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Remember the hey-day of 2D fighters and Street Fighter clones left and right? You had clones from SNK to Konami to ADK to Acclaim to Data East. Well, some clones were good, some were average, and some were dog gone terrible. In 1993, Data East unleashed Fighter's History and it caused an uproar with Capcom. Capcom tried to sue Data East and blah blah blah. Well, despite all the bad cuts, personally, Fighter's History did have quite a bit of similarties to SF, but it wasn't nearly as fun. So in 1994, Data East tried to counter with Fighter's History Dynamite. On July 4, 1997, FHD was released to the Sega Saturn. How well does it hold up? Let's take a closer look...

Characters
You got your Ryu in Mizoguchi. He's a semi-interesting fellow, but nowhere as deep as Ryu in terms of moveset and character. You got your Ken in Ray. Ray is pretty boring. Nothing exciting about him. You got your Guile in Jean, who is decent. You got your Zangief in Marstorios, who actually is cooler-looking then Zangief. I won't go through the rest, but overall, you got some silly fighters in this one. Remember Karnov from the good old days of the Nintendo? Well, the big guy is playable in this one. There's a clown named Clown.... go figure. Lee is pathetic. Feilen is unmemorable, but Matlok is pretty cool. Overall, you got 13 characters to chose from but some of them are rather passable if you know what I mean. 79/100

Load Time:
Well, this game loads very well. Probably no longer wait then 5 seconds. 95/100

Sound/Music
Sound is average fare. Music though, is pretty darn good. The coolest thing about the music is that in each stage, it starts slow, then the second someone's energy bar drops 50% off, the music hits a medium pace. Then when about 80% is knock off anyone's energy bar, the music rushes to a chaotic pace which really makes the last few seconds of each battle something different. A small adrenaline rush if you will. Well executed. Cool music and nice pacing of the music. This makes up for the lack of sound "oomph". 90/100

Graphics
Nothing too bad. It kind of looks nice actually. I mean, if you just sit back and glander at it, it is kind of attractive. Too bad the characters for the most part are rather lame... so that takes away some of the potential appreciation. But nonetheless, graphics are quite nice. Oh yeah, the stages, for the most part, are quite nice 88/100

Controls/Gameplay
Controls will make you feel right at home. Gameplay is adequate. Some fighters are pretty unbalanced though. But for some reasons, as decent as the gameplay is, there is just a little something something missing that made Street Fighter games a blast to play. Controls are very good and gameplay is decent, but gameplay is something that is more then just skin-deep if you get my drift. FHD fails to capture the essence of true, enjoyable gameplay, even though it plays decently. So, it gets 83/100

Content
13 playable characters is not going to cut it nowadays. Especially when about half of those 13 characters are unmemorable. FHD has four buttons, the original had six. Don't ask me why. Each character has some special moves along with an "extra" special move executed at any possible time by the shoulder buttons on the Saturn controller with the motion of the regular special move. But, what is missing is the little power bar or desperation moves that makes these 2D fighters a bit more fun and crazy. FHD does have an option for english, so that's pretty neat. If you beat the game without ever using a continue, you get one round with a giant black ox at the end, it's pretty fun fighting him. Stages evolved from round to round and there are breakable items scattered about throughout the stages. There's also a feature where if you connect on a character's certain hit point, the clothing or item on them will fly off and they'll become dizzy. But the special moves in this game though, is not really that special looking. They look sub-par, bland, and unimaginative. So that and 13 playable characters, most of which are lame, hurts the game's content. 80/100

Replayability
Well, once again, 13 characters hurt. Especially when many of them are pathetic and lacking in personality that made other 2D fighters enjoyable. There are no extra modes such as tournament, survival, and what not. Unless you got a sibling or friend into 2D fighters, replayability might be low. 77/100

Pluses
-Nice stages, above average graphics
-Cool music that knows when to speed up
-Old school feeling
-English option possible

Minuses
-Lack of cool characters
-Lack of cool special moves
-Lack of characters (13)
-Lack of spark and fun of other 2D fighters

FHD does require a 1 meg ram cart to play. The bottom line is this, Data East didn't rewrite the book on the 2D fighting genre. FHD is for those who were fans of it and those who are simply 2D fighter freaks. Expect nothing fancy, special, or extraordinary from FHD. But if you, like me, enjoyed the clones in the mid 90s, FHD should do just that. I recommend it if you can find it for a low price and you're a fan. The FH world died after FHD and well, it was a controversial franchise to say the least. Nonetheless, some people can't get enough and this may be just good enough to perhaps warrant an addition to your library of 2D fighters from the 90's. 80/100