Ok, my games arrived, and I played through crest of wolf. An odd game. Not unenjoyable, and at least some of the enemies pose a challenge. I thought it might have been 2 player, because surely the PC engine can handle more sprites than that? I'm really annoyed that they wasted sprites with punch effects, and if those mice are sprites rather than dynamic tiles, it's a waste.
Overall however, if the PCE can only handle 4 of those nice big sprites on screen, looks like any attempt to remake Final Fight will be doomed to failure. I played the XBLA version, and there are way too many enemies, even without all the weapons, to make a halfway decent port
But what makes this game better, is that I played Golden Axe afterwards. That game is just broken beyond repair. The main problem is that you can only target one enemy at a time, meaning when you're attacking one, the other can just walk right through your attacks and nail you. Couple this with the fact that there's no state of invulnerability = death. Weird that they spent so long on the intro to end up with this jerky small-sprite low-enemy broken mess.
Possibly the worst PCE game I've played.