SOLITARY FIGHTER

Developer: taito Year: 1991 Genre: Fighting

Here’s a fighting game which hit arcades around the same time as Street Fighter II – and when you compare the two, it’s easy to see why Capcom’s game is the one that people remember. Solitary Fighter is the sequel to Violence Fight, and like its predecessor pits you against a single opponent per round, who must be pummelled into a pulp with your fists and feet. Sometimes you’ll have freedom of movement around an arena as in Pit-fighter, and you can be attacked by knife-wielding women and a bottle-lobbing crowd.

At other times, you’re strictly limited to a 2D plane of battle.

In either case, the game is unappealing. Characters are bland and have dumb names like Lick Joe, and the fighting is utterly devoid of skill and technique. Winning a game doesn’t feel rewarding, unless you like bad voice clips and inexplicable winning screens. Unlike its predecessor, Solitary Fighter never ended up on the Taito Legends compilations, presumably because they’d have ended up banned under the Geneva Conventions.