Fatal Fury 3 has four different endings, and half of them don't work in the non-Japanese versions of the game. Yep, there's a 50% chance if you'd played this through to the end you could end up causing the machine to reset, or worse, causing it to freeze up entirely. The Japanese version doesn't have any issues, these problems arise when the game's language is set to anything other than Japanese.
Arcade Neo Geo MVS endings
Ending 1 |
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The worst ending, and possibly the most difficult to get? You have to be playing really badly to see this, which means getting the lowest fighting level grades as possible. To do this you want to be winning via time overs or little time left on the clock, and also taking a load of damage every round. I've heard you also need to lose a round to Yamazaki the first time you fight him in the game. If you manage it, the game will end after the second fight with Yamazaki. You won't see your character's ending and you also won't get the credits. Jin Chonshu tells you to play better, and it then cuts to the name entry screen.
Ending 2 |
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This is the ending you want to see in the arcade version. To get this one you need to be getting better ranks, but not too good -try aiming for C or B ranks, and avoid AA or anything higher than that. When you get to Chonshu, the background should be green. If you beat him, the ending sequence for this works -you'll get to see your character's ending, and then you'll get the credits sequence. It's all downhill from here.
Ending 3 |
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If you play well, you'll get to Chonshu, but you should notice that the background is different -the dragon statues have been changed and there are some flags present which aren't there in the ending 2 background. If you beat Chonshu here, the game shows some of the same text seen in the previous ending, then the screen fades out. The same image then appears again... followed by some garbage text. And then that's it, the game freezes! That's what happened on Kawaks anyway, if anyone wants to test this out on a real MVS board, let me know the results. What's supposed to happen here is that Jin Chonrei will appear, but you don't get to fight him -the game is meant to cut straight to the name entry screen.
Ending 4 |
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Surely the best ending works, especially after you've had to slave away through this game's cheap AI? Nope*! If you get through the game getting high ranks, you'll fight Chonrei after Chonshu. Beating him will start to play the ending, but the moment it shows your character talking to the Jin twins, it crashes. It seems to have different effects depending on which character you're playing as, or maybe it's just Kawaks not knowing what the hell to do. Sometimes it resets immediately, sometimes it'll try and display a little text before resetting, sometimes it'll freeze and not reset at all. It's not just an emulator issue, this also happens on real hardware.
*There is one exception. Beating Chonrei with any character will cause it to crash, unless you're playing as Geese:
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His ending works just fine. I can only assume this is because his is the only ending where he doesn't talk to the Jin twins, instead he has a completely different scene where he's looking out of a window. For some reason, the game is OK with this, and the ending plays out as it should, including the credits. So if you intead to play and beat Fatal Fury 3 in an arcade, you better well learn all the 1CC strats with the Geester.
Neo Geo AES endings
When this game was released for the Neo Geo AES, you would have thought that all of these ending issues would have been fixed up. SNK must have realized people probably wouldn't be happy dropping 300-400 dollars on the home cart only to not be able to finish the game. And so they went ahead and fixed them... mostly.
Endings 1 and 2 |
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I'm lumping these two together because all you need to know is that they're both like the arcade version: they both work fine. If you get the Yamazaki ending, the game cuts straight to the name entry screen. If you only fight Chonshu, you'll see your characters ending and the credits as you should. Play the game well but not well enough and...
Ending 3 |
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... you'll find that ending 3 is still broken! The exact same thing that happens in the MVS version happens in the AES one too: the cutscene loads and shows some text, then the screen fades out. The same image loads up again, some garbage text appears and then the game freezes on this screen. This seems to be completely broken no matter what. Even if you play the game using the Japanese version and set the text to English in the options menu, it'll still crash if you get this ending. Basically if you're playing this in English and see that background with the flags when you fight Chonshu, you may as well turn your Neo Geo off.
Ending 4 |
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SNK did, at least, fix the best ending. If you get through the game and fight both Chonshu and Chonrei, the cutscene showing your character talking to the Jins displays correctly, and then you'll see your character's ending and the credits. If you've got the AES cartridge of Fatal Fury 3, either play it really well to get this ending, or aim lower so you get ending 2.
Other versions
When Fatal Fury 3 found its way onto other formats, everything was fixed up. The Neo Geo CD and Playstation 2 versions have all the endings fixed, including ending 3. Hamster's Arcade Archives version, which is based on the MVS version, also has all of the endings fixed. The only version I'm not sure on is the PC port. I believe this is based on the Neo Geo CD version so in theory they should be fixed there too, if anyone can confirm this, let me know.
