Customer Reviews

Art of Fighting Anthology

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

For casual gamers, SNK's Art of Fighting franchise may not be as well known as their King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, or Samurai Showdown franchises, but that has never made it any worse. The Art of Fighting Anthology collects the three games in the series that follow the fighting adventures of Ryo and Robert as they take to the streets. The first game is the only one that has a storyline that makes any kind of relative sense (the pair are on the hunt for Ryo's kidnapped sister Yuri), but since when have you played a fighting game for the story? All three games have been emulated relatively perfectly from their Neo Geo arcade counterparts, which is good and bad. The first game suffers from a bit of slowdown and offers somewhat archaic controls, while the second game improves on this. The third Art of Fighting game is undoubtedly the best and re-vamps the graphics and tweaks the gameplay as well, making this collection worth picking up for alone. Though it would have been nice if some extras were included on the disc, the Art of Fighting Anthology is an excellent pick up for the price; and offers some great, old school 2-D fighting action that is still enjoyable to this day. Like the Metal Slug Anthology before it, maybe SNK will release some of their other franchises (like Fatal Fury or Samurai Showdown) in compilation form for the PS2 before it finally goes to console heaven.

Art of Fighting was never that good a series in the first place. It had poor strike resolution, EXTREMELY demanding joystick control (you need to be REALLY accurate with the fireball, dragon punch motions, etc., to get the specials out at all), almost no combos, and ungodly cheap CPU characters.

AoF had a small following but for the vast majority of fighting game fans it was always the game that you played if the local pizza shop or candy store didn't carry SF or MK. It was an innovator in the genre because it was the first to introduce a separate power bar for specials and a desperation move (though some will argue that those features were introduced in other games such as Crossed Swords, they were never in any head to head fighting game until this one), and the zooming display. But its animation is jerky, the zoom is very heavyhanded and tends to be disorienting, and the game mechanics were just not that good overall.

SNK didn't put out a really good fighter that was competitive with the SF and MK franchises until Samurai Shodown. Fatal Fury wasn't even that good until FFII.

Some of the fans out there will enjoy this because it's a fairly complete and faithful port, but honestly -- the game was never that good to begin with, and the benefits of buying this game on a new system will mostly be for nostalgia only.

Snk-Playmore seems to be one of the last companies to be releasing these old-school compilations. I'm personally glad that they are archiving the legendary Neo-Geo collection thru these releases.

Personally, I've never been a big fan of the Art of Fighting series. Just couldn't really get into it like some other fighting games; however, I still enjoyed it from time to time.

This compilation is a no-frills "direct to video" port from the Neo-Geo. You get all three original AOF games without any touch-ups or additions. Some might berate this tactic, but I don't mind it 'au natural'.

You get three original Neo-Geo fighters, that went for about $200 each back in the day; now for around $10 or less. Don't like 2D sprite-based fighters? Then go look elsewhere. Otherwise, you've come to the right place for some SNK nostalgia.

Good collection of good fighting games. I really like Art of Fighting 3 the most. It was really ahead for it's time with smooth animation.

THIS FLASHBACK IS AWESOME FUN FOR THOSE OF US WHO SPENT MANY A NIGHT BEATING THE CRAP OUT OF EACH OTHER AT THE ARCADE. EVERYTHING I REMEMBER AND MUCH MORE.

i used to play this on the arcade. now, i own the game over my PS2! this is a great game! classic!

I always believed that the Art of Fighting series were badly underrated. It never really caught on like the Fatal Fury or later the Samurai Shodown series. But it did had its merits nevertheless from the hugh characters to the sprit meter which limits how often you can special moves to the graphic scaling.

All 3 games in the series are 100% versions of the arcade ports. Sadly, SNK Playmore didn't bother to do more like tighten up the controls in the 1st. Art of Fighting game (I'm still having problems exucuting Robert's Lighting Kick, the Haoh Sho Koh Ken & the Ryuko Ranbu). The second game improves on this, but its best to play with another player as it's tough, even on Easy mode. AoF 3 is the best looking of the series. It plays a little like Virtual Fighting (despite the fact that it's still 2-D. SNK planned to make Aof 3 in 3-D. But I guess the Neo*Geo couldn't handle 3-D graphics).

If you're an old school gamer like myself & like fighting games, this collection is at least worth a rental.

The game is great. Fighting style is similar to the Street Fighter II games. The game is very fun to play.

Well, it's good for anybody who was playing 2D fighters at the arcades back than, but there's a old saying, "you cannot ever go back" I tried, and the magic just wasn't there anymore. For hardcare oldschool 2D fighters collectors ONLY!

it was fun for a while, but pretty outdated when compared to tekken or soul calibur.