Guy - 0:00
Lucia Morgan - 0:15
Dean - 0:32
Mike Haggar - 0:51

Final Fight 3 (Final Fight Tough in Japan) is the third entry in Capcom's scrolling beat 'em up series, which came out in 1995. As with the second game, Final Fight 3 only had a home console release rather than starting as an arcade game.

Final Fight 3 features 4 playable characters, including Guy and Haggar from the original game, plus 2 new teammates Lucia and Dean. Guy and Lucia went on to appear as playable characters in the Street Fighter series, while Haggar is also seen in Saturday Night Slam Masters.

The combat system has been upgraded to include rear grappling moves, running attacks, and super moves. The player can access secret rooms, alternate routes, and bonus stages by using enemies to break down doors or other objects.

Despite Final Fight 1 being a hugely influential beat 'em up, it seems that Final Fight 3 is more derivative of earlier games in the genre like Streets Of Rage 3. This is because Streets Of Rage 3 also has alternate routes which require the player to break down doors. Also, both games have a stage where the player must stop a bulldozer. The new character Dean in Final Fight 3 has electric attacks and a long reach, making him reminiscent of Dr. Zan from Streets Of Rage 3. Dean's body slam move and long range grabbing ability appear to have, in turn, inspired Dr. Zan's apprentice Floyd from Streets Of Rage 4.

Final Fight 3 allows players to fight alongside a computer-controlled co-op partner. This is an excellent addition to the series, and something which is lacking in Streets Of Rage (other than the unofficial Streets Of Rage Remake).

Final Fight 3 uses a slightly different grappling system to Streets Of Rage. The player must press down and punch to switch to the other side of the opponent, rather than pressing jump to vault over them, as in Streets Of Rage. While this feels awkward at first, it has the benefit of allowing the wrestler character Haggar to perform both jumping throws, and switch grappling positions. By contrast, Max the wrestler from Streets Of Rage 2 can only jump with the grabbed enemy, but has to approach them from behind to establish a rear grapple. Haggar is also able to walk around whilst holding enemies, which is useful when planning to use enemies as projectiles.

Final Fight 3 also uniquely grants every character 2 rear grab attacks, which include a striking attack for all characters except Haggar. Dean's rear pummeling attack can strangely be cancelled into his front throw.

The super moves in the game can be performed by filling a super meter, which is done by landing successful attacks on enemies. When the super meter is full, the player has a limit time to initiate their super move by entering a character-specific command. Every character apart from Lucia has a super move which is performed whilst grappling an enemy. Lucia has a free-standing kick combo as her super move. The game is very lenient when recognising command inputs for super moves, and it is easy to use them by accident. However, the command for Lucia's move is counter-intuitive, and not well-suited to a beat 'em up game, as the player must press down twice which moves her towards the foreground.

Final Fight 3 generally has a good variety of grappling moves. However, Guy and Lucia's shoulder throw are perhaps too similar. I would have given Lucia a Tomoe Nage instead. Haggar could have had even more wrestling moves, given his appearance in the Saturday Night Slam Masters series. I noticed that his super move just recycles animations from his normal throws, which makes it less interesting. However, I assume this was done to save on cartridge space. While I miss Haggar's vertical suplex from Final Fight 2, his gorilla press throw is more practical for targeting other enemies and background objects. I do like Haggar's spinning piledriver, Izuna drop (inverted piledriver), and back drop / belly-to-back suplex.

My main complaint with Final Fight 3 is that the game is presented in a letterbox format, due to having an aspect ratio which is shorter than standard 4:3 displays. This is likely due to hardware limitations of the SNES, including processing power, resolution, and cartridge space. This is one example of where the SEGA Genesis could be considered to be better than the SNES.

Overall, I think that Streets Of Rage 3 is a superior game, due to having smoother gameplay, better stage design, catchier music, more animated bosses, and unlockable characters. However, Final Fight 3 is a solid beat 'em up game, which is definitely worth playing if you like the genre.

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