Update #2 [Wed 20th Dec, 2023 09:00 GMT]: Real Bout Genesis – a port of Real Bout Fatal Fury Special for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive – is now available to download for free.
"Have fun, don't accept paying for this game, instead, buy an everdrive and run the from," says the developer. "The rom is free for everyone, and non-profit, a fan game for study purposes."
There's a download link to the ROM in the YouTube video description, but at the time of writing, it appears to be struggling with demand.
Update #1 [Wed 20th Dec, 2023 09:00 GMT]: It's been a while since we took at look at this particular project – which is now known as Real Bout Fatal Fury Genesis – but it's coming on leaps and bounds.
A survival mode has now been added, which you can see in action below.
Original Story [Wed 17th Aug, 2022 15:00 BST]: If you wanted to play Real Bout Fatal Fury Special on Sega hardware back in 1997, your best bet was the Japanese-exclusive version of the game for Sega Saturn.
Recently, however, a homebrew developer named RheoGamer has taken to Twitter to share footage from what looks to be a Sega Mega Drive/Genesis port of the popular SNK fighting game (as spotted by GSK). And it's looking impressive so far.
The videos on Twitter show characters like Terry Bogard, Wolfgang Krauss, Blue Mary, and Mai Shiranui all squaring off against each other, and it seems like, in spite of the limitations of the hardware, the port maintains much of the expression and charm of the original.
Real Bout Fatal Fury is the sixth game in the popular fighting series from SNK and the second game in the Real Bout subseries. It returns to the two-plane system of fighting, seen previously in Fatal Fury 2, as opposed to the three-lane system featured in Fatal Fury 3: Road to the Final Victory.
RheoGamer is currently documenting the development of this port over on YouTube, though the videos are only available in Portuguese at present. Nevertheless, if you want to check out more footage of the port, that will be the place to go, alongside their Twitter account.