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Little Fighter 1 — English Edition

Little Fighter 1

LF1 English

A fan-made English translation and quality-of-life mod of Little Fighter 1 (1995), the original DOS beat-'em-up by Marti Wong. The game's menus, fonts, and text have been re-lettered for English players, and MODS.COM — a lightweight TSR included alongside PLAY.COM — adds optional cheats, gameplay tweaks, and MIDI background music.

Recommended: The smoothest way to play is RetroArch with the DOSBox-Pure core. It handles the DOS environment, gamepads, save states, shaders, and MIDI out of the box — just point it at PLAY.COM and go. See Running the Game below.

Background music requires a General-MIDI SoundFont. This repo ships weedsgm3.sf2 (≈55 MB) — point your MIDI synth (FluidSynth / DOSBox-Pure / RetroArch) at it. See SoundFont setup.

From lf2.net (Marti Wong, creator):

I started to write my first Little Fighter game in the summer of 1995. It is my first game written in C language. In this game, you run with a bunch of kids who just want to fight. You choose to be one of 11 characters, each character has 3 special moves and then you participate in an all out fight. In the game, you can play one on one, team matches or elimination tournament matches. There is up to 8 fighters simultaneously on screen controlled by up to 3 human players. The game modes include the usual championships as well as fighters divided into 2, 3 or 4 groups.

Table of Contents

Screenshots





Screenshots courtesy of lf2.net/lf1.html.

Running the Game

Little Fighter 1 is a real-mode DOS program, so you need a DOS host.

Recommended: RetroArch + DOSBox-Pure

The best way to run this game is RetroArch with the DOSBox-Pure core. Why:

  • Works identically on macOS, Windows, Linux, Steam Deck, and handhelds.
  • First-class gamepad support with per-player input remapping (great for LF1's up-to-3-player local multiplayer).
  • Built-in save states, rewind, shaders (CRT filters look fantastic), and a built-in MT-32/FluidSynth MIDI stack.
  • No messing with mount, autoexec, or cycles — just point it at PLAY.COM.

Setup:

  1. Install RetroArch from https://www.retroarch.com/.
  2. In RetroArch, open Online Updater → Core Downloader and install DOSBox-Pure.
  3. (Optional but recommended) Configure MIDI music — see SoundFont setup below.
  4. Load Content → Start Core and pick PLAY.COM from this repo. (Or on macOS, just double-click Play Little Fighter (RetroArch).command, which does this for you.)

Alternative: DOSBox Staging

If you'd rather run DOSBox directly, install DOSBox Staging and from the repo root run:

dosbox -conf dosbox.conf

dosbox.conf mounts the repo as C:, auto-runs PLAY.COM, and enables FluidSynth for MIDI using the bundled weedsgm3.sf2 SoundFont. On macOS you can instead double-click Play Little Fighter.command.

Bare-metal DOS

Just run PLAY.COM (or DOSBOX.BAT). MODS.COM is loaded by PLAY.COM on startup; you do not need to run it separately.

SoundFont setup (for MIDI music)

When bgm=1 in mods.cfg, Little Fighter streams a MIDI soundtrack via the DOS timer. That MIDI has to be rendered into audio by something — either your DOS host's built-in MIDI synth or an external one. This repo includes a General-MIDI SoundFont you can use for that:

In RetroArch / DOSBox-Pure (recommended)

  1. Copy (or symlink) weedsgm3.sf2 into RetroArch's system SoundFont folder:
    • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/RetroArch/system/
    • Windows: <RetroArch>\system\
    • Linux: ~/.config/retroarch/system/
  2. Launch the game in RetroArch.
  3. Open the in-game menu (default F1 in RetroArch) → Options (for the DOSBox-Pure core) → set MIDI Output to FluidSynth (or "Use SoundFont").
  4. If the core asks, select weedsgm3.sf2 as the SoundFont.

In DOSBox Staging / vanilla DOSBox

The included dosbox.conf is already wired up:

[midi]
mididevice = fluidsynth

[fluidsynth]
soundfont = weedsgm3.sf2

As long as weedsgm3.sf2 is in the repo root (it is), MIDI will just work. If you want to use a different SoundFont, change the soundfont= line to its path.

Using your own SoundFont

Any General-MIDI .sf2 file works. Popular alternatives include GeneralUser GS, FluidR3_GM, and Arachno SoundFont. Replace weedsgm3.sf2 (or update the soundfont= path in dosbox.conf / your RetroArch config) and restart the game.

Tip: If music doesn't play even though bgm=1, your MIDI device isn't hooked up to a synth. Press F11 in-game to toggle music on/off for debugging, and double-check the SoundFont path in your host.

Controls

Player 1 Player 2 Player 3
Up W I 8
Left / Right A / D J / L 4 / 6
Down X , 2
Attack S K 5
Jump Tab Space 0
  • F10 — end the current battle
  • Esc — exit to menu

Moves

Each character has 3 special moves. The number after the colon is the MP cost. The icons below read left-to-right as the input sequence; = Attack, = Jump, / / / = directions.

The direction assumes your character is facing right — mirror the left/right inputs when facing the other way.

  DEEP

Fireball   (5 MP) Charge   (20 MP) Bomb   (50 MP)
Sword + 

  HENRY

Arrow   (5 MP) Blast   (50 MP) Flute   (60 MP)
Bow + 

  DAVIS

Ball   (10 MP) Grab   (20 MP) Uppercut   (70 MP)

  WOODY

Ball   (10 MP) Teleport   (10 MP) Launch   (70 MP)

  LOUIS

Airpunch   (30 MP) Airkick   (40 MP) Blast   (60 MP)

  RUDOLF

Teleport   (10 MP) Shuriken   (20 MP) Invisible   (50 MP)

  FREEZE

Iceball   (20 MP) Sword   (40 MP) Cyclone   (60 MP)

  FIREN

Fireball   (10 MP) Explode   (40 MP) Charge   (70 MP)

  DENNIS

Ball   (10 MP) Grab   (20 MP) Spinkick   (70 MP)

  JOHN

Ball   (10 MP) Disk   (30 MP) Healing   (80 MP)

  JULIAN (Boss — press F1 to unlock)

Charge   (10 MP) Skulls   (20 MP) Big Bang   (50 MP)

Character sprites, move animations, and button icons courtesy of Little Fighter Empire.

Mods — mods.cfg

Gameplay tweaks are controlled by a plain text file, mods.cfg, in the same folder as PLAY.COM. Open it in any text editor, set the options you want, save, then launch the game — the values are baked into MODS.COM at startup (so editing the file while the game is running has no effect; quit and relaunch).

Each option is a key=value pair. Most are on/off flags where 0 = off and 1 = on. Lines beginning with # are comments.

Options

Option Default Values Description
unlock_julian 0 0 / 1 Make Julian selectable from the character screen without having to press F1 first.
balanced_julian 0 0 / 1 Disable Julian's HP regeneration so he's fair in mirror matches / FFAs.
free_run 0 0 / 1 Running no longer drains MP.
free_jump 0 0 / 1 Jumping no longer drains MP.
free_supers 0 0 / 1 Special moves cost 0 MP. Overrides cheap_supers.
cheap_supers 0 0 / 1 Special moves cost half their normal MP.
spawn_weapons 1 0 – 3 Weapon drop rate: 0 = off, 1 = normal, 2 = 2×, 3 = 3×.
all_weapons 0 0 / 1 Bow, Shuriken, Bomb, and Ice Sword also fall from the sky during fights.
fast_mp 0 0 / 1 2× MP regeneration rate.
no_mp_on_hit 0 0 / 1 Landing a super hit no longer grants MP to the attacker (stops infinite loops).
easy_supers 0 0 / 1 Single-key supers: Q/E/Z (P1), U/O/M (P2), Num7/Num9/Num1 (P3).
practice 0 0 / 1 CPU opponents stand still — use for combo practice.
fix_camera 1 0 / 1 Prevent players from walking off-screen.
gore 0 0 / 1 Enable the original gore death frame (head falls off).
game_speed 18.2 18.2 – 200 PIT timer rate in Hz. 18.2 is normal DOS speed; higher = faster gameplay.
vsync 1 0 / 1 Wait for vertical retrace before drawing (reduces tearing).
bgm 1 0 / 1 Enable MIDI background music. Press F11 in-game to mute/unmute. Requires a MIDI synth with a SoundFont — see SoundFont setup.

Example

To play a fast, chaotic "everyone's a boss" free-for-all:

unlock_julian=1
balanced_julian=1
free_run=1
free_jump=1
fast_mp=1
spawn_weapons=3
all_weapons=1
game_speed=24

How it works

MODS.COM is a small DOS TSR built by build_mods_com.py. When PLAY.COM starts, it loads MODS.COM, which reads mods.cfg, patches the game's runtime in memory, and installs an INT 08 handler that drives the optional MIDI music (streamed from SYS/FUSION.BGM and SYS/TRANS.BGM). End users don't need Python or the build script — everything is pre-built.

Cheats / Hotkeys

In addition to mods.cfg, the original game has a few built-in debug hotkeys (all require holding F1):

Key Effect
F1 Unlock Julian on the character-select screen
F1 + 0 Change background
F1 + [ Full HP for Player 1
F1 + ] Full HP for Player 2
F1 + \ Full HP for Player 3
F1 + - Drop weapons (including dynamite / shuriken / bow)
F1 + = Delete all weapons
F2 + number Switch control to a different character
F10 End the current battle
F11 Toggle background music (when bgm=1)

Credits

  • Little Fighter 1 (1995) — created by Marti Wong. Official site: https://lf2.net/lf1.html.
  • Reference documentation and art — Little Fighter Empire: controls, cheats, and the character/move GIFs reproduced in this README.
  • English translation, MODS.COM, and build tooling in this repo — the little-fighter-1-english contributors.
  • SoundFont — weedsgm3.sf2 (Weeds GM3), public-domain General MIDI SoundFont by Clement Voillequin.

This repository distributes a fan translation/modification of a freeware game. All rights to Little Fighter 1 remain with its original creator.

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A fan translation of Little Fighter 1 DOS to English

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