The SNES port of one of the first Neo-Geo fighting games. At first glance, you may think that this is a Street Fighter II clone. But not quite...

Art Of Fighting made its debut in the Neo-Geo in 1992. It featured huge characters, horrid controls, good music, a so-so storyline, and great graphics. Thankfully, some of these qualities never made it to this version:

Gameplay: 7
The Takara programmers made an effort to improve the arcade version's bad controls, and they succeded somewhat. Though it is still difficult to pull off some special moves [and the default button layout isn't much help, either], you get used to it very quickly.

It's probably just me, but the game's difficulty has been toned down a bit. The AI isn't as aggressive. An example is that Mr. Karate isn't as difficult as the arcade version, but he still gives some cheap hits that deplete your life quickly.

Story: 8
It has the same story as its arcade counterpart, so let me repeat what I said in that review: "It has a decent story, and the game is set in the same universe as the Fatal Fury series. The events that occur in this game are the prelude to that series. Another cool addition is the pre-fight dialogue, where Ryo or Robert talk trash to everyone before fighting." However, this version does have a real ending! The Neo-Geo version only showed a bit of story and the phrase "To Be Continued?". This version actually explains the events that trigger the Fatal Fury / Garou series.

Graphics: 6
The game's graphics are OK. Though the game characters and their close up portraits are well done, the rest of the graphics look as if they were redrawn in a hurry. When you move away from the enemy, the screen shrinks using the SNES' Mode 7 effects, and even though it reproduces the arcade's scaling, it also brings the grainyness in a worse manner. And the character's faces don't show any damage dealt to them any more.

Sound / Music: 4
For some reason, Ryo, Robert and some other characters use the same grunts and screams. The punches and kicks sound OK. And as for the music, it doesn't even sound the same as the arcade version! It seems fine, but they overused some of the music samples [an example is Mr. Karate's stage, where they use a chanting that instead of being scary, is annoying].

It looks OK, it sounds kinda bad, the gameplay is too loose, and the story is old, but this game can entertain anyone for a while. You'd better get a friend, because the 2P versus mode is the only redeeming quality of the game.