Some novel ideas that have been used since, but ultimately disappointing.

User Rating: 6.5 | Ryuuko no Ken SNES
By QualityApeMan | Review Date:
Art of Fighting is a Beat-'em-up made by famous developers SNK. It stars Ryo Sakazaki as the main character, also a main staple of SNK games like the 'The King of Fighters' series. In this game Ryo, along with his friend Robert Garcia try to find Ryo's sister Yuri, who has been kidnapped by someone. The story evolves as the player travels around South Town, getting into many fights and getting information and leads to her whereabouts.

The graphics in this game are quite good for this type of game, with the character sprites nicely designed. The backgrounds are also nicely detail and each one is different from the others. It seems a bit of a shame that this didn't take off as well as Capcom's Street Fighter series (not where I'm from at least).

The sound is what you would expect from a beat-'em-up. Various punch and jump noises, and some speech samples for special moves. It all works well. The music is very arcadey, which makes sense, this originally being an arcade machine. It doesn't seem to be all that memorable though, but it does its job.

The gameplay is reasonable enough. There is your standard setup: two fighters, a time limit, and health bars. there is also however the spirit bar, a novel idea which has since then been taken and used as a staple in many modern beat-'em-ups. The spirit bar is used up as you use special moves, and slowly replenishes itself throughout the match. When your spirit level is low, then your special moves are less than substantial. Another interesting feature is the bonus rounds which occur after every second fight. These give you the chance to learn a new move, raise your max health, or raise your spirit bar. A mini game is played to achieve this. Controls are not as expansive as other beat-'em-ups however, as this game uses a single punch button, single kick button, a taunt button and a throw button. Other games of this genre have various strength punches at hand.

Lastability-wise, this game isn't too long, with only 8 fights I think to complete story mode. On 2-player mode it has a long longer lifespan as playing with your friends can be a lot of fun.

Overview
Graphics - Reasonable enough. Quite nice
Sound - The usual sort of music and sound FX that comes with these games
Gameplay - A Few novel ideas in the game like the spirit bar and bonus stages, but controls are very simple and unvaried.
Lastability - Quite short 1 playermode, but 2 player will be some fun with friends.

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