Final Fight was the monster back in '89. it was THE arcade game, with huge and violent sprites, thunder FXs and shiny but also dirty grafx you've never seen before in a video game. for me, the final fight i saw back then is still the same today, a master piece of arcade history. alltough i understand people saying that it's boring, because regarded to later standards of beat'em ups (e.g. CRIME FIGHTERS 3), yes it is, but many other games from the 80s suffering from that. e.g. i never could understand what's so funny about double dragon as well, but other people love it to no end.
when bare knuckle 1 came out i loved it to death, not because it had the grafx of a final fight (which was far away from), but the BGM rocked to no end and the gameplay was phantastic. but it never could show up with the hard violence and the atmosphere of a final fight in the arcade.