A rough game born out of a rough time at Atari
LOCR Producer: Fight for Life is where my Jaguar fighting series really ends. This is the last title ever officially published for the Atari Jaguar and the last game Atari produced before being liquidated.
Fight for Life copped it really hard when it was released and admittedly, it doesn’t compete with the competition like Virtua Fighter from Sega or Tekken from Namco, but considering Atari’s position at the time (financially and in the market place), Fight for Life is about as good as it was going to get. This game feels solid, I haven’t found any jarring bugs, frame rate is consistent and it feels more balanced than Kasumi Ninja and Ultra Vortek. I never wanted to make excuses for the Atari Jaguar and any of it’s games, it’s obvious it was trumped in every way by the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation, it was a suffering console and I was just really stoked that we got a 3D fighting title for the Jaguar before Atari closed its doors.
Fight for Life was born at an incredibly turbulent time at Atari and it shows. There’s actually a Fight for Life BETA version floating around which is considered to be a much more polished product. Turns out that for whatever reason Atari were withholding payments, and the programmer for Fight for Life withheld the latest version. It’s a real shame that Fight for Life was crippled in that respect, but we still got a solid beat ‘em up with combo’s, a healthy move list and a bit of story with an ultimate showdown and a twist.
If you’re looking for as game that shows off what the system can do, Fight for Life is a good start but you may want to consider something a little flashier; Skyhammer, Doom, Alien vs Predator.
