90’s wiki: Pit Fighter
Pitfighter was the revolutionary arcade game that paved the way for the great 90s fad Street Fighter II, as well as Mortal Kombat, Tekken and many others, by taking the best elements from existing beat ‘em ups like Double Dragon (weapons) and International Karate+ (3 player gaming) and mixing them up in a 3D environment. The biggest innovation came in the graphics department where live actors were filmed performing the movements of the characters against a blue screen and the subsequent footage was then digitised. This was a first for the time and was quite a contrast to the Nintendo-esque cartoon-style graphics that were the norm in 1990.
Innovation was the mantra of this game. You could pick up weapons like barrels, knives and bar stools to use against your opponents, but you also had to be wary of the crowd who would invariably step into the pit and stab you or throw knives at you. The fact that it was the only three-player fighting game around, and had a tag team mode, grudge matches and you could deliver an array of taunts to your opponent made this game totally unique.
Graphics and innovation aside the gameplay was pretty good too. Though perhaps not as fast or fluid as later fighting games, it still had a number of plus points. For the first time combos and special moves could be delivered – a feature which would be a crucial part of the Street Fighter franchise – and players could move up and down to sidestep opponents attacks, a key development in the later Tekken series. The three individual players Ty, Kato and Buzz had their own unique moves and characteristics which lent a bit of an Enter the Dragon feel to the game, although if it is based on any movie it would have to be classic Van Damme foreign legion flick A.W.O.L.
Trivia
Was originally made for the primitive Atari 7800 console but the prototype never saw the light of day.
Clips
Arcade footage
90s Guy says
This game was awesome when it first came out! The graphics were unbelievable, you could really see the gore close up. I kind of expected every game to be digitised after this but sadly it wasn’t to be and the technique was only used sporadically over the next few years, mainly because in the post Street Fighter II era consoles killed the arcades off and consoles just couldn’t replicate the graphics of their bigger brothers. Pitfighter is probably the best example of a what happens when a coin-op conversion goes wrong, the console, ST and Amiga games were totally shit.
Links
Pitfighter 2 – Site which lobbys for the release of a sequel
Popularity: 27% [?]
Posted: September 5th, 2008 under 90's wiki, Computer games, Video.
Tags: 90s, arcade games, Atari, Pitfighter