Final Fight CD

Final Fight can be played by up to two players simultaneously. Before the game begins, the player chooses between the three main characters: Haggar, Cody and Guy. Each has his own fighting style and attributes. Health gauges are displayed for both player and enemy characters.

The controls for Final Fight consist of an eight-way joystick and two buttons, one each for attacking and jumping. By entering different combinations of joystick moves and button presses, the player can perform a variety of attacks:

The game is set in a fictional city on the Atlantic coast in the United States named Metro City, analogous with New York City. According to the game's intro, in the 1990s, or 1989 in the Japanese version, the city's crime rate reached alarming levels, but since the election of pro wrestler turned politician Mike Haggar as the new Mayor, Metro City was changed and cleaned up drastically. Under his term, Haggar managed to suppress the crime rate of the city to its lowest points.

While the citizens of Metro City were thankful for Haggar's hard work in curbing crime, the Mad Gear Gang, who had served as the dominant criminal organization of Metro City, would not go down so easily. Under the leadership of the crooked businessman Belger, the group attempted to bribe Haggar with a large payoff to keep him from going after them, to which Haggar refused. Still determined to bring Haggar under their rule like the last mayor before him, Mad Gear proceeded to kidnap his daughter Jessica and create further unrest among the citizens.

The game was designed by Akira Nishitani, and produced by Yoshiki Okamoto. When coming up with the game's concept, Okamoto cited the arcade game Double Dragon II: The Revenge (1988) as his basis for Final Fight. The game was originally shown at trade shows under the title of Street Fighter '89. According to Okamoto, the sales division of Capcom originally requested a Street Fighter sequel, so his team decided to promote Final Fight as a Street Fighter sequel at trade shows (going as far to refer to one of the main characters as a "former Street Fighter"). The title was changed to Final Fight before its official release after feedback from operators stating that the game was nothing like Street Fighter.

According to the developers, they were originally planning to have Ryu and Ken Masters from the original Street Fighter as the playable protagonists, but that idea was scrapped for a new plot and new settings, involving the kidnapping of an attractive young woman by a city gang. Capcom's president wanted the team to develop the game as if it was a film, so he made the team watch a number of films. Nishitani's team then approached the "planning and design as if it were a movie."

In Japan, Game Machine listed Final Fight on their January 15, 1990 issue as being the second-most-successful table arcade cabinet of the month. It went on to be the highest-grossing arcade game of 1990 in Japan (according to the annual Gamest charts), as well as Japan's second-highest-grossing arcade game of 1991 (just below Street Fighter II).

Overseas, the game had a successful launch in North America and Europe. In the United States, it was a blockbuster hit, becoming the top-grossing new video game on the RePlay arcade charts in February 1990, and then the top-grossing software conversion kit for eight months in 1990, from March to April, then from June to October, and then December. During November and December, weekly coin drop earnings averaged $183.50 per kit. It ended the year as America's highest-grossing arcade conversion kit of 1990. Final Fight sold a total of 30,000 arcade units worldwide.

Final Fight was followed by a few sequels. The total sales of the Final Fight series have totaled 3.2 million units for home systems.

The Super Famicom version of the game is a key element in the plot of the manga Hi Score Girl and its Netflix anime adaptation.