Maybe it's a good thing this game is rare and hard to find...
I got this game knowing full well that it was one of the worst fighting games of all time. The fact that the game farts real loud upon starting should speak volumes on what you’re in for. After playing it, I can say that it is bad. We’re talking Pit Fighter levels of bad here. Even the menu screen is awful. There isn’t much to like about this game other than maybe the soundtrack or the inherent bathos of a game this ridiculous. It is technically playable, as I actually completed the game, but it’s still very much deserving of its status as one of the worst games ever.
Also, I had to go through the trouble of fixing and booting up Ye Olde Windows XP just to run the damn thing. It doesn’t play nice with Windows 7 and will run far too fast during gameplay. I’m serious, you need Windows XP or something older to run this unless you want gameplay to run unplayably fast.
Story- The story involves Shinma, who looks like some kind of KISS groupie, taking powerful women from across the universe and making them fight in a tournament. You’ve seen this plot before a million times in old school fighting games, but this time all of the combatants are ladies. Each character has her own ending, which is short and usually disappointing.
By the way, if you head on over to Wikipedia and check out the link to Atlantean Interactive’s website, they’ll claim that you can do things like decapitate and disembowel your opponents. That’s a crock. Catfight never gets that violent. If you use a heavy punch, a torrent of blood will fly out of their neck, but that’s about it. Maybe it’s because this game is trying to be about “sexy” women fighting each other. Guts and severed limbs usually aren’t sexy unless you’re a serial killer, so maybe leaving these gruesome moves out was for the better.
Presentation- Catfight boasts that it has the sexist women in video games. I don’t know about that. Actors are all grainy and all of them either look like muscled up she-hulks or wear awful Halloween costumes that look more laughable than anything. Animation is stiff too. I guess you have to expect this sort of thing when looking at old fighting games with digitized actors, but it’s still pretty bad. The backgrounds look terrible too. They’re all grainy static photographs that don’t move.
The sound effects in Catfight are… interesting. The music is loud rock with a lot of bass. It sounds kind of like late 80s hair metal. Character voices are silly. Everyone announces their attacks and they all overact. Everyone is really into this and pumped up, so it’s hard not to laugh the first time you do a special move. There’s also the option to switch the voice acting to clips of angry cats meowing and hissing. It’s… unique?
Gameplay- Catfight plays like an unholy mix of Mortal Kombat and Art of Fighting. You have your standard MK style moves that everyone has, like uppercuts, sweeps, etc. You also have special moves that consume your special bar. If your special bar runs out, then you can’t perform any special moves. It slowly refills too and fills faster when you use normal attacks to pummel your opponent. There’s also a block meter that prevents turtling, but that’s really the least of your worries if you’re playing this game.
The problem with Catfight is that its controls are slow and unresponsive. All characters have two special moves with standard fighting game style inputs. Getting your character to do these is like wrestling with a soggy mattress: It’s clunky, not worth it, and you’ll probably wonder why you even tried after it’s over. Luckily, the developers seemed to be aware that this was a problem and put shortcut keys in so you can do your specials without having to actually do anything! Special One is always mapped to the A key. Special Two is always mapped to the D key. If you can configure your joystick, arcade pad, or whatever (please don’t play fighting games on a keyboard), then you should be good to go.
The AI is brainless, by the way. They’ll spam attacks even if you’re not in range. They’ll miss with their specials all the time. They’ll jump for no reason. It’s almost as if the computer is having just as much trouble as you are with those awful controls! Now you can share the pain and pretend your computer is playing and groaning along with you, wishing you’d play something, anything else.
Catfight is indeed an awful game, but it is still playable and it’s fun to laugh at, which are technically redeeming qualities. It’s also pretty rare, so good luck tracking it down if you’re actually interested in playing this thing.
Cool Fact- The actress for Chae in this game is the same actress for Kitana in early Mortal Kombat games.
Also Try- Angel Eyes and Asuka 120% are good all-girl fighting games. The sub-genre isn’t all awful, you know.