What are the Ranma 1/2 Super Famicom fighting games?
Ranma 1/2 found its natural game genre early: a cast of rival martial artists with absurd styles is a fighting game roster waiting to happen. The Super Famicom received three versus fighters in Japan, beginning with Ranma 1/2: Chonai Gekitohen in 1992, published by Masaya, each built around the cursed cast fighting in and out of their transformed states.
The second game, Bakuretsu Rantouhen in 1992, is the one Western players know: it was localized and released in North America and Europe as Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle in 1993. Unusually for its era, the localization kept the Japanese characters, names and art, making it one of the earliest anime fighters to reach Western shelves substantially intact.
The third fighter, Chougi Rambuhen in 1994, stayed in Japan and is the deepest of the three, with a larger roster drawn from later manga arcs and a tag style system ahead of its time. For import collectors it is the centerpiece Ranma game: Japanese only, cartridge based and built from material the anime had not yet covered when it shipped.
The fighters sit inside a wider game catalog covered in the Library's Takahashi game census: action titles on PC Engine and Game Boy, a PlayStation fighting entry and later appearances. But the Super Famicom trilogy is where Ranma gaming concentrates, because the hardware, the era and the cast all peaked together.
Collecting notes are friendly ones. The Japanese cartridges are common and inexpensive, boxed copies with manuals are the step up, and Hard Battle's Western box, with its period American packaging art, makes a natural pair with its Japanese counterpart on a shelf that already compares covers for the manga.
