I’ve been a huge fan of developer Four Fats, previously known as Mooff Games, for many years now. They’ve always seemed to “speak my language" as it’s obvious we enjoyed the same type of games growing up and they’ve infused the essence of those games into their own releases by way of numerous references and gameplay styles. For instance, they were obviously big fans of Street Fighter II. Their Blackmoor series are action platform games but feature combat, characters, and special moves that are straight up homages to Capcom’s classic fighters. This even culminated in them creating their very own fighting game called Super Boys – The Big Fight which featured characters from across their entire library of games all duking it out. Then at the end of October last year they brought out a direct sequel to Blackmoor called Blackmoor 2 – The Traitor King (Free) which continued the epic tale from the first game and brought more platforming/fighting game action.

I loved Blackmoor 2 even more than the original, and we picked it as our Game of the Week when it released last fall. But you could tell that the Street Fighter II bug was continuing to gnaw away at the Four Fats. You had all these great characters in Blackmoor 2, and this great combat engine, so why not make another fighting game in a similar vein to Super Boys? Well that’s what they’ve done, except this time that game, dubbed “Super Pub Fighter“, has been added directly into the game via a new free update to Blackmoor 2. And hoo boy let me tell you, this is the homagiest of homages. From the intro animation, to the character select and world map, to many of the arenas, right into the continue screen countdown, Super Pub Fighter is like a love letter to Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Check out this trailer.

As someone who adores the Street Fighter series, playing Super Pub Fighter just brings a huge smile to my face. You can square off against the game’s roster of 14 competitors and 4 boss fights in a single-player offline mode, similar to your typical arcade ladder in other fighting games. But if you’re feeling saucy, you can actually hop online and battle other players in real-time 1v1 action, which is really the heart of any fighting game. There’s even the option to host password-protected private matches so you can ensure you get to battle with a buddy if you want. It’s just a really fleshed out, full-blown fighting game that could have easily been a separate game but is instead just a free addition to Blackmoor 2. It’s very obviously a labor of love. Oh, and not to be forgotten is te Story Mode in Blackmoor 2 which also gets some love in this update by way of a new playable character, Saberwuuf. This is like the update that keeps on giving. So go head to the App Store and give Blackmoor 2 a download both for its excellent action platforming but also for this surprisingly robust new fighting game mode.