The Complete History of Art Of Fighting - Full documentary

foreign game like no other is about to enter the rink [Music] with Graphics unlike anything we have seen before at first time I tried this game on the arcade I couldn't believe my eyes and game mechanics and heard of the spirit bar is what you need to execute your special moves witness the birth and evolution of a franchise they iterated on everything they did right on the previous game that will change the firing games genre forever Yoko no Ken art of fighting [Music] in the early 90s the then Young video game company SNK previously known as Shin Nihon kikaku is on a roll with successful releases for their brand new Neo Geo arcade and home systems following the success of their first fighting game garu densets known as feral Fury in the west as well as the worldwide Fame that the company soon-to-be rival Capcom received from the release of Street Fighter 2. SNK saw potential in focusing more on this new one vs one genre and decided to launch a new franchise that unknown to them will have quite the important role in the development of the future of fighting games because of the success SNK had up until that time the company was interested in trying new Concepts and ideas the success of fatal Fury immediately brought talks of a sequel and while feral Fury 2 was in the early development another internal team within smk led by hiroshimatsumoto known as Finnish Matsumoto was working on a brand new franchise Yoko no Ken which translates to tale of the tiger and dragon Matsumoto was not new to the genre as he previously worked as the Planner on the original 1987 Street Fighter game from its conception the okono Ken titled art of fighting worldwide was supposed to be something special with Federal Fury introducing the two planes of action in a stage SNK has hoped that art of firing will bring something unique to the table especially in the graphics Department when it was released Auto fighting was the most detailed 2D game today each character was big detailed and looked as if it jumped out of an anime at first time I tried this game on the arcade I couldn't believe my eyes like you can see the the the the the characters uh getting hurt on their faces when they fought and the effects so everything was amazing about this game SNK tried to push in the envelope by creating a unique world and characters that were hoping I will be as memorable as the bogart Brothers early on it was decided that the game would lean heavily on story and will focus on two main characters ryosakazaki and Robert Garcia and to make these new protagonists stand out from the heavy competition it was important to make the visuals quite unique when I first saw the game it was pretty amazing because the characters were just so big and they they just had so much more detail and they're just the size of them the characters were big colorful in detail SNK also introduced a new graphics technology in the form of scaling in fighting games when the character moved closer to each other the camera will zoom on them making the fighters on screen look huge an innovation that while time-consuming and difficult to implement made art of fighting stand out from its competition unlike its rival Capcom at the time SNK used to invest in the story and more of the games and auto fighting was no different the right of a bat in the end for the game they tell you about the motivations of the characters right you see the portrait the picture of the gang Rio is there Robert is there Yuri is there and all of a sudden the the picture portrait is shattered and you know that their piece is gone so you understand their motivations what is calling them to action they're not fighting in a tournament they're not fighting for prizes or money or to show their strengths there is a sense of urgency to rescue Yuri the story of the first game follows the struggles of best friends in kyokuge and karate students ryosakazaki and Robert Garcia Rio is the son of the kyokugen style founder takuma sakazaki and Robert is the son of billionaire businessman from Italy who happens to be takuma's friend when Rio was asked to work as a bodyguard for the Crime Boss known as Mr Big and refused the latter kidnaps Rio's sister to force him to cooperate this event leads Rion Robert on a goose chase as they follow the trail of the missing Yuri which will lead them to fight a number of colorful opponents before taking on Mr Big and finally the enigmatic legendary Mr Karate the setting was realistic it felt like it could happen to you so my young 10 year old mine was just blown away right like it it's card me for life like when I had the chance I remember there was this one time in fifth grade where they asked us to do a small play that we would have to read in front of the class and the only thing that came to my mind was the story of harder fighting you could tell it beat by beat and it was believable story SNK published a mini manga setting up the game story illustrated by the master artist chinquiro interestingly enough SNK decided to have the setting of The Game be the same as its previous fighting game fatal Fury serving as a prequel to the latter thus opening the gate on a shared Universe for its IPS something that SNK will fully explore in 1994 with the release of the King of Fighters 94 but that's a topic for another video to have a story Century game without a fighting SNK decided early on to have only two playable characters in single player mode and let players run through the story in a linear fashion as each battle will advance The Game's plot a little bit with cutscenes featuring voice overs and story Revelations gameplay Wise auto fighting was completely different compared to fatal Fury and introduced a number of new mechanics and tools first the button layout like most Neo Geo games Auto finding uses 4 buttons weak punch a a weak kick B strong Punch or kick C and A taunt D more on that later the A or B button must be tapped first before the button C can be used to perform the stronger attacks which was a different concept not seen before person A and C together will perform a hook punch and holding b and c will allow players to execute a shin kick throws are performed by holding down the C button and left or right the game also allowed select characters to launch attacks from the wall or side of the screen by pressing C and performing a kick add in more variety and somewhat realism to the fight out of fighting was for SNK a test field where they could try a lot of things a lot of out-of-winding ideas were used again in other games gameplay wise the game introduced the concept of the spirit gauge a special bar underneath the player's Health that indicated how often a character could perform a special move in its Effectiveness and every time a character is taunted by their opponent however or uses a special move this bar decreases with special attacks becoming weaker as it turns red the player must recharge this bar by holding down the A and B button at the same time it was the first I think the first additional bar alongside your health that people had to to to to worry about when they were playing games and this brought a new strategy to fighting games I think Auto fighting is responsible for that auto fighting was also the first game to introduce taunts this provoking move would not only look cool but was useful in how it reduces the opponent's Spirit gauge as previously stated but the true main contribution to fighting games that auto fighting introduced are super moves these devastating attacks never be foreseen in games had a special requirement in this case the player needed to have 25 or less life meter as well as a full Spirit cage initiating one of these attacks would deal insane amount of damage if it connects most fighting games would later adopt a similar concept and it is now a type of attack that we expect in every modern fighting game as it was a custom back in the day a fighting game would not feel complete without a bonus stage and out of fighting being the original fighter would add a new spin to this custom feature after winning two matches while playing story mode the player is given a choice between three bonus stages each one different from the other and each one grants you a significant reward upon completion first the bottle smash the objective of this bonus stage is to smash off the tops of five bottles on a table the player must carefully time and press the a button when a special bar fails to full for maximum power smashing all the bottles at once completes the stage rewarding the player by increasing their Spirit gauge for the next match second the ice Mash within a time limit the player has to build up enough power to break five blocks of ice pressing the a button will fill a gauge on the screen if successful the player will be rewarded with an increased life bar for the next match third and the most important the initiate Super Death Blow bonus stage the player must execute the super special move haushoken a number of times to learn and be able to use it in game the number of times required to perform the move in a given time limit is dependent on the game's difficulty level a fighting game is as interesting as its characters and the Art of finding introduces a set of colorful Warriors while you can only play as Rion Robert in the single player mode switching to verses will unlock 6 more Fighters and these are the yuhakotodo Todo is the Creator and main teacher of Todo style Kabuto which derives its style from aiki Jujutsu and Kendo Toto had a long-standing rivalry with Disciples of the kyokugandriyu school of karate and considers them a threat to his style of teaching in terms of profits as well as personal animosity dating back to our rivalry with takuma sagazaki the father of both Rio and Yuri Jack Turner Jack is the leader of the South Town Gang known as the Neo black cats a member of Mr Big Syndicate and a developer of his own fighting style one of Mr Big's highest ranking subordinates he devastates anyone who crosses his path Lee Pai long a master of Chinese medicine and martial arts he works as the Director of the Southtown prison and also owns a herbal medicine shop he's a master of several Chinese martial arts including the eagle claw and Northern Shaolin and uses claws when fighting King the only woman of the roster King is a skilled bouncer who at one point was posing as a man to protect herself from the dangers of South Town although she would later be portrayed as a kind loving but strong woman King ends up working for Mr Big during the events of the first game according to an interview with her designer King was primarily inspired and modeled after Jamaican singer Grace Jones during the concept stage they took additional inspiration from the hedgewoman character in the Hong Kong film Chyna white performed by Dutch Muay Thai action actress saskia van richwick Mickey Rogers Mickey was once a professional boxer but was removed from the ranks because he accidentally killed a man during a boxing match he uses traditional box and has no kick attacks he was hired by Mr big as an enforcer John Crawley John was a captain in the Navy and a martial arts instructor that was known as The Mad Dog and the killing machine during a mission he was shot in the back but was eventually saved by Mr Big his fighting style is very acrobatic using several kicks and punches varieties once a player defeats all these six enemies he or she will then face the game's sub boss and big bad of the story Mr Big using his special ratan sticks Mr Big has been involved with the mob for as long as he can remember a former Kingpin of South Town he was eventually overthrown by geese Howard's organization nonetheless he's recruited Mr Big and he quickly rolls through the ranks to become giza's right-hand man big fights used in traditional eskrima of Filipino martial arts under the honest system and shows great Mastery of the art once Mr big is defeated the player will fight the menacing Mr Karate wearing a Tengu mask and having similar attacks to ryosakazakira Mr karate's true identity will be revealed in the sequel and was quite a shock for the game's fans in fact the first Auto fighting ends with a cliffhanger something never seen before in a video game which showed how much SNK did care about the game's story it was worth noting though that the Super Nintendo version revealed the identity of Mr Karate in the first game but this was due to the fact that the port was released very close to the sequel Auto fighting was released on January 24 1992 when both the Neo Geo mvs arcade system and AES home entertainment system the game received positive reviews from Japanese Publications for its graphics and colorful details the new game system was also praised however many were not happy about the small roster in the single player mode which is something SNK had intended to fix in the sequel similar to what SNK did with their previous games the company ordered and released Couple live action tv ads which are still entertaining to watch [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] that's good [Music] Auto Finance received few ports to the Home console Market but this was not done until few weeks before the release of the sequel the game was released in 1994 on the Super Nintendo Genesis and finally turbo graphics nowadays the game is available on many platforms and was part of the art of fighting Anthology that was released on Sony's Playstation 2. following the success of the Fatal Fury anime by Fuji TV SNK ordered the TV special OVA for auto fighting to be directed by Hiroshi fukotomi and produced by Nihon ad system Nas but unlike how SNK was very involved and strict about the plot of the first fatal Fury anime which resulted in a very true to original adaptation for auto fighting they gave complete freedom to the anime producers which resulted in an absurd and very loose adaptation the story was nowhere as serious as the games it's based on with the plot being about finding a missing Diamond the anime was also criticized for omitting many characters like Mr Karate Lee and completely changing others like Toto who is now an incompetent goofball of a police officer even Rion Robert looked nothing like their in-game counterpart the anime received very bad reviews both in and outside of Japan and resulted in SNK abandoning the property for future anime adaptation besides anime there were couple of manga adaptations of the first game and the most important one was a single volume by etsuya amajishi released in 1994 the book offered a really good take on the events of Auto fighting and showed total respect to the characters and lore of this first chapter with good reception of the first game SNK knew they had something special and decided to greenlit a sequel only a couple weeks after the release of the first game work on auto fighting 2 was underway while at the same time another SNK team was working on a new franchise that will also introduce new gameplay elements such as team vs team fighting mechanic SNK took the criticism it received in the first king to heart and decided early on to focus on a bigger roster and one playable in both single and multiplayer modes changes on how the game unfolds were also introduced in fact early on the team decided to focus Less on the game's story and more on the vicious aspect so the game developers spent more time on balancing the roster than adding story details it was the expansion of the ideas that were implemented in rfiding one while the team initially wanted all of the first games roster to make a comeback they ultimately decided to drop Toto from the sequel returning from the first Auto fighting were of course Rion Robert look in more detail than ever foreign Mickey who now looks more like Muhammad Ali less than himself Jon Lee King and Mr Big the first game sub boss four new characters were introduced to the series with art of fighting 2. Yuri takuma Aji Kisaragi and tanjin Yuri sakazaki Rio's sister who was the main plot point of the first game during development various concept arts for Yuri sakazaki were made before deciding on what would be known as her classic outfit unlike other new characters more was done on Yuri's personality likes and dislikes and even friends in fact three never before seen female characters were created as Yuri's best friends part-time model with relatively masculine personality what girl who is good at studying and somewhat sickly and a child about 10 years old who thinks of Fury as her big sister none of these characters were ever seen outside of these concept Arts takuma sakazaki Mr karat now revealed to be Leon Yuri's dad takuma makes his playable debut in the game Auto fighting 2 reveals that takuma was forced to work for geese as Mr Karate as geese threatened to kill Yuri and Ryo now seeing that his children can take care of themselves takuma takes the fight back to geese and Mr Big with the help of his children as well as Robert and King aegisaragi eiji kisaraki's design reason was to create a new flashy character AEG is a ninja from the feared and respected Kisaragi Clan sworn to be the strongest Anders to Heavens he made it his goal to defeat that one school his clan has not yet surpassed the Kyoko gendrio Karate Dojo temjin with 10gen the developers wanted to create a new lovable character pure of heart he's a Mongolian dog worker at the Southtown Port he entered the tournament solely to make enough money to help a school back in his home country didn't we say pure of hearts while Mr Big still feels the role of the final boss of the game and in most circumstances if the player is able to reach the final boss without losing a match he will then fight the true real boss of the game a young version of geese Howard the final boss of pharaoh Fury 1. since the events of Auto fighting were originally presented as a prequel to The Federal Fury series [Music] so besides updated characters the graphics were a noticeable upgrade from the previous one which was already considered the Pinnacle of Neo geosprite the characters were more detailed and the stages busier with more colors and life in terms of gameplay not much was changed as the basic game mechanics remained the same subtle changes were made to the bonus stages this time the bonus stages are reworked too increase the rage gauge in this case the player's character has to chop down a tree with one punch to increase the maximum health meter the player's character must also defeat a number of punks under a certain time limit [Music] [Applause] [Music] and the initiate Super Death Blow stage is now reworked and adapted for each of the characters super special moves it's a great game they just took everything that worked well in the previous game and they made it better Auto fighting 2 was released on February 1994 for both the Neo Geo mvs and AES to Great reception and reviews foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you're one of a kind everybody SNK the game was praised by both game pro and electronic gaming monthly for having far better graphics sound character selection and gameplay techniques than the original Auto Finance but while most reviewers agreed on how the game has improved they also unanimously include that the AI of the game is brutal and boy were they right to this day Auto fighting 2 might be the most difficult fighting game on the Neo Geo Library even if you choose the easy difficulty the art of fighting 2 CPU will still kick your ass and of course the CPU being unforgiving as usual would just slap you about and you you probably the average person would not get past a second or third character it's just yeah it's just unlike the first game art of fighting 2 will only receive one port outside of the neo-do family and that is only Super Nintendo released in December 1994 the port will keep all of the characters and features of the original but with a slight downgrade in graphics and Sprite details and size [Music] celebrate the release of Auto fighting 2 mangaka etsuya amajishi was hired again to make a sequel to his successful Auto fighting manga the new manga would span two volumes and would adapt the events of art of fighting too out of fighting 2 was a success and it's a great reception from fans and Publications gave SNK the incentive to green light a sequel shortly after the game's release but this time SNK wanted to try something different something bold and revolutionary both out of fighting 1 and 2 were the Pinnacle of their times in terms of Graphics but SNK was ready to take things to the next level as they introduced motion capture technology to the pixel art something never before seen the result are smooth and detailed animation which exactly what SNK used to wow its fans about the upcoming ryokonoken Gaiden or as it is known outside of Japan art of fighting 3 path of the warrior art of fighting three it has amazing animations the the characters are you know they have way too many frames of Animation the the backgrounds are actually beautiful visuals were not the only major change for auto fighting 3. SNK decided to completely revamp the series by only bringing back Creon Robert from the previous games and adding 8 new characters including a sub boss and a final boss these characters are kasumitodo daughter of ryuhakotodo from the first game upon learning that her Father Was Defeated at the hand of riosa kazakin she decided to avenge his defeat and sets on a journey to find and defeat Ryo Carmen Cole a longtime employee of the Garcia family he was sent by Robert's parents to look for their son when he went missing looking for his childhood friend Freya Lenny the suffering journalist who is constantly looking for the next big thing she learned through her sources that the final boss Wilder was looking for a lady named Freya Lawrence seeing this as the scoop she needed she decided to personally track down Freya and get the information she needs for her article rodie Birds a bounty hunter and partner of Lenny Creston who has been hired by her to find freyja both he and Lenny seem to have rather poor professional reputation he fights with tomfas and is believed to be a former police officer a former student of Aji Kisaragi his master betrayed him and left a scar in his chest Jin now seeks revenge one call son a friend of leak by long from the previous games Wang is an artist who is looking for inspiration he practices and has interest in the final boss mysterious elixir Sinclair a mystery character that works for the final boss Wyler she uses her power to control her weapon from a distance and can create energy copies of her sword ER the final boss of the game and a character clearly inspired by the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde tale while there is working on a mysterious Elixir which can turn him into a formidable Beast story-wise the game's setting was quite different from the previous titles as it shifted Focus from the sakazaki to the Garcia family Robert disappears to search for an old childhood friend Freya Lawrence and he tracks her to Glass Hill Mexico freyja is wanted by The Game's main antagonist swallow to complete a powerful Elixir that was created by his and free as fathers besides the floor with animation and reasonable difficulty the gameplay of Auto fighting 3 also saw a drastic change the fights feel a tad bit more realistic while maintaining Combos and juggles the action now includes a Parry system known as redirection activated by tapping back and Sea players can also hit grounded enemies which was not possible in previous Games characters can also easily stumble or fall during matches normal attacks are now more varied as they can be performed by combining A and B or C with different directions of the stick another major gameplay aspect that was new to SNK games is hopping the characters now can jump at different heights depending on how long the player keeps holding the joystick for jumping this gameplay mechanic will go on to become a staple for the king of fighter series Auto fighting 3 has tons of special moves including desperations and super desperation moves speaking of sdms the game introduced a concept of ultimate KO when players finish an opponent with a desperation move and that opponent has 10 percent life or less it counts as an ultimate KO an ultimate kale leads to the win of the entire match even if performed during the first round unlike its predecessor Auto fighting 3 adapts a linear story similar to the first game of the franchise and unlike the previous games we no longer had bonus stages and the players no longer needed to learn the powerful desperation Moves In Those minigames in order to execute them another unique and interesting thing about autofire M3 is this special day system each character from the roster has their own unique birthday when playing the game on that specific day that character will always be raged even above 20 life all these changes while sounding good on paper bring many problems with them for one thing opponents were frequently known to fall down which would break the flow of combat some Physics felt off and the game balance was all over the place I feel that this game was a little bit ahead of its time and like many of the cases where something similar happens whoever is ahead of its time is not well received as expected by many who saw the game early Auto fighting 3 received mainly negative reviews upon its release on March 12 1996 and recognizable roster and interesting story and odd gameplay changes were to blame [Music] add to that the fact that SNK was getting ready to launch the King of Fighters 96 a game that was supposed to overhaul the popular series in an even better way reviews were not forgiven either electronic gaming monthly gave them Neo Geo as version a 5 out of 10. they lambasted the game for a sport balance they further criticized that the game lacks originality and Innovation failing to distinguish itself from the Deluge of 2D fighting games coming out at the time the poor reception of AutoFair and three led to snk's decision to not Port the game on any console outside of Neo Geo AES after three games in the series and with the last one ill received and with the company seeing massive success with his king of fighter series SNK decided to put Auto fighting on Hiatus and focus on its Flagship yearly released series [Music] in 1997 SNK released its next Generation arcade board the hyper Neo Geo 64 with a plan to take the fighting game genre to the next level both samwai Showdown 64 and later Federal Fury while ambition saw modest reception and many speculated that auto fighting was next to make its awaited return on the new hardware rumors went around at the time that an early prototype of an art of fighting game was seen But to this day I cannot confirm the rumor as no image or information about the supposed Auto fighting reboot for hyper Neo Geo 64 were seen under the new SNK Playmore banner and with the company's shift to focus on pachinko's slot machines an art of fighting Pachinko game was released featuring some jaw-dropping anime cutscenes the game was a retelling of the first two games [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] fighting games since Auto fighting 3. the main characters of the series continue to thrive and being an important part of the company's Flagship the king of fighter series Rio Roberts Huey King and takuma have become an essential part of any good King of Fighters roster even other companies recognize the major contributions of the arrow fighting series to the genre Capcom for example famous for the insanely popular Street Fighter franchise wanted to give homage to the game and also poke some fun by creating a character that looks like a combination of Rion Robert I am of course talking about Dan hibiki who made his debut in Street Fighter Alpha that looks like Robert but wears clothes like Rio only in pink even his moves are inspired by the SNK Duo Dan was also a way to poke some fun at Rio who was seen at the time of Auto fighting 1 as a combination of Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter let's go it would have seemed that SNK stopped seeing the potential in the art of fighting franchise as even now with a resurrect to the same K that is slowly regaining its title of king of fighting game companies no interest has been shown to resurrect the series I hope that at least the events of the first and second game are retold in a more Modern Way Auto finding is very particular and unique game and I don't really think it has a future right now SNK has always been known for taking risks but I don't think this is a risk worth taking at this moment in time all the fighting was for SNK a test field where they could try a lot of things a lot of out of hiding ideas were used again in other games so it's I think it was their test field they could just do what they want well they can imagine things without rethinking about balancing or about gameplay game system so that's why you can't you don't see those games back again not seeing many like Auto fighting two or three tournaments all right while the gameplay of Auto fighting is certainly a difficult style to implement in today's fighting games genre one thing is for sure these games and characters have certainly left their mark on the world of SNK and that of fighting games and while they might not have their own game anytime soon we will definitely be seeing them in other titles I hope you guys enjoyed the series and I would like you to know that I am working on more history of SNK documentaries the next one will be the history of feral Fury and followed by a higher budget history of the King of Fighters a documentary that will be filmed in Japan next year

Channel: NeoGeoNow

Views: 42,390

Keywords: snk, neogeo, neo geo, kof, the king of fighters, samurai shodown, samurai spirits, king of fighters, art of fighting, snk history, snk documentary, aof, fatal fury

Id: 89twz0eQuts

Length: 35min 58sec (2158 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020