Pit-Fighter (SNES) review ""Blood Sport" it ain't..."

If I made a list of ten most influential games in my life, Pit-Fighter on the SNES would be there. For it's thanks to this game that I learned that awful games really do exist. The innocent view I once bore of games like Deadly Towers and Demon Sword turned rabid, their flaws now more apparent, and it got so I couldn't even look at them anymore.

I had hoped that the SNES iteration of Pit-Fighter would resurrect the feel of playing the arcade version: mashing buttons while my photographic opponents writhed in pain, grabbing weapons like knives and bludgeoning/stabbing all suckas, grabbing drug-like power ups and becoming a super warrior. It was like attending a black market brawl without having to pay for my ticket in a back alley or look over my shoulders for the authorities.

But the home version?

I popped that bad boy in my SNES and picked Ty. He was a kick boxer, and therefore awesome. My first opponent was a man with a black bag over his head named The Executioner. Ty greeted him with a stupid pose that took five seconds to execute. The Executioner, on the other hand, immediately gunned for my fighter--psycho-froth oozing from his mask--and tore into him while he was frozen in a display of flashy idiocy...

He nailed me first with an axe handle smash, following it up with kicks to the kidneys while I laid on the ground. I got back up and mashed a few buttons only to be knocked down before my first punch could even register. Executioner forced me back against the crowd, a gang of vaguely human peach-colored figures that moved in two different frames. They looked more phantasmal and hellish than real. My chances were grim pressed between them and Executioner's sweaty trunk. Nothing I did in regards to attacking, blocking, moving mattered. The Executioner's attacks were devastating and mine were paltry, assuming they even landed or were registered.

After pulverizing me for a minute straight, he applied his dreaded finishing move: humping the air next to my unconscious character. So vigorously did he hump that air that the color drained from my body. Even as my gray husk laid there, Executioner continued to make the empty space next to me his bitch.

I sighed but didn't count myself out. That was only round one and-

Titanic imposing red letters on the screen:

G A M E O V E R

My hopes weren't dashed. I thought I would just contin-

Then came the title screen. There are no continues in Pit-Fighter and only once chance to win it all. You have to brawl a near-perfect game with faulty physics serving as your fighting style.



I spent most of my allowance renting this game for the weekend. The world of gaming now seemed like a cold, harsh place where developers didn't care what their consumers experienced.

I tried my hand at SNES Pit-Fighter again years later, thinking maybe I just sucked as a kid. The effects were much the same, except that I found the only method of victory was to mash and pray. You had to hope that your one or two semi-effective moves work for an entire match. It was a gamble, but it was the only method I'd found to defeat The Executioner. By the end of the match, I had less than half of my life left and The Executioner was the one laying on the ground sans coloration. This was after about thirty or so tries, playing for an hour.

The next battle started and I was ready to mash the buttons again, but the brief ray of hope I had dissipated when I realized that my life didn't replenish even a bit since the last fight.

You have to beat this broken fighting game on one life with little to no life restoration. No fun can be found between the ridiculous challenge and faulty gameplay. There's nothing, not a single thing, redeeming about this title. Pit-Fighter feels like it was slapped together in a few hours and marketed without any testing or care for the consumer. It's an experience that will leave naïve gamers jaded. Yes, Virginia, there are awful video games.

Community review by JoeTheDestroyer (May 12, 2011) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.