1. General Analysis
As we said before, Art Of Fighting I is an arcade fighting videogame released in 1992, around these years this genre reached its peak, there was an apogee for arcade fighting videogames, few of them still being considered as masterpieces nowadays, a clear example of it is Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat I.
Art Of Fighting I introduced revolutionary mechanincs in the genre such as "Desperation Attacks", "Power bar" and a previous introduction of the character you are going to take a fight with.
Art Of Fighting I was released for the Neo Geo system so we're gonna take a look about the specifications of the console:
First of all, it's important to say that Neo Geo is a cartridge-based arcade system board due to the golden era of arcade BUT also a fourth-generation home video game console. From now on we are going to reffer to them as Neo Geo MVS (Arcade|Multi Video System) and Neo Geo AES (Console|Advanced Entertainment System)
First, let's talk generally about the Neo Geo MVS (Multi Video System) which was released on April 26 1990 by SNK Corporation. Neo geo MVS was the most powerful video game console at the time, being so that it's rival, Capcom couldn't surpass the console until 1993.
It was marketed as a 24-bit platform, its CPU is technically a 16/32-bit Motorola 68000-based system with an 8/16-bit Z80 coprocessor, while its GPU chipset has a 24-bit graphics data bus. It's RAM counted with 68 kilobytes of memory. This set of pieces granted the technical supremacy for Neo Geo MVS in year 1992.
Neo Geo MVS run games at a resolution of 320x240 using 4096 simultaneous colors of a pallete of 65.536 colors, it's incorporated screen has a refresh rate(How many times the screen refreshes the image in 1 second)derived from the main clock(24MHz) of 59.94Hz and it's CPU and GPU work together to provide an stable 59.1 frames per second.
In terms of audio and sound, the MVS worked with a Yamaha YM2610 Sound chip and 4 concurrent FM channels.
- CPU: 68000 16/32-bit Motorola.
- GPU: 24-bit graphics data bus.
- MAIN RAM: 68 Kilobytes.
- VIDEO RAM: 84 Kilobytes
- Graphics: 4096 Simultaneous colors.
- Screen Resolution: 320x224.
- Audio Chip: Yamaha YM2610.
- Frame/Sec: 59fps
- Refresh rate: 59.94 Hz
With this being said about Neo Geo MVS we know a little bit better which aspects condition the techincal profile of "Art Of Fighting" I and get to a better understanding about which techincal specifications AoFI was working on.
Now, let's move on into Neo Geo AES, a truly arcade experience for home users. It first was released and planned to be part of a japanese rental program made by SNK, however the expensiveness of the system led Neo Geo AES to be a luxury product and SNK re-made it for everyone's home use.
It counted with the same raw specs as the MVS and had full compatibility. The only notable changes between MVS and AES are their frames/second being the ones from AES a little bit higher than MVS: 59.59 vs 59.18.
One more thing we found remarkable is the minimum and maximum size for sprites that Neo Geo could handle being the minimum: 16x16px and the maximum 16x512px.
Hiroshi Matsumoto was the original creator of Art Of Fighting I, it's desire was to create a prequel for the Fatal Fury series which took place in the same functional universe. Matsumoto worked with "Shin Nihon Kikaku Corporation" or SNK Studios, a hardware and software japanese company (Developers of Neo Geo) to develop the game itself which was originally released in 1992 for Neo Geo.
The great feedback the players gave to the game and the big popularity that the game was enjoying in it's years made the title to have 2 sequels: Art Of Fighting II (1994) and Art Of Fighting III(1996).
Both sequels of Art Of Fighting I counted with new characters and new mechanics added such as "rage gauge" similar to the "spirit system" (We're gonna talk about this in Design) or "Motion capture" being the first saga to introduce it in SNK games. Also, exclusive versions like Art Of Fighting Anthology or Art Of Fighting: The Path Of The Warrior were released in which you could play the 3 titles of the AoF series.
Art Of Fighting is a videogame that works on a lot of platforms leaving aside the original ones (Neo Geo and it's versions) AOF has been released on SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis, PC Engine CD, Super Famicom, Play Station 2, Wii and Nintendo Switch.
- Art Of Fighting I: PC Engine CD, SNES, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.
- Art Of Fighting II: Super Famicom.
- Art Of Fighting III: Nintendo Switch.
- Art Of Fighting Anthology: Play Station 2.
- Art Of Fighting II&III "The path of the warrior": Wii Virtual Console.
We strongly think that Art Of Fighting is still relevant nowadays because it was revolutionary for the Fighting Game Genre and we can clearly see this as how Nintendo Switch or Wii included the title to it's virtual shop, giving the title a deserved place for the old-gamers who want to enjoy again the arcade experience.