Playing this gave me the conviction that it's actually criminal Nintendo will throw up games onto its Switch Online service for western audiences without translating them. I get that it's an extra expense, but hey, I'm paying them for this. It's honestly impressive how much of this you can get, even the little tutorials, without understanding a character of Japanese. But it sure would be nice to enjoy the flavor text, and I fear the lack of translation will turn people off from a solid, cute, very enjoyable little title.

I'm not a fighting game person, but playing through the story mode was really fun, and encouraged me to try out all of the playable roster (8 for story mode) as the various abilities for each might give you an advantage when you find yourself stuck. The last set of fighters in story mode are clones of your own roster, but more powerful, which seems unfair but makes it more satisfying when you beat them.

I love that the mascot is essentially the comedy character, as well. Still, drill guy for life.

You’re trying to tell me these are mechs? They look like potential rayman characters

One of the last games released for the famicom during the shift to the super famicom in Japan, joy mech fight was nintendo’s last attempt to create a fighting game for the famicom (like what they did with urban champion). This game was actually never brought to the west until Nintendo switch online a year ago so uhh…good job Nintendo. Good to see the game finally got a localisation! Oh wait-

So because I can’t read what’s going on, I’m currently going off of what it says on the Wikipedia page. Dr. Emon and Dr. Walnuts create these really cool robots until walnuts steals them and plans world domination. Thankfully, Emon brings a robot called sukapon and turns him into a military robot to fight back against Walnuts and all his robots. Pretty simple plot.

Gameplay is your typical fighting game, though it has quite a lot of charm to it. In the story mode, you eventually get 36 available fighters, each with their own abilities that you can use. These can also be played in the multiplayer modes, and some are extremely easy to master. The story mode consists of beating 7 fighters per level until having to face a boss at the end. After finishing the boss, you move onto the next level.

Overall, whilst not the best game on the famicom, I must admit that joy mech fight has a really nice charm to it. And as one of the last famicom games, it has a really nice presentation that I love and it doesn’t feel stiff at all. It is probably one of the best fighting games on the famicom, but whether it is on a similar level to that of street fighter 2 or tekken is possibly a very big stretch.

Fun gameplay, really nice presentation, neat music, rayman if it was a fighting game

Joy Mech Fight is a cute time. I haven’t played a ton of fighting games, but this was mostly enjoyable. The controls are simple, but I definitely grew to understand them a lot more by the end of the game, which is a sign of depth. As you play through the game, you begin to pick up on the differences between all 8 of your fighters and where they excel and where they don’t, so sometimes you can beat a tricky fight by finding a better robot for the job, almost like mega man. One thing I’m not huge on is the wide difficulty range from the start to the end. This game starts off very easy, but by the end of the game characters became incredibly difficult and I had to attempt them multiple times to progress which really dragged down the pace of an otherwise brisk experience.

Joy Mech Fight might be one of the best looking Famicom games. The backgrounds especially are gorgeous displays full of life. Fighting on the moon with the earth in the background and 3 parallax layers of craters, it’s a great spectacle to cap off a game of other beautiful arenas. The character design is also quite interesting. Without arms, the mechs can have very fluid motion, and their cartoony presentation is fun.

I apologize if this review isn’t up to my usual standards. I’m up quite late writing jt because I want the game fresh on my mind when I write this so I’m writing this piece dead tired.

You wouldn't think the NES would have a fighting game of this calibur, and for what it is, it's fairly impressive: It only has 8 playable characters, sure, but there are 36 characters in the game total (even if I wanna say half of them are powered up versions of previous, which can be funny in its own way after you beat a weak robot only to find a more threatening stronger version of that, with a silly name). Not only that but they all have 4 special moves, setting them further apart from each other, all with unique names. The game even has proper cross-ups which is impressive.

It's not all perfect though, as combos aren't really there besides a minor air juggle or two. Moves have seemingly no endlag, once your hitbox goes away you can start your next move. On top of that, there's no hitstun either, so enemies can and will quickly punish you back if you aren't careful. The AI will love to spam their strong special moves at the end of the game because of this. Grabs are also incredibly powerful and have no counterplay, just don't get grabbed.

There's a fun campaign, but it does drag. 36 fights is a lot to ask of a player, especially with how brutal they can get closer to the end. I would have just cut out one of the sections and rebalanced accordingly, and compensated elsewhere.

The biggest crime of Joy Mech Fight is its copyright getting lost for years until someone found it in a drawer, this could have been a solid Nintendo fighting series, but it just wasn't meant to be. Now that the rights are recovered, I hope something can be done with this, as I'd love to see it return with the polishes of modern fighting games.

Honestly the reason I gave up on this one is more my fault than the game’s, because for a genre I don’t typically mess with that much (fighting games generally) I had a pretty good time with this one. There aren’t too many special moves and the ones there are aren’t too bad to pull off, though I’m gonna be real I’m bad at remembering and executing inputs for special moves and that’s probably why I don’t play fighting games. I do feel like this was relatively beginner friendly in that regard, though I feel like the gimmicks for the NPC fighters in story mode ramp up a not insignificant degree. Like one of those dudes turns invisible, what the hell?

I accidentally overwrote a save state before a boss that was kind of a pain in the ass, which is why I dropped it. I also do think it’s a shame that you’re limited to the eight playable fighters in story mode since there are some cool dudes, even if it does feel like there’s a lot of asset reuse. But I don’t know, I think that’s at least kind of clever.

I think my biggest beef isn’t the fault of the original game but how Nintendo handles releases that were originally Japan-only. This game has a lot of text, including hints on what the enemy robots are good at. Unfortunately, they don’t bother translating the roms before slapping them on NSO, which sucks! This game feels really charming and I think it’d be a lot of fun to actually understand the Mega Man-ass plot, but I guess that’d be work or something? Maybe there’s some weird directive from higher-ups. I don’t know, I just think it’s a shame.

It’s also a shame that this never got any kind of follow up that I know of. I guess not everything needs to become a franchise but this is cute enough that I wish it’d get a revival of some kind.

Game Review - originally written by (wraith)

For some reason, I had always thought TMNT Tournament Fighters was the only one-on-one fighting game for the Nes (unless you count the tournament mode of Karate Kid). BUT I THOUGHT WRONG. Not only is there another fighter for the Nes, but unlike TMNT Tournament Fighters, this one doesn’t suck. Proof that Joy Mech Fighter doesn’t suck? Well, for starters, after playing TMNT TF for five minutes, I thought that little gray cartridge would make an excellent substitute for a clay pidgeon. I had no such sentiments after playing Joy Mech Fighter.

Anyway, I imagine you’ve played a fighting game before, so I’ll spare you the details of what the gameplay is like, because its like every single other fighter. What sets it apart is the concept of the game. You start with one robot fighter, and as you play through the game, each robot you beat becomes a new playable character. It’s like Megaman meets Street Fighter. And the graphics totally kick ass for an nes game. You’ve gotta check this one out, it’s bound to keep you entertained for awhile.
(editor's note: I agree this game owns)