Final Rage Trilogy *v1.2* (Updated January 18)

[DeusX87]

I believe this mod (and the standalone Final Rage) is a classic case of the quote "you can't please everyone".

It was either make the level orders like the originals and risk being reamed about not mixing them up, or mix them up and risk being reamed about not keeping them in the proper order. So, I picked my poison. Also, this does have some mixed up alternate routes that often branch into the other games, and it had just as many other-game branches (maybe only one fewer or so) as Rage in Time, which if you look at the larger picture, didn't have that many in the first place.

I already knew the enemy placement would be criticized, but I knew exactly what I was going for when making the mod (replicating the originals entirely with SoRR mechanics, and not much more complicated than that) and stuck with it, and I knew what fans of the original games would have expected.

I fully expected that some would appreciate it for what it is and some wouldn't, because this is exactly what happened last time. Also, though I never actually played Streetwise, this mod is Final Rage *TRI*logy. The first 3 games and nothing afterwards are the main focus.

[graylandertagger]

Well I guess I have to give you credit for making the mod as close to being like the three first games in the Final Fight series as possible. It makes it stand out from the other mods quite well because of that.

[BigDarsh]

Oh man you've did it! Downloading right now: I'm sure know you're da f*ckin' man

[Don Vecta]

Okay, time for review.


I was anxiously waiting for this mod and I wasn't sure when it was about to be released but when I saw the sudden news I was jumping like a schoolgirl. And as you could see I was the first one who rushed to download it.

I have to say this: This is the v5 of the Final Fight series. At least in structure it is: contains the 3 games, involved into a new story, intertwined in some alternate paths and the best? A special final stage with the cameos of the Metro City heroes no more no less and with a very challenging Final Fight with the new boss.

With FF1 mod I was quite please the way it was structured and the detailed style of the graphics, the enemy placement, the music choices and overall the complete recreation of the classic arcade game. FF2 and FF3 were indeed also beautifully recreated but I have a couple of gripes I'd point out, mind you, these are personal views about style that doesn't really affect too much the game experience.

1) the 224 height format. Man, i HATE those black scanlines at top and bottom. I know resizing or expanding it's a bitch but I prefer to take my time in expanding to make it look full screen... but then again, that's just me. It is probly done on purpose to keep the native aspect so it's not a real issue if this is the case. Besides, like this it's lot easier to rip and paste, lol.

2) Lack of diagonal stages. Okay, I understand that making upward diagonal stages it's kinda impossible to make on SORmaker unless you go down first then go up so the first part of the Japan stage and the Hot Dog alleyway are overruled, however, HK stage and the second part of Japan *could* have had a diagonal stage. I guess the issue here that pretty much locked the attempt was (once again) the Issue No.1 listed above (the ugly black scanlines) cuz simply you can't break those lines. *sigh*

3) Boss enemies as mooks. This is especially prominent in FF3: Southers as Dirks? Yes, I know, those dudes fit well cuz the claws and the super priority of their attacks (and their anti-airs), but putting many of those also combined with mid-tier sub-boss enemies like the Slashes as Rick make it look more difficult. Same when you put several Judos as Jo's (lol, I never expected to see such beautiful cosplayers of those ugly ass midgets Joes) it's a lot of ARGH!! I guess my only advice is to lower their lifebars the best you could. But overall, it's still playable and not really a big issue.

4) Copy/paste of Final Rage. This is, again, me just being *extremely* nitpicky. Final Rage was magnificent as it was. But this mod is trying to go into the SNES experience of Final Fight. I know FF1 for SNES got washed down a lot, but the enemy placement was different and the stages also looked different. Perhaps if it was one me, to put complete consistency in the trilogy, I'd have ripped and recreated FF1 for SNES with the same graphics, same enemy placement (probly cranked up for higher difficulties trying to make something different), perhaps the only arcade stage staying would be the Industrial Area, but I think this way it would be something different from the first Final Rage and give a new replay value of the FF1 path.

But I understand if you feel lazy, in the end, the whole work it's pretty awesome as it is.


This is me nitpicking only and, as I said, if there's a reason to do this I respect that cuz in general doesn't affect the game itself.

I did love the alternate routes to switch into the other storylines, certainly the guest appearance of the airport terminal from DD was a nice addition and lol to the Street Fighter 2 reference while switching from France to Metro City.

As I said, the new storyline in how the three final villains spill the existence of a new shady boss was well done. Especially Belger's kind advice to the heroes made me lol harder. The remixes of some of the stages are quite good but others could have been done a bit more unique, for example, as going backwards to the stopped subway that it's not in a tunnel but in outside rails, etc. But once again, me just nitpicking.

VERY well use of the wall breaking feature. I know in SORmaker it's a fucking issue cuz you must line up the characters to walk into it but you managed to make it work perfectly in most stages.

I'm glad also all the cast of FF made it... including the faggy male characters Sid and Billy (as Sydney and Billie respectively) and Leon and Robert.

I have an idea to make the Metro West side cage match don't look chopped in the end when you need to go out from it. Put a foreground wall into it (kinda like you did in the control rooms of FF3), so the enemies walk behind them and the choppiness cannot be seen.

Oh, couple of technical issues:

Stage 7-9 needs collision at the beginning. I mean, main characters float over the staircase pit. Same for stage 1-8.

Check your script after you defeat Belger: Mr. X it's mentioend there and certainly Belger is NOT Mr. X. Keep the characters in their roles.


Overall, this is a great mod and me as a Final Fight lover I'm quite pleased to see it done. Still lacks a proper ending but I guess the extra scenario made it up well. Congratulations, this is indeed an awesome mod!

[charco]

I played this mod right after trying your original FInal Rage mod for the first time last night. So far I have only taken the Final Fight 2 path so I will give my initial impressions on that.

I have to disagree with Don Vecta on the height format. I absolutely love it! It's just like the original SNES game and it actually frames the action, the health bars etc. perfectly. It gives the mod a distinctive look and differentiates it from other mods. Again, I have to disagree with Don Vecta about the lack of diagonal stages. I think what you did is a good workaround and turned out really well.

The graphics in the original games were of a high quality, so they do look great in this mod I have to say. The proportions are all correct for the SoR chars which is great as some mods suffer from this issue. This is one of the benefits of making a remake, you get consistent style of graphics throughout the entire mod. Some nice scrolling and animated background layers. Enemy placement in FF2 was better than FF arcade that's for sure. It being a console game and not designed to eat your money is of course the reason for this. The use of bosses as mooks does not really bother me as they mostly had reasonable health bars and were not too hard to take care of. I don't play on mania, so the lower difficulties are very enjoyable here. I really liked how you created a new, simple story to tie all the games together and the bonus ending was really cool with the cameos. One feature in Sormaker, and beat em ups in general, that I always loved was the heroes breaking a door/fence to move on to the next stage and this is very well implemented here. I only had one opportunity to use this feature in my mod and only wished I could have used it in more scenes. It really is awesome in this one. I haven't tried the FF mod in this trilogy version yet, so I don't know if you implemented this instead of the "Walking To" exits you used in the standalone version that I played.

Well, that was my first impression of this mod having tried both the FF route in the original mod and the FF2 route in this one. I will definitely be trying out the FF3 route next, the alt routes in each game and of course revisiting the FF1 route to see if there are any improvements there that I saw examples of in the FF2 route. I am very impressed with this mod so far, I really can't wait to try it again tonight.

[DeusX87]

Okay, time for review.


I was anxiously waiting for this mod and I wasn't sure when it was about to be released but when I saw the sudden news I was jumping like a schoolgirl. And as you could see I was the first one who rushed to download it.

I have to say this: This is the v5 of the Final Fight series. At least in structure it is: contains the 3 games, involved into a new story, intertwined in some alternate paths and the best? A special final stage with the cameos of the Metro City heroes no more no less and with a very challenging Final Fight with the new boss.

With FF1 mod I was quite please the way it was structured and the detailed style of the graphics, the enemy placement, the music choices and overall the complete recreation of the classic arcade game. FF2 and FF3 were indeed also beautifully recreated but I have a couple of gripes I'd point out, mind you, these are personal views about style that doesn't really affect too much the game experience.

1) the 224 height format. Man, i HATE those black scanlines at top and bottom. I know resizing or expanding it's a bitch but I prefer to take my time in expanding to make it look full screen... but then again, that's just me. It is probly done on purpose to keep the native aspect so it's not a real issue if this is the case. Besides, like this it's lot easier to rip and paste, lol.

2) Lack of diagonal stages. Okay, I understand that making upward diagonal stages it's kinda impossible to make on SORmaker unless you go down first then go up so the first part of the Japan stage and the Hot Dog alleyway are overruled, however, HK stage and the second part of Japan *could* have had a diagonal stage. I guess the issue here that pretty much locked the attempt was (once again) the Issue No.1 listed above (the ugly black scanlines) cuz simply you can't break those lines. *sigh*

3) Boss enemies as mooks. This is especially prominent in FF3: Southers as Dirks? Yes, I know, those dudes fit well cuz the claws and the super priority of their attacks (and their anti-airs), but putting many of those also combined with mid-tier sub-boss enemies like the Slashes as Rick make it look more difficult. Same when you put several Judos as Jo's (lol, I never expected to see such beautiful cosplayers of those ugly ass midgets Joes) it's a lot of ARGH!! I guess my only advice is to lower their lifebars the best you could. But overall, it's still playable and not really a big issue.

4) Copy/paste of Final Rage. This is, again, me just being *extremely* nitpicky. Final Rage was magnificent as it was. But this mod is trying to go into the SNES experience of Final Fight. I know FF1 for SNES got washed down a lot, but the enemy placement was different and the stages also looked different. Perhaps if it was one me, to put complete consistency in the trilogy, I'd have ripped and recreated FF1 for SNES with the same graphics, same enemy placement (probly cranked up for higher difficulties trying to make something different), perhaps the only arcade stage staying would be the Industrial Area, but I think this way it would be something different from the first Final Rage and give a new replay value of the FF1 path.

But I understand if you feel lazy, in the end, the whole work it's pretty awesome as it is.


This is me nitpicking only and, as I said, if there's a reason to do this I respect that cuz in general doesn't affect the game itself.

I did love the alternate routes to switch into the other storylines, certainly the guest appearance of the airport terminal from DD was a nice addition and lol to the Street Fighter 2 reference while switching from France to Metro City.

As I said, the new storyline in how the three final villains spill the existence of a new shady boss was well done. Especially Belger's kind advice to the heroes made me lol harder. The remixes of some of the stages are quite good but others could have been done a bit more unique, for example, as going backwards to the stopped subway that it's not in a tunnel but in outside rails, etc. But once again, me just nitpicking.

VERY well use of the wall breaking feature. I know in SORmaker it's a fucking issue cuz you must line up the characters to walk into it but you managed to make it work perfectly in most stages.

I'm glad also all the cast of FF made it... including the faggy male characters Sid and Billy (as Sydney and Billie respectively) and Leon and Robert.

I have an idea to make the Metro West side cage match don't look chopped in the end when you need to go out from it. Put a foreground wall into it (kinda like you did in the control rooms of FF3), so the enemies walk behind them and the choppiness cannot be seen.

Oh, couple of technical issues:

Stage 7-9 needs collision at the beginning. I mean, main characters float over the staircase pit. Same for stage 1-8.

Check your script after you defeat Belger: Mr. X it's mentioend there and certainly Belger is NOT Mr. X. Keep the characters in their roles.


Overall, this is a great mod and me as a Final Fight lover I'm quite pleased to see it done. Still lacks a proper ending but I guess the extra scenario made it up well. Congratulations, this is indeed an awesome mod!

And now, I shall do my best to address what was mentioned.

1. I could have done this like I did with Final Rage 1 by manually editing the maps to be full screen without distorting the pixels, but holy crap...having to do that with ALL the maps from Final Fights 2 and 3 would have taken more time and energy than I actually have, especially since I'm only one person that has to undertake everything. So, I thought it was best to just letterbox it so I could get to the main idea already.

2. I attempted diagonal stages for places that I knew could use them, but as usual because of the format of the stages (they don't go downwards in the direction the SORMaker would want them to go), it was more difficult than I expected. And on top of that, it would have taken further map editing because of the annoyingly problematic issues that diagonal stages cause in SORMaker. Next thing I know, I'm losing my hair because of the clashing problems. So, because of the already exhausting undertaking of the mod overall, I cheapened out. I guess you can say laziness also had a part in it.

3. This is actually a personal deal when it comes to my play style. I've gotten so used to having to playtest the mod constantly that I started having less and less difficulty facing down Southers and Slashes altogether, and it almost got to the point where I thought it was too easy. And after Final Rage, the Blaze clones went from being all-around threats to a minor nuisance. I may update this.

4. I realize that using the SNES Final Fight's maps would add to consistency, but since I already went to the trouble of ripping and editing the maps of the arcade version, I didn't see any reason to just rip the same maps with the only differences being less details and more bitter color palettes. The enemy placement, however, could have been different, because after playing it myself a few times, it has already overstayed its welcome because I've already played through Final Rage enough times.

The foreground wall in the West Side cage hadn't crossed my mind at all, even after all this time. At first, I could never figure out a way to fill in the rest of the stage without making the ring look ridiculous, so I left that big blank space. It annoys the hell out of me every time I see it because it just looks like part of the screen is missing.

I completely forgot about the staircases. I hadn't even noticed that while I was playing since I would immediately just run towards the enemies.

And I already caught the Mr. X reference and fixed it in Quick Patch 2. Did you miss that?

I played this mod right after trying your original FInal Rage mod for the first time last night. So far I have only taken the Final Fight 2 path so I will give my initial impressions on that.

I have to disagree with Don Vecta on the height format. I absolutely love it! It's just like the original SNES game and it actually frames the action, the health bars etc. perfectly. It gives the mod a distinctive look and differentiates it from other mods. Again, I have to disagree with Don Vecta about the lack of diagonal stages. I think what you did is a good workaround and turned out really well.

The graphics in the original games were of a high quality, so they do look great in this mod I have to say. The proportions are all correct for the SoR chars which is great as some mods suffer from this issue. This is one of the benefits of making a remake, you get consistent style of graphics throughout the entire mod. Some nice scrolling and animated background layers. Enemy placement in FF2 was better than FF arcade that's for sure. It being a console game and not designed to eat your money is of course the reason for this. The use of bosses as mooks does not really bother me as they mostly had reasonable health bars and were not too hard to take care of. I don't play on mania, so the lower difficulties are very enjoyable here. I really liked how you created a new, simple story to tie all the games together and the bonus ending was really cool with the cameos. One feature in Sormaker, and beat em ups in general, that I always loved was the heroes breaking a door/fence to move on to the next stage and this is very well implemented here. I only had one opportunity to use this feature in my mod and only wished I could have used it in more scenes. It really is awesome in this one. I haven't tried the FF mod in this trilogy version yet, so I don't know if you implemented this instead of the "Walking To" exits you used in the standalone version that I played.

Well, that was my first impression of this mod having tried both the FF route in the original mod and the FF2 route in this one. I will definitely be trying out the FF3 route next, the alt routes in each game and of course revisiting the FF1 route to see if there are any improvements there that I saw examples of in the FF2 route. I am very impressed with this mod so far, I really can't wait to try it again tonight.

I await any criticisms you may have. You seem to be one of the people that fully appreciate the mod for what it is, so I know you'll be more fair about it. Not to say that other criticisms don't count, though.

[Don Vecta]

Hey hey! I resent that. My review was mostly things that would be nicer if I go nitpicky, that's why I said to ignore my comments overall since I was just going to go deeper, but in general I think it is fine as it is, don't get me wrong. You don't need to change anything if you don't want to.

[charco]

Completed the FF3 straight route and had an absolute blast yet again. Door smashing for the win!! Again, lovely stages, enemy placement is nice and the bonus stages are good fun. This is becoming one of my favourites

[DeusX87]

On a little side note, it is ridiculously hard to find remixes of any of the Final Fight tunes from 2 and 3, but I just found a straight badass remix of the Hong Kong stage theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwVd5XH5SQI&list=FLIiyXKu6nw0XBIRP1GsrTvw&feature=mh_lolz

[realnabarl]

You missed an invincible item here.


An invincible item could be replaced with pepper s. IMO. What you did in FF2 Spain stage is one 1UP, it is better a lot than an invincible item IMO.

And you replaced chicken in the bar of stage 2 of FF3 with apple, mistake or some special purpose?


There's a chicken here (only in alternate route), in straight route here's a diamond.
In the next scene food is on the mid part (alternate route), in straight route food is on the left side of last screen.

[DeusX87]

When I first saw the street after the sewers, I immediately assumed it was exactly like the other one, so I didn't change or add anything (though I did remove the alternate route that would have just sent you even farther backwards).

However, I'm going to include these things in another update that will also add and change quite a few more things. After regaining my sanity from this huge undertaking, I'm starting to feel motivated again.

Also, I used an apple because that item would be random. In my reference playthrough of FF3, I got a curry plate instead, which is equivalent to an apple.

[BigDarsh]

I really liked Final Rage mod, despite some mooks/bosses do not fit the original game, I must admit this one is much better. I've played about 8 time with different pathes, charaters and even settings; and it is really great. A great idea was to replace Andore by Ash, since Abadede is a much tougher opponent than Andore.
Putting Barbon for Callman is a weak call, I think R.Bear would fit better. Using Souther as Dirk can be a pain in the ass some times but all in all, you've did great work.

I just wanna thank you again for all the fun I get from playing this mod.
PS: the last stage is a bit messy but very fun too

[realnabarl]

1) the 224 height format. Man, i HATE those black scanlines at top and bottom. I know resizing or expanding it's a bitch but I prefer to take my time in expanding to make it look full screen... but then again, that's just me. It is probly done on purpose to keep the native aspect so it's not a real issue if this is the case. Besides, like this it's lot easier to rip and paste, lol.

It's not 224 height format only, the original game has black bars already. It's 200 height for FF2 and 190 for FF3.

[Largamon]

Hi everyone. I've been away for awhile from forum, but I played this recently along with some other exciting new mods. Final Rage Trilogy is solid work, but I have one big issue with it: I can't complete the mod! I tried twice with different routes, but after defeating the final boss

Spoiler: show

(yes, that very final Hive Mind robot in fenced last stage when it becomes available)

the mod just freezes. Various animations (background, main character etc.) still go through their cycles, but main character can't be moved and there's no transition to stage clear or whatever should come next.

I've now come across similar bug in two hub-based mods, other being that infamous Santa Luna route in H.U.N.T.E.R. I talked about extensively. DeusX87 and Don Vecta, maybe you could exchange information to find the common nominator in your mods that might cause this problem.

I didn't notice anything problematic aside from this. Good work.

[DeusX87]

The game is supposed to end immediately after the final-final boss. However, I've never had such a problem.

I keep thinking it's because of copying the patched files over the original files, as I remember people had experienced other bugs and errors just from pasting over the original (with Rage in Time). If it's not that, I can't possibly figure out what else it could be.