With the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network opening up the capabilities of ‘mini game’ purchases, the automatic option for a lot of gaming companies is to dust off the old financial records and see what classic arcade coin poppers collected the most amount of lawn mowing money from the youths pockets some 25 or 30 years ago. While the lists get totalled and games get ported over to the next gen formats, a lot of games loose that classic touch, thankfully, Capcom understand what gave them the allure all those years ago and use that knowledge to create packages such as the Final Fight Double Impact.

Two of the biggest arcade games of the early nineties were Final Fight, and Magic Sword, the Double Impact package wraps the two titles in a fresh box and neat wrapping and delivers it straight to your online account via 800 Microsoft points. Final Fight is the granddaddy of the side scroller and was the basis for many titles to come such as Splatterhouse & Goldenaxe.

Final Fight follows former wrestler and newly elected mayor Mike Haggar takes a stand on the Mad Gear Gang, a violent street gang who are taking over his city. Though it seems Haggar made a bad enemy and the gang kidnap his daughter Jessica as a warning to stay away. It seems they messed with the wrong politician, as Jessicas boyfriend Cody and friend Guy, team up with Haggar to beat their way through the six stages of gang members to ultimately defeat the gang and rescue Jessica. Using one of the three main character and the various weapons you smash and pickup through the six stages you battle in a gauntlet of gang members with a boss at the end of each level.

Magic Sword is the tale of a epic hero named, The Brave One, who takes it upon himself to use his barbarian skills to defeat the evil dark lord Drokmar who has taken control of the Black Orb crystal which will allow him to take over the world. The Brave One has no choice but to fight through fifty floors of Drokmars tower and then finally defeat the evil Drokmar himself using the various allies that he saves and unlocks throughout the level such as Ninja, Lizardman, and Wizard.

Both games have a very similar style of play, utilising a simple Attack/Jump/Special Combo, but the separation is in the waves of fighting. While Magic Sword has fifty different levels, some of the levels are terribly short and the enemies can be simpler to kill when you have an ally to fight with, it uses the mass number of levels to give the variety it needs. In Final Fight the six stages are balanced internally with hard sections and seemingly invincible enemies, it goes for quality over quantity.

Of course, there couldn’t simply be a grab it and run release for these titles, Capcom have put some work in too. The graphics have HD filtering layered over the top to give it a low bit quality but smoothed edges to improve the look on modern televisions; this if you like however can be disabled to give a more genuine view. The most genuine view however is the addition of an arcade border which replicates the vinyl skin of the classic arcade machine, down to the wear and tear on the instructions panels.It brings a tear to the eye to see. So with the visuals out of the way, the main drawcard for these games are their co-op play. Long before games like Halo made co-op the hot new thing, FF & MS would give you the option of have a forty cent buddy help you through the levels, and these versions retain that feature, though now you have the online option of co-op with a Friend or stranger via the Xbox Live system. These two small additions alone make all the difference, instead of tinkering with all the objects of the game, Capcom knew they had a good thing here and stuck with it, simply making a few small additions that would push the game along, if you chose to use them.

For that, it makes it a brilliant rerelease, and at just 800 points a perfect bargain, classic simplicity, addictive nature, and much replay ability.