GALAXY FIGHT

Review Introduction:

Galaxy Fight is Sunsoft's first Neo Geo fighter. The storyline has something to do with a divine being called Felden Crais, who is supposed to be more powerful than anything or anyone else. It's not that interesting, but regardless, you don't need a strong plotline in a fighting game to make it great (although it can be a big plus), but what does matter is good gameplay. Unfortunately, Galaxy Fight doesn't deliver enough of that vital ingredient, not by a long shot.

Gameplay: 🕹️

Perhaps I have been spoilt by some of the fantastic Neo Geo and Capcom beat 'em up games that have been released in the past few years, but Galaxy Fight feels like a very old school fighter, even for a 1995 game. There aren't any super bars/moves, just standard special moves like in the original Street Fighter II games. On top of this, the arenas do not have any corners and stretch on infinitely (much like in Tekken), which means that you won't be cornering people to do your combos on them. The infinite arenas thing might have seemed like a good idea, but in this game it doesn't really help at all.

Unlike Sunsoft's excellent Waku Waku 7, the characters in GF don't really have much personality and I couldn't really care a less about them myself. I know I said that I didn't think storyline adds too much to fighters, but you do at least need a strong line-up of quality characters, and again this game does not deliver. Many of the characters are just plain weird looking (see G.Done) and others are just a bit too generic, like the "Dragon Punch" characters Rolf and Kazuma. Kazuma is probably my favorite character, although even he is just your average Ninja guy.

Graphics and Sound: 👾🔊

Graphically, Galaxy fight is quite a mixed bag. Although I don't like the character design, some of the stages are quite well done and use the Neo Geo's "raster effects" a lot. Gunter's stage has nice reflections in the water, and Musafar's has a nice rain effect. All stages use LOTS of parallax scrolling too. The one other plus point is the games introduction sequence, which as I mentioned, doesn't show any of the games plotline, but is very pretty all the same.

The music and sound effects are a bit of a mixed bag too. Most of the music sounded to me like it was just made solely for the purpose of being noisy enough to attract peoples attention in a busy arcade. It succeeds in that goal, but while sitting playing it at home without any other noise to distract my attention, the music didn't do much for me at all. The only piece of music I liked a little was Kazuma's, which is kind of a mysterious techno-ish tune.

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Overall: 📊

Reading the FAQ for this game, I can see that the author of that liked the game a lot, and I've spoken to other people who enjoyed it. I have to go out on a limb and say that I didn't enjoy Galaxy Fight too much at all. The game is flawed in my opinion, and could have done with a lot more work to make it a better game. It does show some promise in a few areas, but then it falls flat on its backside because of the other parts that are lacking. At least Sunsoft learnt from their mistakes and went on to make the fantastic Waku Waku 7, which is truly a great game, and one of the most unique and fun fighting games that the Neo Geo has. Galaxy Fight, on the other hand, fails to shine in the overcrowded Neo Geo beat 'em up market.

My advice: Try it, as you may like it, but I'd really go for Waku Waku 7 instead.