By ZZZ
For any game to be popular, it should allow players to immediately enjoy the game regardless of skill level. That, concisely, is what is wrong with fighters these days. Due to complexity, fighters are no longer as easy for first timers to immediately and continually enjoy as veterans. The first few times that I play a video game should not amount to a practice/training mode, before I can even do the things that are involved in playing the game. It should also not be required that I master it to keep having a good time playing it.
There are also dogmatic design philosophies that keep people away from the genre. Why do I need to do 720s, or weird pretzel motions, or whatever to execute a move in a video game? What purpose does this serve? Are developers doing this simply because they are not willing to change? The problem this poses is that it prevents players from having every possible kind of attack available without having to master any, simply so they can even be attempted. Players need to immediately have everything that is available directly in front of them when they begin playing a game for it to be accessible. This is a second major problem. Fighters no longer allow first timers to immediately be capable of doing the basic things that are involved in playing the game.
As a result, it's no mystery why fighting games have become a niche genre. While there are still outstanding series like King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown and Guilty Gear, none of these veered much from the Street Fighter II template. Currently, all games being made are only targeting the hardcore fighting audience, resulting in a lack of diversity in fighting game design.
Things were not always like they are today in the genre. Those pretzel motions I was talking about? Those were originally hidden moves. They had controller motions which would
not normally be performed in regular play for the novelty of the player having to look for the moves themselves. The advanced techniques that certain modern fans of the genre consider to define it? Those were once completely non existent. Canceling originated in Street Fighter II was a glitch. Extensive comboing, also first available in Street Fighter II? That was also an accident. Hit detection and hitboxes were completely different in early fighters as well. Even hit levels and blocking were once not a part of the genre, and when they were invented there were still games that did not have them. Diversity? Once there weren't any sacred cows in fighters. Designers tried many different approaches to the genre. After certain elements became popular there were still just as many alternatives as there were fighters with the more "modern" gameplay elements.
Then Street Fighter II happened. Most modern fans of fighters consider the template this game popularized and standardized to be the definition of "fighting game", often not even realizing there were dozens of games before it. It's kind of difficult to imagine today, but SFII sold millions and millions and millions. It is among the highest selling games ever, and the series is Capcom's third highest selling after Resident Evil and Mega Man. Developers began attempting to cash in on this game and many fighters were made in a fairly brief period. There are about seventy five fighters for SNES/Super Famicom alone, it being the dominant console during the genre's peak in popularity. So, again, what happened? How did we go from that to where it currently is? Well, designers forgot why people played fighters to begin with.
Eventually the "point" became about things like comboing and other techniques, which, like I said, began as accidents. It was advanced players who found these things. Nobody else was really good enough to do them very well or even cared. What did attract people was the basic gameplay.
Despite the genre threatening to dry up completely, there is still a series that stands apart in general public reaction. That series is Super Smash Bros., obviously. It is among the highest selling series on the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube, and proved that the genre could still be popular. Most interestingly of all, after many years, it is more popular than ever. That is something that no fighter has ever accomplished before. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat got less and less popular after they took off. Yet Smash Bros. accomplished the impossible in the genre and outlived its novelty. Given how it is designed, and how different it is from what preceded it, I believe that fact is testament to everything I have stated above.
So that brings me to here. Why bother with this history of fighters that precede Street Fighter II? Other than general documentation purposes, to examine all of the influences that led to the creation and popularity of Street Fighter II. This is sort of like how the inspiration for Cave's games was Raiden, which eventually inspired the "bullet hell" genre of shooters birthed by Donpachi. Many of the games listed within are, honestly, quite bad. But each of them are significant in some way or another.
I need to define the term "fighting game" before I keep going. In this case, it involves two characters fighting each other, one-on-one. Any more characters (one-versus-many) becomes classified as "beat-em-up" a la Double Dragon and Final Fight. I will also be excluding boxing games and wrestling games, as they are recognized separate genres, but will be discussing competitive martial arts games and weapon fighting games, like fencing or whatever.
Table of Contents
Page 1 (here) - Warrior, Attack of the Phantom Karate Devils, Karate Champ
Karate Champ: Player vs. Player
International Karate (Atari 8-Bit)
International Karate (Atari 8-Bit)
Galactic Warriors
Street Smart (Arcade)
Pit Fighter
Warrior - Arcade (1979)
There is no other way to say it, this is simply a horrible game, with little to no redeeming value. Hit detection is inexcusably poor, and the characters control quite sluggishly. Also, your opponent's sword will block yours. As in, they can not move through each other. This might not seem like a problem, but given the perspective that the game is viewed from, the swords take up quite a bit of room, and getting past them to hit your opponent is far too difficult.
Warrior
The Attack of the Phantom Karate Devils - Commodore 64 (1983)
Quality wise, this is as bad as it gets, and probably the worst fighter ever. The gameplay, graphics, audio, and whatever else are among the worst in video games of all time. No joke. Getting a move to work effectively might as well be impossible. The playable character walks forward during certain attacks, and looses health for each attack, or for walking. The controls are as bad as they could get in a video game, and nothing is reliably effective in the entire game. This game is simply absolute trash. Not even worth playing as a curiosity.
The Attack of the Phantom Karate Devils
Karate Champ / Karate Dou - Arcade (1984)
KC is controlled with two joysticks and no buttons. The left joystick is for movement. Holding a direction on the right joystick, or both joysticks will perform attacks. The joysticks must be HELD. If they are released mid move animation the character will revert to their standing animation. Technically this makes it the first game with a form of canceling, but it does not allow moves to be canceled into other moves, so it is not the same thing. Technically this is the first fighter with blocking (performed by holding back on the left joystick), but it is difficult to get it to work and not reliable. Rather than a health meter or health points each attack that makes contact will score a half point or a whole point. The first character who reaches two points is the winner of the round. The first to win two rounds is the winner of the match.
After winning there is any of three challenges: evade objects flying toward your character, break every wood board/ice block/cement block, and knock out a charging bull (!?). There is a tutorial demonstrating moves and allowing them to be practiced before the first fight begins. It is nice to see a tutorial in any fighter, but pretty amazing in a fighter from 1984! Also of note in KC is its characters. They are identical to each other, and merely generic "karate guys", but it is believed that Ken and Ryu from Street Fighter are modeled after them. No joke.
Graphics are merely mechanical and are there simply to do what they need to do. This was the first fighter with digitized speech. The judge would tell the characters to fight and verbally declare a winner. Making the first judge the original announcer in fighters. The Japanese release has Japanese voices. This game's Japanese title is "Karate Dou". This translates to "Way of Karate".
As far as how many clones were made, this would be the SFII of its time. Many games were made after this that were really just technological updates of the same thing. Certain versions of KC are two player, and certain versions are for a lone player. "Lastly it is noteworthy that this game has the first ever judge character."
Karate Champ
Karate Champ
Karate Champ Player vs. Player / Taisen Karate Dou Arcade / NES / Famicom Disk System / Apple II / Commodore 64 - (1984)
Every version of Karate Champ Player vs. Player allows for a two player game. Again both characters are identical generic "karate guys". There is slightly different hit detection and the computer A.I. is slightly different. Otherwise there are only differences in the backgrounds and a woman before and after each match who the characters seem to be fighting over (?!). Primarily because of two player mode and the hit detection, most people will probably prefer this version. The Karate Champ games were the first huge stride for the genre in establishing itself as a separate genre, and not simply boxing games without a boxing theme, or two character action games, or whatever.
The two Karate Champ games are so similar otherwise that they are generally mistaken for each other. Data East even released each port of KC - PvP as simply "Karate Champ". They can be determined to be KC PvP because they a multitude of backgrounds which KC lacked. Different ports seem to have slightly different backgrounds. Gameplay wise they are all far from accurate. My favorite port by far is the Famicom Disk System port. This port was later released for the NES and is extremely inaccurate. The animation is more or less nonexistent, and there is no blocking. The Commodore 64 version and the Apple II version are horrible with bad gameplay and presentation. Because the platforms it was ported to did not have two joysticks they changed the controls for each. The FDS/NES port, for example, involves tapping a direction and either of two buttons to perform each move.
This game's Japanese title is "Taisen Karate Dou". This translates to "Way of Karate Competition" This game was played in the movie "Bloodsport" by actors Jean Claude Van Damme and Donald Gibb.
Karate Champ: Player vs. Player
Karate Champ: Player vs. Player
Whatever happened to the level of general interest in fighters that existed at the peak of Street Fighter II's popularity? Back in the early-to-mid 90s, the genre was absolutely booming, but it's only held up by a few Japanese-only arcade games and homemade PC titles.
Page 2 - Urban Champion, Great Swordsman, Karateka, Typhoon Gal, Shanghai Kid, Galactic Warriors
Page 3 - Kinnikuman Colosseum Deathmatch, The Way of the Exploding Fist, International Karate, Gladiator, Brian Jack's Uchi Mata, Trojan, Karate
Page 4 - Street Fighter, Fuuun Shaolin Kyo, Fuuun Shaolin Kyo: Ankoku no Maou, Barbarian
Page 5 - Fighting Road, Ka Ge Ki, Track & Field 2, Double Dragon, Hissatsu Doujou Yaburi
Page 6 - Street Smart, Fist of the Norht Star (GB), Last Apostle Puppet Show, Hippodrome, Violence Fight
Page 7 - Tongue of the Fatman, Budokan, Tenkaichi Bushi, Otoko Jukyu
Page 8 - Pit Fighter
Warrior
Warrior
Warrior
This Vectorbeam developed vector based game is arguably the first fighter. The two characters are intended to be knights sword fighting as viewed from above. However, they merely look like two blobs fighting with sticks. The game is timed and players compete by approaching the other player's character and attempting to hit them with their character's sword.
The Attack of the Phantom Karate Devils
The Attack of the Phantom Karate Devils
The Attack of the Phantom Karate Devils
"The Attack of the Phantom Karate Devils" is certainly on the fence genre wise. It barely meets the requirements I have made for a fighting game, so it is here. If this is a fighter than it was the first fighter with health, as well as was the first fighter where the characters were viewed from the side. The plot involves a "karate guy" fighting invisible ninjas. After killing a invisible ninja a door to the next screen will appear. Then a trek across a bridge and other terrain will occur with the same gameplay.
Karate Champ
Karate Champ
Karate Champ
Outsourced to Technos by Data East, Karate Champ is kind of like the Virtua Fighter to Yie Ar Kung-Fu's Street Fighter II. Or vise versa. KC and YAKF are more or less responsible for founding the basics of the genre and are both directly influencial to what came after them and before SFII. However, KC was even more primitive than Yie Ar Kung Fu.
Karate Champ Player vs. Player
Karate Champ Player vs. Player
Karate Champ Player vs. Player
"Karate Champ - Player vs. Player" is the first fighter revision and the first fighter sequel. This time the game was made by Data East with no involvement from Technos. Despite this there are no major differences between this game and Karate Champ.
