Fight for Life

Fight for Life is a 1996 fighting video game developed and published by Atari Corporation in North America and Europe for the Atari Jaguar. It was the final game to be developed and published by Atari themselves before dropping support for the platform and merging with JT Storage in a reverse takeover on July 30, 1996, and the last fighting title released for the console. Set in a purgatory dimension known as the Specter Zone, Fight for Life follows eight deceased fighters as they enter a tournament held by a shapeshifting being called the Gatekeeper, who will bestow a second chance at life to the winning victor. Its gameplay consists of one-on-one fights, with a main eight-button configuration, featuring special moves and the ability to customize character's movesets, as well as four different playable modes. Directed, designed and solely programmed by former Sega AM2 member Francois Yves Bertrand as Atari's answer to Virtua Fighter, Fight for Life started development in the second quarter of 1994 and had a troubled development cycle, undergoing various changes before its late release on the system. Fight for Life was met with negative reviews; while some praised the ability to customize the characters with stolen movesets from fighters, the slow pace and controls were widely seen as crippling flaws. Gameplay Fight for Life is a polygon-based fighting game similar to Virtua Fighter and Tekken, in which the player fights against opponents in one-on-one matches. The fighter who manages to deplete the health bar of the opponent wins the bout and the first to win two bouts in a best-of-3 match becomes the winner. Rounds are not timed.