art of fighting

align=center colspan=2\|*Art of Fighting*
align=center colspan=2\|Screenshot of
style=width:80px\|Developer:	SNK
a href="/encyclopedia/Video-game-publisher" title="Video game publisher">Publisher:	SNK
style=width:80px\|Designer:	???
elease date:	December 11, 1992
a href="/encyclopedia/Computer-and-video-game-genres" title="Computer and video game genres">Genre:	Fighting game
ame modes:	Up to 2 players simultaneously
a href="/encyclopedia/ESRB" title="ESRB">ESRB rating:	not rated
latform:	Neo-Geo (Ports available on various consoles of the time)
edia:	Neo-Geo cartridge

Art of Fighting (龍虎の拳: Ryūko no Ken, in Japan and in video game music archives), or AOF (or RnK in video game music archives) for short, is a fighting game series created by SNK. It is one of the many SNK series that ties into The King of Fighters.

Gameplay

Art of Fighting was the first fighting game with a super bar, and introduced the "spirit gauge" and "desperation move" (the equivalent of "super combo", often used with SNK fighting games) into the fighting game vernacular. A spirit gauge is a manually charged super combo gauge where all special moves will utilize and drain, with greater amounts of power dealing greater amounts of damage.

Story

The central story of the original Art of Fighting is a typical damsel-in-distress story set in the fictitious city of South Town (a common setting among SNK video games), where the duo of Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia try to rescue Ryo's sister and Robert's love interest, Yuri Sakazaki. It takes place before the Fatal Fury series, since Jeff Bogard, father of Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury, is alive at the time Art of Fighting took place, according to what Takuma Sakazaki said during the ending. Although the story starts this way, future games would focus more on the struggles of the Sakazaki family and their fictitious style of karate known as Kyokugen-ryuu (meaning "Extreme style"). The more recent games containing the Sakazaki family are outside the Art of Fighting series, mostly the King of Fighters series. On its own, the Art of Fighting series seems to take place in the late 1970's or early 1980's, judging by the birthdates of its characters (Ryo's AoF birthyear is 1957). When SNK Playmore brought the characters from its many games together for the King of Fighters, they adjusted the birthdates (moving Ryo's to 1971, for example) to have the characters interact with each other without having to remake character sprites to account for age. This does create a discrepancy within Takuma Sakazaki's history, as he was originally a contemporary of Jeff Bogard, who is killed in the early to mid 1980's. The actual-aged Ryo can be seen in Buriki One.