Capcom’s Street Fighter Event at GDC ’10 almost contained more of the esteemed fighting franchise than I can take for one evening. The rows of Super Street Fighter IV set-ups lining the walls were daunting to say the least. Thankfully, nestled beneath the staircase leading into the event was a demo for Final Fight Double Impact.

Thinking back, it’s hard for me to say whether I enjoyed Final Fight or Streets of Rage back when I was a young’un. I only had one friend with Final Fight and he wasn’t allowed to play it because it was “too violent” for his parents to handle. Nevertheless, we’d sneak in playtime now and again; and I’ve always remembered wishing that we could actually play the game the way it was intended: with co-op.

Final Fight: Double Impact solves this problem for me completely. It’s an arcade perfect recreation of Final Fight with all the co-oppy goodness baked into every bite. I found the whole thing rather charming. Not only could you change the graphic modes to display the game in all its pixilated glory, but you could also extend the arcade game conceit even further by framing the action with a mock arcade cabinet. In this mode, the edges of the image curved to create the illusion of a screen within the screen. It all looked really snazzy, and helped bring the coin-op feel to life.

During my playtime, the producers kept throwing out technical terminology and pointing out achievement systems and the like, but I honestly couldn’t have been bothered to listen.  The game was already engrossing enough; I didn’t really need to hear about their revolutionary new technique to transmit data with no lag. Honestly, all it left me thinking was why they were hyping this up for Final Fight online co-op rather than Super Street Fighter IV.

At any rate, I had a great time with the Final Fight portion of the game, as evidenced by the fact that I actually beat it at the event with an anonymous member of the press (granted, I jumped in a few levels through the game). This does, however, bring me to the other side of the Double Impact coin, which is Magic Sword. Magic Sword may not be familiar to many of you, as I certainly couldn’t remember it until I started playing.  It’s a side-scrolling fantasy-themed beat-em up (of sorts) that is pretty fast-paced and enjoyable. It was definitely no Final Fight, but that’s not to say that people won’t have fun with it.

As you play, you pretty much hack away at the legions of undead and other miscellaneous fiends that stand between you and fantastical victory. There are tons of power-ups to snag, as well as CPU controlled partners that you can save to help move things along. And move along it does, briskly. The game is so quick moving that I kind of just chugged along for a good amount of time before remembering that I should actually be playing some Super Street Fighter IV.

After going right from working on my Mega Man 10 V-Guide to playing Final Fight: Double Impact, I’m really impressed with Capcom’s desire to embrace gamer nostalgia. They have not only made sure this game evokes as many memories as possible of huddling around a game in a dank, dingy arcade surrounded by greasy nerds, but have also given me something that I’ve always wanted: the opportunity to snag Haggar on the character dselect screen before my friend does.