The hottest new fighting game on the Switch was developed by Nintendo in 1993

Do you currently have an excessive number of games to play? Undoubtedly, you do. Your entire leisure time is being absorbed by Balduring Gates and Starring Fields. And I comprehend it. Those are splendid titles that require dozens, if not hundreds, of hours to complete. Your autumn season is already brimming, and we haven't even been struck by Mortal Kombat 1 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder yet. There are too many games to play, and the amount of effort one must exert to keep up can be quite overwhelming.

Anyway, here's another game for you to enjoy! And the beautiful part is that it's a combat game developed by Nintendo in 1993, which hasn't made its way to the West until now. It's also available for free if you subscribe to Switch Online. Well, not entirely free, but sort of? Anyway, you should give Joy Mech Fight a try. Currently, the game can be found in the Nintendo Entertainment section of the Switch Online emulators. Free-ish of charge.

Technically speaking, Joy Mech Fight is a Famicom game and not an NES game, as it never made its way here, but that's not really important now, and we truly don't have time for that. Something about a superior sound chip and more reliable cartridges. Yes, the Famicom was magnificent. Thank you very much. We will all surely be amazed and humbled the next time we embarrass ourselves with the sight of used games during a visit to Nakano Broadway.

Let me rewind for a moment. Joy Mech Fight is an 8-bit combat game developed by Nintendo and released in 1993. As you may notice, the Super Famicom was already available in Japan by 1990, and Street Fighter 2 made its debut in 1991. Therefore, this game emerged during the peak of the initial fighting game boom. One might expect it to be as lackluster as the vast majority of other fighting games released during that time. It is also understandable that Nintendo believed no one outside of Japan would have any interest in the game. It was a fighting game that had to make do with the hardware of a fading system, years after the hottest new system had been launched.

However, it manages to surpass expectations! Joy Mech Fight is an entertaining fighting game that is far better than it has any right to be. Similar to the original Street Fighter 2, it offers a selection of eight fighters. Each fighter, as one would anticipate, possesses their own unique moves, strategies, and so forth. However, instead of portraying racially stereotypical caricatures from around the world, Joy Mech Fight adopts a robot theme and a storyline that essentially resembles Mega Man. Seriously, I know Mega Man didn't invent the concept of "two scientists invent robots and then disagree on their usage, with one scientist turning evil," but Joy Mech Fight certainly adheres closely to that formula.

The cool thing about it is that instead of inheriting the abilities of a boss like in Mega Man, in single-player mode (everything is in Japanese; good luck with that), you can use every defeated robot as a fighter by progressing in the story. So instead of, for example, getting Woodman's leaves, you could damn well fight as the entire Woodman if you want to. It's not groundbreaking, but it gives a satisfying sense of progress when you "turn" robots to your side.

Of course, there are also player-versus-player, player-versus-computer, and computer-versus-computer modes. Plus, good news: you don't have to progress in the game to unlock things. Mainly because there isn't much that can be unlocked. But still, it's truly a game that you can turn on right away and start fighting within a good thirty seconds.

The fact that the game is actually great is a miracle. The hardware achieves this by animating the head, hands, feet, and torso independently. You might be familiar with this from an SNES game, where a dragon or a monster or whatever had a head and then a series of moving circles stacked on top of each other represented a neck? Similar principle. Probably. Someone will be mad that I said it's the same. To be fair, it takes some getting used to this style. When the "arms" and "legs" are missing as connecting tissue, it's initially hard to figure out exactly what the fighters are doing. It becomes even more difficult when the fighters have similar colors.

But more importantly, Joy Mech Fight allows for movement and gameplay that we would expect from a normal, modern fighting game. The controls are relatively smooth. The frame rate is much less choppy than one would expect given the hardware. Despite being an 8-bit fighting game, it offers a great gaming experience and provides incredibly fun multiplayer battles. It was developed by Nintendo. The company knew how to squeeze out the last reserves of performance from the system.

Most other fighting games (or two-player fighting modes) on the Famicom/NES were limited to allowing side-scrolling beat-'em-up characters to compete against each other. That's nice and all. Meanwhile, 8-bit games that attempted to have larger sprites were slow and clumsy. I love the series, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters on the NES simply cannot compare to Joy Mech Fight on the Famicom.

By the way, a funny fact: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters was released in America but not in Japan, while Joy Mech Fight was released in Japan but not in America. It's been 30 years, but now we can finally play it easily without having to download a ROM. That may not sound like much if you're used to doing it all the time, but it's encouraging to see that some real classics that never made it to the West are finally reaching an official audience. So take five minutes out of your miserable life scanning planets and play Joy Mech Fight.