Art of Fighting

"Art of Fighting Looks Great, Plays Awful"

I have a love-affair with the Neo-Geo Advanced Entertainment System. Therefore I love it's games. I also like to play ports of their games on other machines just to see the differences. Art of Fighting is a port of a well-known SNK franchise, which uses a cool zoom effect when your fighter gets closer to your opponent. It then zooms out when they move far apart. This fighting game actually has a deep storyline, and is very nicely animated. The SNES version is no slouch graphically, it looks much like its arcade counterpart. It keeps the zoom effect intact, and the characters remain rather large and colorful. So this all sounds good, so far. Just wait here comes the best part...

(gameplay - 3)
This game is very hard. Not just the opponents but the whole game. Yes the CPU is cheap, yes the game is difficult, but nobody ever realized it was this difficult until they find out that special moves are nearly impossible to pull off. Everything seems responsive as you push the buttons and jump around, however it is very hard to do any special moves. This makes for a very difficult and frustrating game experience. That is most unfortunate because AOF graphically is great.

(story - 9)
The story is great, Ryo Sakazaki and his friend Robert Garcia are out to save Ryo's kid sister. They must fight several tough bad guys in South Town to make their way to the end and save the girl. Along the way you'll see the storyline develop and unfold right before your eyes. Better than most standard fighting game plots...

(graphics - 9, sound - 7)
The backgrounds are colorful and bright, and the characters are still huge, just like the Neo version. The characters appear to be well detailed, and the animation is spot-on. Really the graphics here are so good that you'll wonder why other Neo to SNES ports don't look better. Certainly this proves the SNES is capable of doing most of the tricks the Neo has. It may not be perfect but it looks great on the SNES. This is one of the best Neo-Geo ports I have ever seen, at least it is visually, gameplay wise is another story. As for sound, well it is decent and sounds pretty much like the arcade does. No outstanding tunes here, but the sound effects are great. Overall AOF excels in the audio and video department.

(replayability - 3)
I don't think you will want to play this after taking it for a test drive. Not being able to pull off special moves really kills the game and curbs your enthusiasm for it. I know it has some extra modes of play like Versus and Story Mode, but it's just not fun if you can't do the moves with relative ease. I don't think anyone would keep coming back to this well, mainly because of the terrible game engine.

(recommendations)
This game is great visually, sound-wise, and really remains true to the arcade version. However the inability to pull off special moves really hurts this game. I'd stay away for sure, as this game really feels broken and it is not worth anything if you can't even play it the right way.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/19/04