The Atari Jaguar was quickly forgotten when the 32-bit consoles hit the scene. The likes of Virtua Fighter and Tekken were taking both the arcade and home markets by storm. These 3D fighters pushed gaming forward into the polygonal world. Atari decided that they wanted a tech-pushing fighting title for their 64-bit Jaguar console. This is how Fight for Life came to be. Was it the Tekken and Virtua Fighter killer they hoped it would be? Hardly.
Fight for Life (what a mess of a name that is) has you choose from a roster of eight different characters. These are people from the real world that have died, are in purgatory, and are engaged in combat purely for the entertainment of the entity known as The Gatekeeper. The catch? Each of these fighters died in the year 1995 and they each have a different fighting style at their disposal.
The roster is, for lack of a better word, weird. Atari went with a mish-mash of archetypes no normal person would care about. You have a ninja, a former army soldier, a mentally ill housewife, a former dock-hand, and more. If you think I’m making this up you’re in for a rude awakening. The rest of the fighters are a bit more traditional and includes martial artists, boxers, etc. There’s no central theme here, rather, it seems that Atari picked professions and designs out of a hat and combined them. That might sound like an exaggeration, but little makes sense here.
Moving on… now we come to the gameplay engine. If you thought the character roster was a mess then this is a trainwreck. It’s pretty typical fare; you move left and right (with the ability to sidestep into the foreground or background) and drain your opponent’s life bar with a mix of kicks, punches, and special moves. In usual fashion each character can jump unusually high (even over each other’s heads) and you can punch/kick mid-air as well.
Each character has their own set of special moves which, like Tekken and Virtua Fighter, are typically more realistic. That means you won’t be throwing fireballs or doing any dragon uppercuts here. Each character is very limited in the number of special moves that they have. This is unfortunate and makes combat more cheap and random. There’s very little skill involved. As you defeat foes in the main mode you unlock their special moves to use as your own. It’s a real shame that this system isn’t more interesting, but it’s not. The different attacks are all very boring.
Even ignoring that rather large issue Fight for Life is an absolute disaster gameplay-wise. Above all else the main problem is that the characters move sluggishly. Scratch that, they’re downright slow and clunky. Moving a few inches across the screen is an absolute chore because it feels like both characters are walking through super glue. The awkward animations only further prove this metaphor. This is not how people walk, and I’m surprised this game made it through any amount of testing or quality control.
As if that wasn’t enough the game suffers several other issues. There’s an awkward ring-out feature in place here. Normally I’m not against this sort of thing, but in this case it makes a bad game even worse. There’s an electrical fence on the edge of every stage that, upon touching it, results in instant death. This was apparently the best they could come up with. It wouldn’t be so bad but after jumping over your foe you keep facing and moving in the same direction until you push the the opposite button on d-pad. It sounds simple, but I had many needless deaths because of this.
The hit detection also suffers some serious issues. You can hit your foe even with a foot of space between both characters. It’s awkward and doesn’t help this game’s case any. The animations also don’t help; in some cases I had a difficult time telling exactly what the characters were doing. Punches and kicks more often than not look like they’re having a seizure.
I could forgive a few of these issues if it wasn’t for the fact that each and every match lasts so darn long. Most fighting games have bouts that last only a matter of seconds, but those found here feel like they aren’t over until several minutes have passed. For some weird reason the developers also thought that life-bars take up too much on-screen real estate so they’re hidden except for when damage is dealt. It makes very little sense and answers complaints that no one made, ever.
Fight for Life is one of the more graphically impressive games on the 64-bit Jaguar console. That’s true until you see the game in motion. The character models feature texture details I haven’t found in any other polygonal engine on the system. The environments are flat and feature virtually no scenery (except for the static backgrounds) but that’s not the worst offender here. The animations are laughably bad. You won’t believe how much so until you see it in motion. I suppose it fits the action well; Fight for Life is incredibly clumsy, but this is another area of the game that’s a joke.
The music is also pretty awful. The soundtrack goes for a faux rock and roll motif that screams pure 90s, but in the worst way possible. I found myself really annoyed by the music which served as a constant reminder that I was playing what was essentially shovelware. The voice overs and effects are also quite poor with low quality recordings and samples. Everything sounds a little scratchy. The Gatekeeper’s voice in particular as he announces matches is particularly cheesy.
This game is yet another great example of why Atari just couldn’t compete. It’s a clear attempt to cash in on the popularity of the popular 3D fighting games of the era, but it has no heart. Fight for Life feels like cheap shovelware even by system standards. I can’t imagine that anyone who worked on this title cared at all about it. The gameplay engine is slow, mundane, awkward, and surprisingly random. No matter how hungry you are for a fighting game Fight for Life just won’t satiate.
