Fight for Life is a 1996 fighting video game developed and published by Atari Corporation in North America and Europe for the Atari Jaguar. It was the final game to be developed and published by Atari themselves before dropping support for the platform and merging with JT Storage in a reverse takeover on July 30, 1996, and the last fighting title released for the console. Set in a purgatory dimension known as the Specter Zone, Fight for Life follows eight deceased fighters as they enter a tournament held by a shapeshifting being called the Gatekeeper, who will bestow a second chance at life to the winner. Its gameplay consists of one-on-one fights, with a main eight-button configuration, featuring special moves and the ability to customize character's movesets, as well as four different playable modes.

Directed, designed and solely programmed by former Sega AM2 member Francois Yves Bertrand as Atari's answer to Virtua Fighter, Fight for Life started development in the second quarter of 1994 and had a troubled development cycle, undergoing various changes before its late release on the system. Fight for Life was met with negative reviews; while some praised the ability to customize the characters with stolen movesets from fighters, the slow pace and controls were widely seen as crippling flaws.

Fight for Life is a polygon-based fighting game similar to Virtua Fighter and Tekken, in which the player fights against opponents in one-on-one matches. The fighter who manages to deplete the health bar of the opponent wins the bout and the first to win two bouts in a best-of-3 match becomes the winner. Rounds are not timed.

Similarly to Battle Arena Toshinden, characters can maneuver in the 3D environments by sidestepping to avoid upcoming attacks, allowing them to move around in a counter-clockwise direction while still facing their opponent. Health bars are also not displayed during gameplay, instead, they are only shown once any of the characters have taken damage.

Unlike most fighting games of the time, players begin with very few special moves and by defeating opponents, they can "steal" two special moves from them and build their unique fighter. The game features four modes of play and two types of camera movement, in addition to supporting both the Jaguar's ProController and standard gamepad. In the easiest mode, players do not fight against the final boss.

The Specter Zone is a purgatory dimension set between heaven and hell, which is overseen by a shape-shifting being only known as the Gatekeeper, who forms a tournament for his own amusement and will bestow a second chance at life to any of the eight deceased fighters, all of which died in 1995.

Francois Yves Bertrand developed his first video game, a text-based adventure game, for the TRS-80 while in high school period. Bertrand later purchased an Acorn Atom computer and developed for computers manufactured by Acorn Computers. Several years later, Bertrand joined French developer Sisteme and worked on titles from the label such as Ballarena and Erotictac. He would also later form his own game development company in France, Eterna, developing and publishing several titles for the Acorn line of home computers, such as Blaston.

While working for Sisteme, Bertrand began developing a new idea that involved controlling a computer program with a virtual camera system. Neither Bertrand nor Sisteme had the means to develop the technology, and Sisteme went out of business due to competition from Japanese developers.