Okay let's start, this is the very first installment of the legendary, or maybe infamous ? Art of Fighting/Ryuuko no Ken series. Which (sadly) consists of only three parts, (up to now)...
Journey back to the year 1992, the graphics were just
astonishing and impressive ! The character-sprites are really HUGE when the screen
is zoomed in, they're still fairly large even when the screen is zoomed out
(they're somewhat grainy then, though). BTW, this game introduced the
zooming-feature which now literally have LOTS of 2D or 3D fighters. Another cool
feature is: The more someone gets punched or kicked into the face, the more
bruised he/she looks then ! The background-artwork is decent, too. The animation
is pretty choppy and outdated, but does it's job.
Some of the tunes are awesome, in my opinion ! For example: Mr. Karate's theme, just listen to it and you'll know what I mean... The SFX are also quite good. Every character has his/her own voices & grunts. There's quite a lot of speech in it which is quite nice, although it is muffled. Punches and kicks sound o.k.
This game doesn't shine in this category. It controls a bit wooden and as a result awkwardly. Most of the special moves are ridiculously tough to do. I mean things like the 'Genei Kick/Zanretsu-Ken Punch' . It gets horribly annoying after a while and you'll find yourself terribly pissed off. Overall, it controls average. It is also a pretty tough game, guys like Mr. Karate will make you soon want to give up (if you can make it that far on home cart, at all). But I'm able to beat the game without losing a continue... Good luck finishing it, gamers !
"Replay value" is the worst aspect of the game. What I mean is that you only have two playable characters (Ryo and Robert) during story mode. Which is truly a bad thing, since they're almost identical ! They both practically have the same special moves.
Art of Fighting 1 is, despite it's many flaws, still an enjoyable and decent game. If you can overlook the lack of playable characters during story mode, you'll have hours of fun with this game !
