realised, for example, that the Amiga and Arcade versions of Street Fighter 2 were "different" somehow but I had yet to understand how much worse one version was than the other. I distinctly remember playing Game Gear OutRun and really thinking it was just like the arcade. There are many games I've seen on BotP and in real life that have really made me reflect on this.

PitFighter was the first game in which I noticed the difference between an original arcade game and a port. As I said above, I'd started to become discerning enough to realise the difference between arcade games and home games, but even so, I still thought it was partially to do with the "arcade experience" affecting my judgement - the huge screens, the loud audio, the over-stimulation.

I had PitFighter for the Megadrive. It was one the first games I received for the machine, and I remember playing it loads. I really liked it, and played it a bit with my dad - he would usually play as Buzz and I'd play as Ty (I still remember Ty's special move, the kind of double-flykick he did when you pressed A+B+C).

Around that time, I went to a sea-front arcade, and saw they had PitFighter, so I decided to have a go. I was terrible at it. On the home version I think I could finish it (could it be finished? I certainly could get very far) but I remember the controls of the arcade version being very imprecise, and the huge characters/cropped view made it much harder to play.

It was the first time I remember enjoying an arcade game less than a home port, but most importantly, it was when I started to really understand how complicated and intricate videogames were. Things like camera, controls - these are things that I took for granted, just expecting them all to be the same in different games.

It made me look back at other games I liked in a totally different light, and see some of the underlying qualities that they had. Things like the clever camera logic in Super Mario World, or the subtle weight of Sonic's movement, or the character animation in Street Fighter.

It's weird, but in a way that terrible game was a really formative experience.

[Mayhem]

There is a reason why I dubbed this game ****fighter instead

[Atticus]

Reminded me of C&VG's 'Pub Fighter' April Fool's joke

[Leon Retro]

I have a vague memory of Julian Rignall saying Pit-Fighter was a game he was playing a lot in his local arcade back at the time of release. I guess the digitised graphics and gritty setting grabbed his attention, as the actual game is poor. I don't have strong memories of playing it on home systems, but I can't forget being disgusted by the SNES version.

[Team Andromeda]

Don't get the hate myself . It was a perfect Arcade game and that's simple fun for 10 of so mins and it also looked amazing back in the day . Really was impressed with the Amiga version too back in the day

[Leon Retro]

Don't get the hate myself . It was a perfect Arcade game and that's simple fun for 10 of so mins and it also looked amazing back in the day.

I don't hate it, but I definitely don't see it as a great, or even reasonable retro game. It was very much a gimmick sort of game. I think Pit-Fighter, as a concept, could work well if it were more polished and had some depth. It has gone down in the history books as very much a dud, despite some people having fond memories of the arcade version. It was released at a strange time when fighting game standards were very low. After that, in the 1990s, people got a taste of what truly satisfying Vs fighting was all about, and it really put into perspective how lame Pit-Fighter was.

[nakamura]

It was a terrible game. Just because it was short doesn't mean it was good for the arcade. It cost money to play. Good arcade games are good.

[Team Andromeda]

It was very much a gimmick sort of game.

Well quite a lot of Arcade games are gimmicks and don't know why people seem to think of PitFighter as a flop is was a Arcade smash hit and to me was more fun than the likes of DragonNinja. Plus I was quite impressed with the Gfx at the time with the scailing and digitized graphics (something I hadn't seen at the time) and fun 3 player mode . Sure it was Arcade games that I never wanted to really play in the home, but in the Arcade it was a great way to kill a few mins with my mates in my local Arcade

[Baseley09]

From my own experience with PitFighter, the graphics were great at the time, to play it was quite novel. When Guardians of the Hood landed i was thrilled! At least that was fairly playable (from memory!)

[Yakumo]

Ninja Gaiden, Shadow Warriors, Ninja Ryukenden. Whatever you want to call it, the new Battle of the Ports is out now.

[Nu-Eclipse]

The music in the intro on the Amiga version manages to make the sequence a million times more corny.

Nope, OG coin-op intro is still superior.

[Yakumo]

No way, I love the corny Amiga intro. It's screams 80's action

[BigDeadFreak]

I agree Yakumo, it's really evocative and fits the era perfectly.