ART OF FIGHTING
Original Release: SNK, 1992, Arcade/NeoGeo
Other Releases: SNES (1993), Genesis/TurboGrafx/NeoGeo CD (1994), Wii (2007), PS3 (2010), PS VIta (2012), PC/Xbox One/Switch (2017), Android/iOS (2022)
While the action is even more clunky and dated than arcade inspiration Street Fighter 2, Art of Fighting added a bunch of twists to the genre SNK would build on very successfully in other titles
Art of Fighting (Arcade, SNK, 1992)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
OK, today let's take on the interesting position of defending the first Art of Fighting game!
First and most importantly, it's not good enough to be worth spending money on (or at least it hasn't held up well enough). However I would say that, for its time, it was actually a pretty interesting fighting game and could be halfway fun to play.
Introduced in rapid succession right after Fatal Fury as SNK jumped with both feet into the red-hot fighting game market sparked by Street Fighter 2, the first AOF introduced a bunch of concepts to the genre that ended up becoming staples: "spirit gauges" that limit how much you can spam special moves, taunts to more quickly replenish said gauge, and screen scaling to allow the camera to zoom out for larger backgrounds and playfields.
First the backstory. Ryo Something and Robert Whatever, two tremendous Ryu/Ken ripoffs, set out to find Ryo's sister who has been kidnapped by some mysterious guy for no apparent reason. So they brawl their way through the town, assaulting random strangers at various businesses until they finally find someone who happens to know what's going on.
In single player mode, you can only play as Ryo or Robert. In two player mode, however, you can play as any of the other enemies in the game (a la Double Dragon NES). The core gameplay is pretty much Street Fighter style down to Ryo and Robert's special move inputs, setting aside the added spirit gauge and screen scaling gimmicks.
Hardly graphically impressive now of course, but at the time the large sprites and expanded backgrounds were pretty neat to look at. The character's faces also gradually turn into ground hamburger as you beat on each other, which is actually more of a disgusting feature now that I think about it.
The fighting action is a bit clunky, with somewhat iffy hit detection and the computer AI repeatedly spams special moves harder than a kid who just got the latest issue of Gamepro in the mail. However, in two player mode it's actually not that bad. I think it's significantly smoother than Fatal Fury, SNK's other major fighting game of the time (which is usually more highly regarded).
The background art and the music are both pretty good. I think the soundtrack is by the guy who later did all the King of Fighters games, as it has the same style and you can hear early versions of some of the songs that later went on to be remixed in KOF. It also has typical excellently bad SNK transration, which is the other consistent thing you can expect from them along with good music and nice background art.
Oh and this was also the first game to institute the trend of blowing King's clothes off with special moves, which is perhaps the greatest item of historical importance.
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