When it comes to video game adaptations, sticking close to the source material will often times more than not lead to a successful outcome, however, there are some unique cases where some how some way an over reaching story line can ultimately make for a good viewing experience and such is the case with Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture. The art style for the Fatal Fury anime's were always constant leading up to this final film and I never took an issue with this direction. Character's always managed to stay in line with their original look and to be honest it was nice to seethem get the anime makeover so to speak.

The animation and fight scenes in this title, while pretty decent, lacked consistency. One minute the attention to detail and movement looked astounding, another minute it looked a bit questionable. I also felt that often times the scenes were over to quickly and things would stop before they even got started.

Fortunately the fight scenes, which I am normally all about, was not the highlight of this film. The story, which ran completely off track of the video game series, was actually not all that bad. A mysterious girl, seeks the help of main protagonist Terry Bogard and friends to find pieces of the infamous armor of mars also sought by her brother the antagonist of the film who is slowly losing himself as he finds each one.

This leads them in a race around the globe as the film tries to entangle historic figures, mythology, and few cheap tie ins from the game to create a progressive story line. It certainly does pain at some points especially if you have a bias towards the source material yet and still some how it managed to keep me interested.

The biggest fault of the film lies with the interest of the villain and his powerful underlings and not with the heroic quartet especially Terry whose ability seems to get down turned at every moment until the end of the film. While the story was a fairly decent one, looking back, you realize that the creators of this film blew a big opportunity to make this a true classic by not focusing the plot on the character that mattered, Geese Howard...what an ending that should have been.

The soundtrack was another stand out part of the film and certainly adds a much needed ambiance to each scene. The music always seemed to cue in at the right time adding some great intensity at certain moments during the film.

Barring any affinity you may have for the films origin, Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture was a pretty good watch. It is unfortunate that the OVA did not continue after this as I believe they would have gone back to a more canonical timeline. With all that being said, I still recommend you take a gander. The effort they put into this film shows and that can at least be appreciated.