There's more strategy, skill, and dancing around your opponents in this game than any other fighting game before it.
Well ... to be honest, I can't tell you how well its emulated because this is my first experienced with Art of Fighting. In fact, its my first experience with ANY Neo Geo game. Before it arrived on the VC, my idea of a "Neo Geo" was a crappy hand held that didn't sell very well. Shows you how much I know.
Of course anyone who's anyone really knows that the original Neo Geo was a 600 dollar graphical powerhouse when it arrived .. and I specifically chose to download Art of Fighting for its various descriptions. I was intrigued that the sprites reflected combat damage and more intrigued of the mentioning of voice acting, cut scenes, and a "cinematic camera that zoomed in and out on the action". That, along with what sounded like a unique concept of "desperation attacks" when your health got low, convinced me that this was a unique fighter that I really needed to have in my collection. I was right.
Even when you're playing Art of Fighting on Wii, you're still aware ... more than any else ... that this game definitely looks like it came out of the arcade. Everything about it is graphically polished ... the text and option menus reflect that kind of Street Fighter-esque feel, and if left to its own devices the game will start playing a demo as it blinks "Press Start" over and over again, looking identicle to what one of SNK's system's might have looked like standing in an arcade. Despite the fact that I grew up around SNES and N64, I can easily see how excited and amazed consumer's must have been to have a Neo Geo ... a bonified arcade machine ... sitting in their living rooms. But enough about the system .... lets get back to Art of Fighting.
Art of Fighting is, obviously, a fighting game about two guys who are going to go rescue a girl. Is it their sister? Just a friend? I'm not certain. I haven't really bothered paying much attention to the story as of yet. Once you get the game yourself you'll see why -- the gameplay is where the money's at in this game, not its story.
I don't see how anyone can play Art of Fighting effectively on Wii without a Classic Controller -- the game DEMANDS an arcade-pad like setup, and even once you have your classic controller connected, you'll really need to set it in your lap, place your index finger over the Y button, a second finger over the A button, and try and play the game like that. The reason you'll need to do this is because a lot of moves requires you to press these two buttons simultaenously, or others like it simultaneously, to perform all the possible moves you can perform ... and if you're not utilizing every ability in your arsenal, you're not going to survive in art of fighting very longer.
Everything the game's descriptor's advertise are true -- sprites start changing to reflect bruised and swolen faces ... tattered clothing and cuts ... and the camera does indeed zoom in and out on the action as you get closer together ... something I haven't seen in a fighting game sense Super Smash Bros ... and if Smash Bros. emulated this game with that, then Art of Fighting must be flattered indeed. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a "desperation" move yet ... but ... then again, I'm still learning the special moves. Another gamplay element worth mentioning is that special abilities are dictated by how much "spirit" you have in a bar. You can drain your opponents spirit by taunting him ... but then that leaves you open for assault. Like wise, if you're opponent runs out of spirit, you can hold down B and start to charge it back up ... but once again, this leaves you open as well ... so the game really walks this fine balance between these aspects that can make or break a match in someone's favor.
The "cut scenes" aren't so much cutscenes ... they're really kind of simple animations with text speech bubbles before and after fights. Honestly, we probably wouldn't think anything of it in this day and age ... but this kind of attention to detail and extra effort probably got noticed back when console games were rather weak, simplistic versions of their arcade inspiration.
The characters do have very, VERY small lines of spoke dialogue in between fights, but the quality of the audio is very bad ... and its nothing to get too exited over.
Art of Fighting comes with a 1 Player adventure and a 2 Player versus mode as well, meaning a friend can tag along and try to whip ya.
No one can deny the amount of production quality thats in Art of Fighting: its artwork indeed, and it's definitely worth a purchase for fighting fans.