Another re-review of an old classic - this time it's Art of Fighting

I started writing some more in depth re-reviews of some of the older Neo Geo games and I finally got another one finished. It was suggested on my forum that I should re-do the Art of Fighting one first as we had been talking about that game quite a bit, so I did exactly that and got it uploaded onto the site.

You can read the new review <a href="http://www.neogeoforlife.com/reviews/art_of_fighting.shtml" target="_blank">here</a> while the old crappy one that I wrote YEARS ago is <a href="http://www.neogeoforlife.com/reviews/art_of_fighting_old.shtml" target="_blank">here</a>. Check them out and let me know what you think!

If anybody is wondering why I am bothering to re-do the reviews of such old games, it is mainly because I am just not happy with some of the older ones I wrote, as they don't really reflect what I truly feel about those games... I think my writing style has improved over the years. A few people requested that I should do this as well, and I thought it was a good idea. Also, it gives me an excuse to play some of my older carts again, and if newcomers read these reviews, it might get them interested in playing some of the earlier classic Neo games, instead of jumping straight to the newer stuff like MotW.

Thanks,
Kaz

Nice one. I like reading reviews

Nice review, do AOF2 next! Or maybe Power Spikes 2 tickled .

You guys really know what´s quite good...

Nice review of AoF3 too... loco

Kasumi Todo, who made her debut later on in The King of Fighters '96

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Kasumi make her debut in Art of Fighting 3?

Good review overall, I love reading reviews for older games.

The reviews are great!

Btw, Kazuya, do you know that one of the first times i got in contact with the neo on web was at your site?!

I can only say "thank you!"

Good review.

I prefer just about everything in AOF to AOF2.

AOF2 lost the comic book/story atmosphere, rehashed ALL the characters from the first, didn't have much of a story, worse music, the animation didn't improve much, went to a strange world heroes style button setup, and is laughably hard.

AOF > AOF2

MrMonk:
rehashed ALL the characters from the first

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How did they rehash the characters? They're completely new sprites! That is like saying Capcom vs SNK 2 is just rehashed characters, just because they make another appearance doesn't mean it's rehashed, unless it's the same sprites (like Morrigan). BTW, Geese makes an appearance, and seeing a young Geese in action is fucking tight.

MrMonk:
AOF2 lost the comic book/story atmosphere, didn't have much of a story,

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Can you let me know a fighting game that revolves around some great inspiring story? IMO, not having a story at all (like in 2) was probably better than the rehashed "kidnapped" story that we've seen in tons of movies.

MrMonk:
worse music

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We must've been listening to different tracks. Go back and listen to these stage tracks: Robert, Ryo, John, Mickey, Geese, Yuri. These are all top notch tracks!

MrMonk:
the animation didn't improve much

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Go back and play both again, and you'll see the animation has increased a lot. The characters are also more detailed than the first as well.

MrMonk:
went to a strange world heroes style button setup

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Um, the button setup was exactly like the first. Punch, Kick, Fierce/Throw, Taunt, and press the P/K a second to make it a hard attack. How exactly is it like World Heroes?

MrMonk:
and is laughably hard.

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One of the easiest games if you give it a chance. I'm not knocking you for disliking the game, rather the reasons you give, because most of them are bogus.

<small>[ April 03, 2003, 07:39 PM: Message edited by: SonGohan ]</small>

SonGohan:

MrMonk:
and is laughably hard.

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One of the easiest games if you give it a chance. I'm not knocking you for disliking the game, rather the reasons you give, because most of them are bogus.

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As far as I've seen, it's easy if you know how to cheese the AI. Played "straight", it's pretty damn hard, and I believe it was docked points by the big game mags for its difficulty.

Hinge:
As far as I've seen, it's easy if you know how to cheese the AI. Played "straight", it's pretty damn hard, and I believe it was docked points by the big game mags for its difficulty.

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It's not "cheesing the AI". It's just knowing how to play the game. One could say using combos in KOF is a way to "cheese the AI", when in fact it's just how you play the game. Granted, I know patterns to get perfects on almost every character, but that isn't fun at all. I play it "straight" every time.

Thanks for the replies everyone

DanAdamKOF: I will do AOF2 again at some point... will need some time to play it again though and there are a couple of others I need to do first. Please don't make me play Power Spikes 2 again though, that game will make me go loco (there's a review of it at my site anyway)

CHRiZ-77: The AOF3 reviews was also written about 3 years ago, and I know it is pretty bad Again, once I get the chance to put in some more playtime on it I will re-review it.

SonGohan: Yeah you are right... I'm a dumbass I have been off work this week with a bad cold, and it must have messed up my memory too. I'll fix that, thanks a lot for pointing it out!

freddryer: That's good to know, thanks a lot for the compliment, I'm glad the site has been helpful!

MrMonk: I kind of know what you mean, although I think my personal reason for preferring the first AoF because that is the game I played most in the arcades back then... it is also one of the games that got me into the Neo Geo. AOF2 is still better in vs mode though imho.

Hinge: I'm gonna have to learn how to cheap the AI to death in AoF2... I've always sucked at it. One of my friends used to be able to finish it one credit though! buttrock

<small>[ April 04, 2003, 04:00 AM: Message edited by: Kazuya_UK ]</small>

hi kaz how are you?

...please do not take this the wrong way, as my defense to AoF was purely out of observation. while it was novel of you to re-review AoF, it seem your observations of this game has a mixture of recent standards, don't you think this is a bit unfair? lemme explain, your previous review of AoF was appropriate during that time because the game was released during that time. there were no enhancements or ingenuity that which we evolved with and enjoy (...sometimes take for granted, LOL) today. naturally, AoF would seemed archaic to you or me judging it by todays standards as we have evolved, but the game didn't. now if we had remade AoF using current technology, better use of sprites, better programming, better game mechanics, don't you think your score of today would be a little bit better than what you gave it. like resident evil, we judge it today, even the ports of re2 and re3 just with higher rez still would have been not upto par judging by today standards, but when capcom remade resident evil tho, using the best technology has to offer of today, the score changed. what's ironic tho is the GC re remake actually sold very well and at the core of that game is the same resident evil game that was released several years ago. another is the original SF2, leaps and bounds title during its time, archaic on todays standards.

point is your original review of AoF was appropriate, and so is your other previous reviews coz you had reviewed them using benchmark standards of that timeframe, not today's. wink

AOF 2 always thoroughly kicks my ass too.

Anywho, hope to see more re-reviews in the future. What have you redone so far?

evasyar:
hi kaz how are you?

...please do not take this the wrong way, as my defense to AoF was purely out of observation. while it was novel of you to re-review AoF, it seem your observations of this game has a mixture of recent standards, don't you think this is a bit unfair? lemme explain, your previous review of AoF was appropriate during that time because the game was released during that time. there were no enhancements or ingenuity that which we evolved with and enjoy (...sometimes take for granted, LOL) today. naturally, AoF would seemed archaic to you or me judging it by todays standards as we have evolved, but the game didn't. now if we had remade AoF using current technology, better use of sprites, better programming, better game mechanics, don't you think your score of today would be a little bit better than what you gave it. like resident evil, we judge it today, even the ports of re2 and re3 just with higher rez still would have been not upto par judging by today standards, but when capcom remade resident evil tho, using the best technology has to offer of today, the score changed. what's ironic tho is the GC re remake actually sold very well and at the core of that game is the same resident evil game that was released several years ago. another is the original SF2, leaps and bounds title during its time, archaic on todays standards.

point is your original review of AoF was appropriate, and so is your other previous reviews coz you had reviewed them using benchmark standards of that timeframe, not today's. wink

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I'm not too bad thanks... had a bad cold this week so I have been off work, which is why I've had a bit more spare time than usual to work on the site

I know where you are coming from, but I do think the new review I wrote was fair. I did actually wrote a lot of it using past tense, and I did say quite a lot about how much I loved the game back in 1991 (and how much I still love it now). But even so, I can't really give the game a higher score than I did... in my opinion, even at the time it was released it was far from the best game of its type - graphically it was excellent back then, but the controls have always been quite stiff and awkward (not that I complained much back then). The final score I gave was also the same as what I gave in the original review - I only changed the score for graphics slightly.

I think that even if they were to remake Art of Fighting with exactly the same gameplay but better graphics, it wouldn't make much difference to the final score that I would give it. However, if they did enhance the gameplay it would be a different story... I think even with the GC remake of Resident Evil they did add a few things in there to try and spice up the gameplay (although at heart it is exactly the same game we played years ago).

Thanks for the feedback though - and don't worry I never take offence at someone giving constructive criticism, and your post had some good points . All of us have different opinions anyway, it would be a very boring world if we didn't! You also got me thinking: what if they DID do a remake of the original AoF game with improved graphics and gameplay - I would pay good money for something like that!

Fygee: Thanks - so far I have done KOF 94/95/96 and AOF. The more recent reviews of KOF 2002 and RotD are also written in the new review style that I am using too, which I think is a lot better

<small>[ April 04, 2003, 09:13 AM: Message edited by: Kazuya_UK ]</small>

Its a crazy statement to say Aof 2 is easy as long as you cheese it

Yeah it is easy if you rehearse the crappy ai patterns like some nerd, but than what kind of game does that make aof2?.....a pretty unenjoyable one.

To this day it remains the biggest neo disappointment to me.

I drove 45 miles to buy it in 1996 and was amazed by the cover art, and intro when I switched on.The select screen was astonishing and than.......wtf is this???......what happened to the gameplay???

Why on earth after improving on the great storyline, graphics and music, and line up, they than proceeded to completely rehaul the aof 1 gameplay and difficulty.....is a mystery.

Art of fighting 1 was the perfect balance, whilst 2 is very hard and art of fighting 3 veers slightly to easy.

I would have loved it if they realised their mistake back in 1994 and had bought out a art of fighting 2 "remix" with more balanced difficulty.

BTW art of fighting 2 has a great story line its just you need to beat Big and reach geese to access most of it

ugh,ibought aof 2 on release for 199..this game has yet to be be cus i get sooo pissed..

although my fave game is indeed aof 3....love that game...

i know everything about it,so if kaz needs some pointers hit me up

Rugal: I think AoF2 is too hard, but I still think it's a better and more fun game in 2 player personally. AoF1 still holds a bigger place in my heart though, especially because it was one of the games that got me into the Neo Geo.

Samhain: yeah thanks, I could probably do with some hints and tips when I get my AoF3 MVS cart... last time I played that game I sucked pretty bad at it

Hey, Kaz...how much ass wold AoF 2 kick if it played like Savage Reign? Man, could you imagine that? And I don't even mean the multiple plane stuff, just the single plane fighting engine. OYE! It would be SO FUN!

As it is now, as someone else already mentioned, to play the CPU, you basically have to trick it and use real cheese ball techniques which suck the fun out of it awfully fast.

I also hold AoF 2 up as one of my biggest dissapointments. The characters are great in this game. The story is even better. It's animated wonderfully for a game of that era. Just all around really, really cool! It just plays like complete hell in 1 player mode. So sad.

SNK bosses are hard/cheap enough without the entire cast of the game playing in the same way.

PS...AoF was one of my first Neo carts (bought it new for $199.00) and I played the hell out of it. My experience is very much the same as the one you have documented in your review. Well done.

I think you might annoy a few AoF2 fans by saying that about Savage Reign wink I have to say though - even if Savage Reign isn't one of the best fighters out there, it is probably more enjoyable in single player mode than AoF2 is... it's hard to know what SNK were thinking with making an otherwise cool game so difficult. I actually have quite a bit of fun with Savage Reign though (probably another game I'll review again)... I even own the full MVS kit

Thanks for the compliments, it's nice to know someone else thinks the same way about Art of Fighting as I do... as I said in the review I really can't help thinking about AoF1 without feeling really nostalgic and wishing we still had the same arcade scene that we had back in the nineties.

Originally posted by SonGohan:</strong>

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When I said rehashed, I meant all the characters from the first one were in the second, many with the same moves and outfits. I would have rather had very few to none return with an all new cast except for Ryo, Robert, Yuri and Takuma.

Some of the characters in AOF2 didn't look as good as they did in the first as well, like Lee, Jack, John, and Mickey just to name a few. I haven't had an opportunity to see Geese yet.

I also missed the cool cutscenes from the first. Like them or not, they helped set AOF apart from the crowd of "me too" games in its times, and gave it a comic book feel. AOF2 lost that touch.

The in game sound didn't improve either, the first had memorable tracks, lots of nice effects in the music and background, stuff like that. The sound in this game is pretty much forgettable.

AOF2 wasn't an improvement on a cool game, it was a mediocre attempt to give us more of the same IMO.

MrMonk:
When I said rehashed, I meant all the characters from the first one were in the second, many with the same moves and outfits. I would have rather had very few to none return with an all new cast except for Ryo, Robert, Yuri and Takuma.

Some of the characters in AOF2 didn't look as good as they did in the first as well, like Lee, Jack, John, and Mickey just to name a few. I haven't had an opportunity to see Geese yet.

I also missed the cool cutscenes from the first. Like them or not, they helped set AOF apart from the crowd of "me too" games in its times, and gave it a comic book feel. AOF2 lost that touch.

The in game sound didn't improve either, the first had memorable tracks, lots of nice effects in the music and background, stuff like that. The sound in this game is pretty much forgettable.

AOF2 wasn't an improvement on a cool game, it was a mediocre attempt to give us more of the same IMO.

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That is lame reasoning. There are few times where a character gets a completely new outfit. Every single sequal to a Neo fighter has the bulk of the characters wearing the same clothes, hell you're lucky if you even get a new sprite. Sorry, that doesn't fly.

Honestly, if you think Jack, Lee, or Mickey look better in the first AOF than part 2, you need to open your eyes and look at the attention to detail. Every character had an overhaul on their look with new sprites and tons of animation.

I think a lot of people hate AOF2 because they can't jump kick their way to victory anymore. Let's get this straight, AOF isn't even that playable. To sit down and have fun with it because of the game engine is something you won't find. Most people are living off of memories, and I'll admit I'm like that too with a lot of games. However, AOF2 has improved in every aspect of the first AOF, but it still doesn't make the engine that great either. Part 2 is a lot better for human competition though.