I vividly remember seeing Pit-Fighter in the arcades for the very first time — it was at water park called Wet n’ Wild in Texas and I was celebrating my bud’s birthday in July. When all the kids were busy urinating in the pool, I stayed away from the heat and nestled myself inside the built-in arcade that housed Pit-Fighter. It was a daunting machine, sort of like that monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Pit-Fighter was separated from the other machines and placed directly in front of a walkway with a spotlight emanating down upon it, adjacent from the gift shop. However that vivid description could be my pre-teen mind romanticizing it, but the fact still remains that Pit-Fighter, a game rooted around violence in blood, was located in one of the most heavily-trafficked family theme parks in the country, and no one seemed to mind.
Since that day I owned Pit-Fighter by Tengen on two separate consoles (Atari Lynx and Sega Genesis) and I’m fairly certain that I’ve beaten it. Apparently some guy was inspired by the grittiest of the game to host a replicated version of Pit-Fighter in the UK called ‘Street Kings,’ and there’s even video to prove it.
