Joy Mech Fight

Joy Mech Fight (ジョイメカファイト) is a fighting game released by Nintendo in 1993.

Overview

Joy Mech Fight (ジョイメカファイト, Joi Meka Faito) or Joy Mecha Fight is a 2D fighting game made by Nintendo for the Famicom's late life cycle on May 21st, 1993 in Japan only. Because of this the game is seen as using the Famicom's audio and visual capabilities to the fullest extent.

History & Copyright Issues

Although Nintendo is credited with the release and development of this game, the starting point was not Nintendo, but rather the commercialization of Battle Battle League (バトルバトルリーグ), which was created by two programmers at the Nintendo Research & Development 1 (Nintendo R&D1) team.

There were requests for porting the game to other consoles and guest starring in other games such as Super Smash Bros., but it was said to be "difficult due to delicate rights issues".

For example, in Super Smash Bros. Melee there was an idea that the player character could board and operate a Sukapon as an item, but the idea was eventually rejected due to rights issues.

In January 2007, a document that appeared to be a memorandum of understanding for the transfer of copyrights without a stamp was discovered at the home of Koichiro Eto (江渡浩一郎), a programmer who was participating in the project at the time.

As far as Eto remembers, he thought that he had transferred the copyright to Nintendo, and he never thought that the situation would become "a mystery as to where the rights were", but when he checked the found documents, he found that it was understandable that it had become a "mystery".

This was an opportunity to sort out the rights, and Nintendo registered the trademark (Commercial Application 2007-011664).

As a result, the rights to the game went to Nintendo, and on March 11, 2008, it was released on Virtual Console.

In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which was released slightly earlier, an official illustration of Sukapon appeared in one of the collectible elements called Stickers. Also, the BGM of the menu screen of this game is partially used in the song Famicom Medley (ファミコンメドレー), one of the songs in Taiko no Tatsujin.

Lastly in Nintendo Badge Arcade, Sukapon shows up as a badge and a assist trophy in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The game is also now playable outside Japan on Nintendo Switch Online.