I thought Dan Hibiki was more or less Robert Garcia's head on top of Ryo Sakazaki's body. Capcom had a lot of fun with this in some of their games. In Street Fighter Alpha 3, one of Dan's win quotes is, "I hate the art of fighting, but I wanna be the king of fighters." But by the best Dan/SNK reference is in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. Dan's ending spoofs the Art of Fighting ending, when Dan's sister stops Dan from killing Cyber Akuma and says "Brother! Stop! Don't you know who he is? He's our..." The End.

The animation in AoF 3 is ridiculously good. Looks so crisp even now. [might be worth a video. One of the first motion captured fighters I think]

Video games would not be the same without SNK. A big part of my video games childhood.

I remember Dan's ending in Marvel vs. Street Fighter poked fun at Art of Fighting's ending.

An arcade machine that ends on a cliffhanger, unique I must say.

The Sakazaki’s family fighting style is based on real life style called Kyokushin Karate, its’ fictional name is Kyokugen-ryu. Takuma is based on Kyokushin’s founder: Masutatsu Oyama.

I loved how SNK tried to make their fighting games more story heavy, that was something most fighting games didn't care about until MK VS DC Universe

Hi Top Hat, you forgot to talk about the "hidden" super moves wich are exécutables only when your life bar is under 10% and your spirit gauge is full. Great vidéo anyway, art of Fighting is a masterpiece

That scaling feature really mesmerized me at the time. It looked amazing! I also really liked that bonus rounds would increase the health bar and teach the super move. The sound effects were great, with every hit sounding really painful. The whole spirit gauge thing was annoying at first, but it's not so bad once you get used to it. The whole Fatal Fury connection made it interesting, and the inclusion of a Latin character made me an eternal fan. Robert García was extremely beloved in all the games he appeared within my gaming group.

I love Yuri's story arc from damsel in distressed/kidnapped victim to someone NO ONE would dare tangle with

mr. karate 1st appeared as PLAYER 1 in a game called STREET SMART by SNK

Wow, can't wait to find out who Mr. Karate really is! Guess I am just going to go watch The Empire Strikes Back while I wait.

Fun fact, the carrier John Crawley is assigned to is the USS Independence. I thought it was a neat background note. He's noted to be a Corporal according to his ending in AoF 2. I'm guessing there was an NJP involved.

I bout the _Art of Fighting Anthology_ for my ps2 and I was floored how difficult it was. It took me days to finally beat the first two games. It was a horrible example of button reading.

Keep up the great SNK videos and I'll definitely become a patron!

My favorite KZfaq series!! Always look forward to these videos.

Clearly, King is inspired by the movie, JUST ONE OF THE GUYS, its an 80s flick, pretty 80s, check it out!

Art of Fighting is criminally under rated and under appreciated. It introduced elements that have become staples in Fighting Games [Story Telling and the Super attacks] I hope I live long enough to see an AOF 4.

I played a lot of this and World Heroes (they were on the same machine in my local arcade) once I got sick of SF2... but then X-Men: Children of the Atom was released....

Art of Figthing's presentation was increible for the time, and also the animé adaptation stands out for being Ayumi Hamazaki's only voice role in animé.

.. anyone remember "world heroes".. was about the same time as AOF

Top Hat Gaming Man You forgot to mention wall jump

Actually, SNK was the first to make fun of Capcom's Street Fighter. In King Of Fighters 94, if you manage to reach Rugal Bernstein, he will reveal his gruesome collection of fighters that he *"defeated"* and made statues of, in the dialogue cutscene. In those metal statues, there's a statue of Ryu,Guile and Akuma. Dan was a somewhat retaliation to this. And in Capcom Vs SNK, there's a special interaction between Rugal and Guile. The special interaction has Guile doing his sonic boom on his statue, damaging it. Rugal then does his reppuken, completely destroying the statue.

I heard that the King's top rip appears in Samurai Shodown 2. But only done by Hanzo's Baku'en Ryuu (Fireball Slinky) as the final hit to Nakaruru. Her top rips open also.

Dan's design is a combination of Ryo and Robert. It's Robert's head on Ryo's body, and his style is a parody mix of them both. His emphasis on taunts is because, as you highlighted, taunting was a mechanic made popular by AOF

Final fight was never ever known as Street Fighter 2. If anything it was Street Fighter 89

Awesome stuff, sir 🎩! It would be awesome to meet you one day.

"Soon, all will know Todo! No, not the dog!" - Todo's daughter Kasumi in KOF96

Love your videos brother!!...the nostalgia comes to me hard when I watch these things!! I would like to see you do vids on the World Heroes series!!

Thanks for the video man. I appreciate. I hope to see more from this series as well

I always thought that Ryo and Robert was kinda inspired by John Kreese and Terry Silver from Karate Kid 3.

Actually in AoF you CAN use desperation moves (ryuko ranbo) if you are with very low health and have the full spirit bar. Probably one of the first games to have this feature.

AOF takes place in 1978!? There nothing about that game that gives off a 1978 look lol

Nailing it. You're on point. Keep this up, 100 k soon.

I've always respected AOF for the innovations it brought to the genre (dashing, super moves, character damage etc) it doesn't get the credit it deserves in that regard....however i've honestly never that big on the series gameplay wise. It was always too stiff and clunky and the "spirit gauge" restricting your use of special moves hurt it too. A damn shame tho because i always liked the graphics, music, and presentation of the series, but overall it doesn't hold up nearly as well as other classic SNK series like Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, or KOF. Tho i will say AOF 3 actually had excellent animations, too bad the game felt so "off" and weird to play. It felt very "slippery" like the fighters were sliding across the stage.

There's one feature that you forgot to mention the Super Special Moves (or Desperation Moves as they're later called). It's when your character is near death (around 25% or less) and you still have a full spirit gauge, you would be able to use an even more powerful attack. In Ryo & Robert's case, it's their Ryuko Ranbu which is their other signature Super Move.

Hats off (pun intended) to you for putting out so many quality videos so quickly! We see the effort and appreciate it!

i had this game when i was young, the SNES port, the guy from the store sold me with this argument: he got the cartuche box, and at the back it had a screenshot of Robert performing a Hawoh-ken and then said "do you like street fighter because of the hadouken right? look the size of the hadouken they do in this game!", my 5yo version thought that was enough of a reason to get tha game and i did. HUAHEUHUHEa

Art of Fighting is the redheaded half brother who gets all the abuse from the rest of the family and then starts walking down odd paths(mostly thinking of you AOF3).

When I was about 6 (1994) the Round Table Pizza by my house had this game. After spending all my parents' quarters on it every time we went, they got it for me on SEGA Genesis. The characters seemed totally ridiculous to me, even compared to Street Fighter, but I loved it and it'll always be the pizza game to me.

I'll say it again . You really should have more subscribers . I haven't really been a fan of fighting games since the days of the SNES and Genesis ( MegaDrive ) , but I still can't get enough of this rich history of fighter games that you have been providing to us . Excellent video as always !!!!

Thank you for all of your content man! It’s great all of the time but even more so in this time. God bless and stay well! ✌🏾

Thank you so much!!! Always look forward to your vids.

The arcade cabinet for Art of Fighting was so cool as a kid, the zooming in and out was very attractive.

I always picture you stroking a hairless cat during your intro. Great video as always 😁😁😁

I like the first game despite its stuff controls. The 2nd game is my favorite even though the ai is bs. I need to play more of 3rd game

rival schools, strider, and saturday night slam masters

Yes! One of my favorite fighting games of all time. I used to speed run this on all difficulty settings. Definitely a classic!

Art of Fighting ROARED in the arcades and had a great crowd of players at my local arcade! What made this game standout more than SF ( besides the amazing visuals) was the special move/ super bar! It would take Capcom another 2 years to finally add a super bar to a single SF title!

I had this game in genesis and I played a lot in arcades.I beat both of them with one credit. It was somehow hard and unfair.

Snk put out a bunch of fighting games in the 90's. This was one of my favorites.

I love TopHatGaming!!!! So much nostalgia!!! 😘

Robert Garcia drives a Ferrari F40. That car didn't come out till late 80s. Also if you have a game save of aof on a neo geo memory card, if you played aof 2, your player started with the death blow if you got it in aof 1.

Thanks for this video! I love the trilogy Art of fighting! Unfortunately many people forgot about this serie!

5:25 That Mr Big's identity was Frankie Lideo. And got turned into stardust by Mecha Jackson turned into a massive battle spaceship.

Your channel is gold man keep it up.

The Art of the Hat Man clearly! Great video again THGM, cheerio!

Art of Fighting was the first SNES game I bought with my own money for my birthday. I had experience playing in in the Arcade prior so I was well familiar with it when I got the console version. I got good enough to beat it with both Ryo and Robert on the hardest difficulty in the arcade mode without losing a single round. It was an early video game achievement in my tween years. Like many fighting games of the time, the harder the difficulty mostly resulted in the AI's attacks taking off more damage and yours doing less. For AOF, you also started out with less health and spirit than your opponents and would enter every fight with a disadvantage even if you were successful in the bonus rounds. If you wanted either max health or spirit, then you couldn't get the Haow-Ken death blow. As cool and powerful as the attack was, it was too slow and unless your opponent was stunned it wasn't easy to hit the AI with it. Plus on the later difficulties it really didn't do that much damage even when you did pull it off successfully. For me I always tried to max out my health, though that was basically impossible without a turbo controller for the last bonus round. Maxing out spirit was the easier route but since you could refill that within the match itself, I didn't usually bother with it. Plus the last bonus round for that was easy to mess up anyways also. This wasn't an easy game but it's almost a cakewalk compared to AOF 2, which is disappointing it never got a North American release on the SNES. I played the Japanese version on an Emulator though so that was more than enough. Look forward to seeing your AOF 2 Video. Keep up the great work!

Great video but I think you should try your hand at fighting layer

Art of Fighting was one of my favourites despite the sometimes maligned zoom effect.

Art of fighting is one of those games that doesn’t get the credit it deserves; it brought more advancements to the fighting genre than even fatal fury

I love this video and series soooooo much! I always kinda liked AoF because of how different it was. A lot of innovations from this small series effected the genre forever.

I honestly have never heard of this game I love learning new stuff on this channel.

Also Art of Fighting 3 is goddamned amazing. Best Neo Geo fighting game animation, bar none. The animation is better than it's direct rival, Street Fighter 3.

I find that Art of Fighting is deeply underrated of the contributions it brought to fighting games. The super special moves is an obvious one, I'd really like to see SNK re-visit this franchise someday. Also seeing the game it reminds me how when it came out there were tons of people in the arcade trying to beat it or going at it in versus mode. Both Aof1 and MK1 were really hard to play since there was always a bunch of people on the machines. Anyway, nice job on the video, you covered the topic really well.

Back in the day, this game captivated me in the arcades. It absolutely towered over everything i had ever seen before. Massive! Sprites that made street fighter 2 characters seem like dwarves, and that zoom effect was highly captivating. The music and quality of the sound... Just everything made me feel highly privelaged to play this work of art!! However, it was hard as balls! This game made my parents bankrupt. Gameplay does feel clunky and tight, so its far from perfect, but damn! The nostalga is high

I played the Super NES port back in the day. It had a special audio mode that played an 'enhanced' versions of the soundtrack. The music in this game was so good! I always played it loud! I always thought (or I read) that King was based on martial arts movie star Cynthia Rothrock.

Ahh Mr Top Hat my good man, would you consider doing the history of Die Hard Arcade/Dynamite Deka & it's not sequel Dynamite Cop/Dynamite Deka 2. Would fall in with your lovely SoR vids & a nice gap on KZfaq would be filled. Many thanks my good chap, Ta Ta.

John from Art of Fighting 1 still has one of the coolest themes in Fighting Games.

Street Fighter & King of Fighters have always been brothers

Thanks for your content, you should do World Heroes, whats that game about, any relations to fatal fury or art of fighting ?

AOF is legendary, When I first played it I was blown away by the visuals and sound quality, huge sprites. SNK games need to be gamed on proper SNK hardware, no conversions etc, MVS or AES

I was a young button masher and would "play" this game in Cental London. Loved it very much

I remember my friends and I playing this as often as we could as 12 years olds in New Zealand. We had a fish and chip shop near us that had this game in it, it was the only AOF cabinet in the entire city. We would spend hours upon hours playing it and trying to master all the moves. An older kid came in one day and did Robert's supermove and rapidly mashed the buttons as Robert was doing the combo, we were then given a false button combination of how to do it haha. As young, naive kids it took about 3 months to click that we had been duped Lmao, good times.

Art of fighting 2!!!!! The culture NEEDS it from you TOP HAT

I wasn't aware that the boss characters (Mr. Big & Mr. Karate) were selectable through a special code in the arcade VS mode. I did know that if you reach Mr. Big & Mr. Karate in story mode and then someone challenges you in VS mode, those two characters were indeed selectable. I do like the strategy element that the bonus stages offer. Do you choose to increase your spirit gauge? Increase your Health bar? Or do you want to unlock your super death blow? Me personally, I don't care for the super death blow. I can beat the game without it. I do health bar the first two times and then try my timing skills on the spirit gauge increase last. Good history lesson. :)

I love SNK fighting games! Fatal Fury is my favorite fighting series of ALL time! Keep up the good work!👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿

Please, please, please do Fighters' History!

Gee, who can Mr. Karate possibly be!!!

I hope there is a build up to how all of these characters all meet up to cross over in the KoF franchise! In Mexico, arcade machines were very popular basically until a few years ago where game consoles reached somewhat more affordable prices. King of Fighters (+ Metal Slug) is a big hit down there as Street Fighter was up here in the US. Even the red frames for the AES multicart systems were super popular to house non SNK games like Marvel vs Capcom. I am enjoying these fighting game histories, keep up the good work!

Good story about Art Of Fighting. How about looking into Global Champion next?

I still own this and AOF2. I always loved the sound in both games. Specially when players get hit by the giant hadouken

I bought AOF not too long time ago here in Japan! Cool story and nice gameplay actually!

You forgot to mention that the SnES or SFC version also had desperation moves for ALL characters - something you also forgot to mention that this was the first game ever to introduce the idea of Desperation moves into the fighting games universe. The hint for all the different character’s desperation moves for the snes/sfc version are found after you beat the game at varying difficulties - easiest level will show Ryo/Robert/Mr Karate’s one, next level up is Todo and follows up to the Hardest mode which reveals Mr Big’s desperation move (lame but damaging). The SNes/sfc stood out for having that extra thrown in, great for 2 player local fights! Gawd i loved John Crowley’s desperation move! Go try it!!

The stories that the games made by SNK are so good. that is one of the main reasons I love SNK games. They had great characters with their own interesting backstories and motivations. there was so much in depth lore that makes you love the characters even if the game wasn't as good. SNK took that basic blocks from the 1st Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting then went on to build on them with each upcoming sequel making their story more grandiose and intertwined. The same for every other game that came after. Every SNK fighter they had made exist in the same universe albeit in different time periods (except for KOF that kind of exists in its own pocket universe). Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Last Blade, Savage Reign, Samurai Showdown , Street Smart, KOF, etc. SNK out-marveled marvel before a shared universe was a thing. Too bad not a lot of people (especially in the west) know about SNK and how innovator and ahead of their time they were. just look at Terry's reveal on Smash Bros and how confused many people were about who he was. I'm glad that more famous youtubers like Top Hat Gaming Man and Maximillian Dude are shedding some light on this legendary company. (copied from the Fatal Fury video so more people can read my thoughts about the SNK games)

I know it's a rather new game, but I love love love Fantasy Strike. I think it deserves so much more recognition! Great online play, easy to learn, difficult to master, on all current systems, etc.

I like the first one but fatal fury special was my favorite

At this point I'm pretty sure you read Ryu as "rai-uh" on purpose.

Good thing you mentioned Dan. I'm sure most people don't know he was designed to make fun of AoF's Ryo and Robert.

Mad story of powerstone soon pretty please big daddy tophat?!

1:57 Did Sagat just throw a smiley

What I love about the SNES version of this game is that in 2 player mode you're able to use all the characters and they all get a Final Death Blow!

I use to main King back on Capcom VS. Snk 2 love doing the Surprise Rose.

Very intesting video, thank you. Made to concurrence SF2, AOF introduced Zoom, Spirit power gauge, face modification, tired stand when character's health come under 30%, giant fireball (haoshokoken) and ultimate attack (kyokugenryuogi), possibility of multiple kick/punch while one jump, oponent may receive hit after KO or after hitted while a jump, KO from a very little punch don't make character jump back, character cry their rage even it's still not the final hit, final hit have its special sound FX (feel like a punch knocking your head), multiple hit attack make oponent flying (zanretsu ken "1000punch" inspired from hokuto's hyakurestuken "100punch"), characters feel more credible and less folkoric than SF2, global ambient too (music & background scene), colorimetry si a good balance between realistic and easy to watch . Character design made by guy comming from Capcom is sometimes said as the real face that SF2 should show. Unfortunately, SNK was hurry and time developement too short (as often), animation frame, character balance, limited story mode (even it's more intense) and SNK's game difficulty (a wall for beginners) make this game underrated. AOF 2 was good balanced but it lost this feeling of surrealistic violence that AOF 1 has and new characters looks folkloric, then AOF 3 is quite different, smaller sprite size, manga colorimetry design, no face modification, surrealism feeling from AOF 1 is lost forever. Then SNK lost interest for this franchise. Half of the bar raised by AOF 1 was forgotten and are still not used on today's fighting games. I have no hope for a AOF4, cause we do not need AOF franchise, we need about spirit of AOF1, so if talent and smart developper may reproduce this feeling and think how to improve it, it's okay to me.

I'd like to see you cover Body Blows or One Must Fall 2097

Top Hat Gaming Man Awesome stuff bro could you do a Donkey Kong Country Series review that was a classic of that 90's era!

One fun fact about AOF, that Ryo Sakazaki design was inspired by Patrick Swayze. Can you say Roadhouse (Roundhouse).

I think it's really funny how you do a halfway decent job pronouncing Ryo's name (Lio, kind of like Yo but placing the tongue at the top of your mouth in the beginning in the L placement going right into Yo) but pronounce the Ry part of Ryu completely differently. Hahaha! Hot oil wins!

Love your fighting game videos! Please do the Tekken series!

Great video the Art of fighting was a great series of games now can you do SNK World Heroes this is another fighting game series that was pretty cool for it time.