Stand two fighters at opposite ends of the screen in Art of Fighting and the camera pulls back to show the whole arena. Let them close in and it swoops forward, until, as Germany’s Video Games put it, two “screen-sized figures” face each other. SNK’s 1992 fighting game for the Neo Geo was built to show off the hardware; Digital Press in 1994 called it the “first game to use scaling in battle”. It also asked players to think about their special moves, which ran on a gauge that could run dry.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: SNK, for the Neo Geo arcade (MVS) and home (AES) systems.
- Created by: Hiroshi Matsumoto.
- Released: 1992. The home cartridge held 102 megabits and cost nearly 400 Marks in Germany.
- Heroes: Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia; eight fighters are playable in two-player mode.
- Home versions: a Super Nintendo version by Takara followed in 1993.
- Sequels: Art of Fighting 2 (1994) and Art of Fighting 3 (1996).
Zooming in
SNK had already answered Street Fighter II with Fatal Fury. Art of Fighting went after it with spectacle. The Neo Geo has no tiled background layer and draws almost everything from sprite strips, and its hardware can shrink those sprites. SNK’s own specification describes reduction only, “from 100% to 0%”, so a game that wants close-ups draws its characters large and shrinks them for the wide shots. Art of Fighting did exactly that, and its fighters were, Retro Gamer later wrote, “some of the largest characters ever seen in a fighting game”.
The effect had a price. Video Games noticed that little moved in the backgrounds, which spared the hardware extra work. Not everyone liked the zoom, either. Digital Press found it “more distracting than anything else”.
Spirit and bruises
The big difference from Street Fighter II was a second bar under each fighter’s health. Fireballs and other special moves only worked, Video Games explained, while this energy bar stood in the green, and using them drained it. A fighter could recharge it with the A button, and when Ryo charges, a glow of energy shows around his shoulders. Taunting an opponent drained their gauge in turn. Reviewing the sequel, which kept the gauge, Edge complained that it soon ran out and that the opposing fighter could “taunt” it down.
Damage showed on the fighters. Video Games noted that faces discoloured after a long exchange of blows, and Hamster’s modern re-release still lists “the reactions of characters when they receive damage” alongside the spirit gauge as what made the game stand out.
Ryo, Robert and the tournament
In the one-player story only two fighters can be chosen: Ryo Sakazaki, a karate expert, and his friend Robert Garcia. Ryo’s sister Yuri has been kidnapped, and the pair set out to rescue her. Their opponents included the steel-clawed Lee Pai Long, John Crawley, a US Navy commander who fights the player on his aircraft carrier, and King. Between fights, bonus stages let the player smash the necks off five bottles, break a block of ice or, by mastering a complicated special move, break a wall. In two-player mode eight fighters were available.
Video Games rated it “excellent”, its highest grade. It did not play as well as Street Fighter II, the reviewer wrote, but it was a great deal of fun with two players and hard enough to keep experienced fighters busy for hours. Elsewhere the reception was cooler. Retro Gamer recalled that it “divided gamers immediately”, that its scaling disappointed many, and that its arcade performance was “meagre”. The Super Nintendo version, published by Takara, was given a poor review by Super Play in January 1994, which found it “dull” and “unbalanced”.
Sequels and The King of Fighters
Art of Fighting 2 (1994) kept the zoom and the gauge, now called the Rage Gauge. Edge found it visually impressive but “lacking in the gameplay department”, while Retro Gamer later described it as “a sequel to Art Of Fighting that apologised for the original”. Art of Fighting 3 followed in 1996; for it, Wireframe reported, SNK experimented with motion capture and 3D models but kept to hand-drawn sprites.
By then the characters had moved on. In 1994 SNK put Ryo, Robert and Takuma Sakazaki into The King of Fighters ’94 as the Art of Fighting team, against teams from Fatal Fury, Ikari Warriors and other SNK games. Hamster’s ACA NeoGeo series re-released the original Art of Fighting for modern consoles in 2017, on the Nintendo Switch on 21 September.
Sources
- Video Games (Germany) issue 1/93, January 1993, pp. 27–28: Neo Geo review by Andreas Knauf (the limited special-move reserve and refilling it; the zoom and “screen-sized figures”; the quiet backgrounds; Ryo and Robert in the one-player game, eight fighters in two-player; Lee Pai Long, John Crawley, King; discoloured faces; the three bonus stages; 102 Mbit; nearly 400 Marks; rating “hervorragend”).
- Digital Press issue 16, January 1994, p. 7: fighting game round-up (“First game to use scaling in battle, more distracting than anything else”).
- Retro Gamer issue 39, 2007, pp. 75–76: SNK history (released in 1992; divided gamers; the scaling; meagre arcade performance; the sequel that “apologised for the original”). Issue 54, 2008, p. 77: the series’ large characters and zooming.
- Wireframe issue 62, April 2022, pp. 85 and 88: SNK developer profile (Hiroshi Matsumoto created Art of Fighting; motion capture and 3D models for Art of Fighting 3).
- SNK, Neo-Geo Hardware Specification (December 1989, revised August 1990 and June 1991), Software Development p. 6: sprite reduction. See the Neo Geo entry.
- Super Play issue 15, January 1994, p. 51: Super Nintendo review (Takara; Ryo’s sister kidnapped; the reviewer’s verdict).
- Edge issue 9, June 1994, p. 74: Art of Fighting 2 review (the gauge drained by special moves and by taunts; “lacking in the gameplay department”).
- Video Games (Germany) issue 8/96, August 1996, p. 102: Art of Fighting 3 review.
- Nintendo Magazine System issue 25, October 1994: The King of Fighters ’94 and its Art of Fighting team; see The King of Fighters.
- Wikipedia, “Art of Fighting (video game)” (web, secondary): Yuri’s kidnapping and the spirit gauge drained by taunts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Fighting_(video_game)
- Nintendo UK, ACA NeoGeo Art of Fighting store page (web, secondary): Hamster’s re-release, 21 September 2017, and its description of the original. https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/ACA-NEOGEO-ART-OF-FIGHTING-1281161.html