Neo Geo

Art of Fighting

Die super-schnelle, abwechslungsreiche Grafik und der phänomenale Zoomeffekt werden selbst dem verwöhnten Neo-Geo-Besitzer noch ein anerkennendes Staunen entlocken. Die finanzkräftigen High-End-Prügelfans dürfen Art of Fighting auf den Weihnachtswunschzettel setzen.

The graphics are the highlight of this game, with smoothly animated characters and elegant backgrounds, including a dimly lit bar and some beautiful city skylines. The main problem with Art of Fighting is the difficulty in executing special moves, some of which are listed in the manual. I even had a hard time getting one-quarter "fireball" motions to register. There's a "spirit gauge" under your health meter that lets you execute "super" attacks, but only advanced players will find it useful. Art of Fighting is pretty barebones compared to most modern fighters, but it looks great, and there's charm in its simplicity.

Art of Fighting 1 is, despite it's many flaws, still an enjoyable and decent game. If you can overlook the lack of playable characters during story mode, you'll have hours of fun with this game !

This game is a mess. It's one player mode is not worth playing, as it has a simple story mode, that really isn't interesting at all. In fact, it really reminds me of a more mature version of the Fatal Fury story. It's a mafia story, and it's like all other mafia stories. The two player mode at least lets you play as eight people, but again, none of the characters have more than three moves, and most of the technique is taken up with snazzy camera effects. Not at all fun to play. It's really hard to recommend this game to anybody except for people that must own all fighting games. It's comparable to Rise of the Robots.

Das war´s dann auch schon. Wie gesagt - AoF mochte damals zwar durchaus ein Hit gewesen sein, und einige Zocker mögen einzig wegen diesem Spiel Hunderte von Deutschmarks in ein Neo Geo plus Software investiert haben... aber letztendlich isses Mist, der (auf den allerersten , und wirklich nur auf den allerersten Blick) gigantischen Optik und den guten Ideen zum Trotz. Bleibt für mich noch 3 Punkte zu geben - AoF war halt nun mal einer der ersten Beat´em up-Versuche SNK´s, und wenn man bedenkt für welch großartige Spiele (Garou, Samurai Shodown, Last Blade) das der erste Versuch war, dann sei es ihnen verziehen.