Game #975: Art of Fighting Anthology

  Well... the art in the cover is pretty good, the art of fighting however....    

 Alright, so... I've never really liked Art of Fighting. I played every game in the series, I played multiple console ports, I gave it as many chances as I could yet I never liked it. With Art of Fighting Anthology I decided to give all three games another go and... it made me appreciate Street Fighter II all that much more.

 Firstly, this are straight Neo-Geo console conversions, so brutal difficulty and no advantage bonus on continuing a match so... good luck. On the other hand, you can edit the colors of every playable character by game, so that's pretty neat! 

 Art of Fighting 1 is fairly interesting because it's focus is on its story mode. Heck, the Arcade version didn't even have a VS mode, but since this is the console version you actually get a VS mode with the other characters. Regardless, in single player you can only play as Robert and Ryo, and every two fights you get a bonus round that can help you increase some stats of your character!

 This game has huge sprites, and character faces get bruised as they take damage, which was a neat little detail. Sadly, spectacle is most of what the game has going for it. You have three attack buttons, a punch, a kick and a 'Strong' attack. Strong punches and kicks are performed by tapping either punch or kick quickly after the strong attack button. It's... unconventional to say the least. Special and Super moves require energy from your energy gauge, and this is AoF's claim to fame as it was the first fighting game with an energy gauge! You have to charge it by holding down buttons, and you can sap energy from your enemy by taunting them.

 I'm not gonna lie... Art of Fighting 1 is boring. I really like Ryo and Robert as friends trying to rescue Ryo's sister, and I love how both of them alongside Yuri and King made it to King of Fighters, so I really like some of these characters, but the rest of the game is so... limited, clunky and forgettable.

 Art of Fighting 2 is a proper fighter, doing away with the bonus rounds and the stronger story element and turning it into a more standardized arcade ladder. The game is much faster, which I really liked, but the difficulty setting... my god, I thought Mr. Karate was nigh impossible on the easiest difficulty setting, but he has nothing on the AI from this game.

 The sprites look more detailed than before, and the bruising returns which is pretty neat. On the other hand.... strong and weak attacks depend on how long you hold down either punch or kick button. It works about as well as you'd expect. So, in some ways the game is a bit better, more characters, better sprites, but in others is a bit worse, since the weak/strong inputs are too imprecise. There's still not a proper combo system, so it's mostly one off attacks and special moves.

 And then came Art of Fighting 3 which just like SF III and Garou is made up of mostly an entirely new cast of characters, joined by Ryo and Robert. Since this was the final game it's the easiest of the bunch, and while the games still lack a proper combo system, now you get 'chase' attacks by mashing buttons. Attack buttons were changed again, now it's a punch, a kick and a strong attack, making for the simplest game in the series, but considering how weird the previous games played, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

 The graphics are a mixed bag. Bruising is gone, sprites are smaller but more colorful than before. Some animations look super smooth but... others look super stiff. Most of the idle animations are terrible, and something about how Wyler's sprite is angled makes him look off. It's so weird, I was pleased and disappointed with the overall look!

 Yeah, I still don't like Art of Fighting. I think all three games were outdated even at the time they came out for the first time. However, and I must stress this, as much as I dislike the series, I really liked the story elements from the first game, Ryo and Robert's friendship(which feels like a more realized version of Ken and Ryu's), the Mr. Karate reveal, the fact that King is actually a woman, etc. And I do think that the characters they brought over to King of Fighters(Except, maybe, Eiji and Mr. Big who were quickly forgotten) flourished much better over there. As for this collection itself, I wish it was more accessible when it came to difficulty settings!

 4.0