The pumped-up ex-wrestler mayor of Metro City, Mike Haggar, returns in this SNES sequel to the arcade and console hit. It improves in many ways from the previous entry, most notably with the option to go into the fray with a buddy. Unfortunately, the core gameplay doesn't feel as solid as its' predecessor, and this ends up being a fairly average beat-em-up, which might actually be a great thing, depending on your view of the genre.

Haggar's cohorts from Final Fight, Guy and Cody, have been substituted this time out with Carlos and Maki, who perform almost exactly the same as the people they're replacing. In fact, even though pretty much every character from the first game has been replaced, their counterparts here are strikingly similar, which ends up being Final Fight 2's big problem. It feels more like a modification or re-skinning of the original, rather than a true sequel.

This wouldn't normally be such a stumbling block, since, after all, Final Fight is still regarded as one of the best beat-em-ups of all time. But the gameplay is lacking the intensity needed in the genre to set the great entries apart from the average ones. Die-hard brawler and Final Fight fans will still find this a worthy purchase, but the more casual Virtual Console users out there would probably be able to find a better use of their 800 points.