Fatal Fury (series) - Gameplay

Gameplay

The main fighting game feature that the original Fatal Fury was known for was the two-plane system. Characters would fight from two different planes, and by stepping between the planes, attacks could be dodged with ease. Later games dropped the two-plane system, replacing it with a complex system of dodging including everything from simple half second dodges into the background to a three plane system. Characters often had moves that could attack across the two planes, attack both planes at once, or otherwise attack characters attempting to dodge.

Later Fatal Fury games experimented with various mechanic changes: "Ring-outs", where a character loses the round if the character is thrown into the edges of the fighting backdrop; single-plane backdrops, where the element of dodging is eliminated altogether causing moves that sent opponents to the opposite plane to do collateral damage. The most successful of these gimmicks were the Deadly Rave and Just Defend. The Deadly Rave was a super combo used by several characters, where after execution, a player had to press a preset series of buttons with exact timing for the entire combo to execute. The Just Defend was a type of protected block in which players regain lost life, did not wear down the player's guard crush meter and removed all block stuns making combo interruptions smoother.