Nintendo isn’t really known for fighting games, outside of Smash Bros, though they have dabbled into the genre with games like Arms and the collaborative title Pokken. That said, traditional fighters weren’t really a genre Nintendo has touched all that much, but this was not always the case, as Nintendo did attempt to take a look at the genre back in the 8-bit days with Joy Mech Fight, a Japan-only Famicom game. The game took a lot of influence from other fighting games like Capcom’s Street Fighter series but was also inspired by Capcom’s Mega Man series as well.
Joy Mech Fight’s story involved 2 scientists who made robots, with one of the scientists going evil and reprogramming all the robots except one. What separates this from Mega Man though is that instead of the main protagonist Sukapon gaining the abilities of the other robots, they instead became playable characters, much like story mode unlocks in modern fighting games like Mortal Kombat. In terms of gameplay, the characters actually had some special moves and a decent amount of attacks they could use, meaning this was far from a basic fighting game.
The graphics and music in Joy Mech Fight were impressive for the time, even as the developers fought against the limitations of the Famicom system to achieve more. In fact, the game had the largest roster for a fighting game for years, with 36 characters, until King of Fighters 98 came out and had 38 characters to choose from. The catch, in this case, was that many were palette swap versions of existing characters.
Joy Mech Fight used a best-of-five system and the rounds had a variation of the double life bar system, with the need to defeat three life bars of an opponent. Upon each time you defeated a bar, you got a bit of life back, but the same would happen if your opponent won a round. The action could be both fast or slow-paced, and the single-player in the game offered a good equivalent of a story mode for the time.
For an NES/Famicom game, Joy Mech Fight has aged far better than many 16-bit arcade and console fighting games. It knew its limitations and worked around them and was incredibly fun. The controls were seemingly simple but actually allowed you to do some fun things, and the characters that weren’t just palette swaps did have a unique playstyle. It was cool to check out each character and there was even a training mode and multiple game options that were ahead of the time.
Joy Mech Fight had some bad luck with releasing so late in the system’s lifespan, which is probably why it did not release in the West, but this raises an interesting question. What if the game had been released in arcades in the west? The Vs. or PlayChoice-10 arcade systems was out of the question due to the timing of those systems being discontinued, and Nintendo has pulled out of original coin-op games after Arm Wrestling, but what if they had made a return for this game, or even worked with a 3rd party to release it in arcades?
Given the fighting game boom that was going on, it is not impossible that the game would have developed a following of sorts, albeit some changes would have had to have been made. The graphics could have been improved and movesets increased, while the story mode could have been altered or removed to focus just on the action. This could have motivated Nintendo to create a SNES / Super Famicom port if the game had done well, and could have led to an ongoing franchise. Of course, if Joy Mech Fight had been given a Super Famicom version, it is not impossible that the game would have been released in the arcades for The Nintendo Super System, since while it had been officially discontinued in 1992, Joy Mech Fight could have motivated Nintendo to keep it around.
Joy Mech Fight is a genuinely well-done experience and one any Nintendo fan should check out now that it is out on NSO in both Japan and the West, albeit untranslated. You can still enjoy the game untranslated, and there are guides online to help people figure things out, and the NSO version is an excellent way to try the game and you can lose hours of time playing this, either in the single-player mode or with friends in the vs. mode. We will also give a reminder that NSO retro games can be played online, for those wanting to test out a versus fighting game from Nintendo online.
Nintendo has something with this game that should not be passed up on, as it could be revived today as an excellent fighting game in a variety of styles. If only it had gotten its chance in arcades right as the fighting game book was taking off, it could have cemented itself as a great Nintendo franchise, and possibly have brought Nintendo back to the arcades in a big way. If you have an NSO account, you need to check this out, as it is a great experience. It is also a great example of how Nintendo experimented back in the day and a look back at what could have been a great franchise.
