Pre-Street Fighter II Fighting Games

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/fighters/fighters.htm

Alright, this is nowhere near finished. It's maybe about the halfway mark. Plus it still need editing, more comparison pics, and other stuff, but it's going to take awhile before I get around to any of that.

Lots of interesting stuff here. It's all chronological, so a lot of games here look very aged, but the point of the article is to see how the genre evolved up to SFII, and reveals many innovations.

[zzz]

Awesome!

Part 1? Are you going to put this up in parts?

You have me credited as ZZZZ.

"I need to define "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."

What the hell? My original definition works way better. Which by the way is:

"I need to define "fighting game" before I keep going. A fighting game really is merely a combative competitive game."

If you change this it might actually be better to change it to something like:

"I need to define "fighting game" before I keep going. A fighting game really is merely any competitive fighting game."

Or perhaps:

"I need to define "fighting game" before I keep going. A fighting game really is merely any competitive game where the characters fight each other."

Not a big deal or anything. If you believe your definition is best, no problem.

You ran Fist and Fist + into each other, and IK and IK+ into each other. Seems kind of confusing, and for Fist there is not really anything pointing out where you begin talking about Fist +. It might seem like that paragraph is about the same game for somebody not aware of the differences between the two.

[Discoalucard]

I'm thinking about combining Karate Champ and Karate Champ PvP too. Mostly I did it for the others because I didn't have enough screenshots for them. I'll probably make the transition smoother though.

[chaoticgood]

Fist 2 actually also had an one on one fighting 'mode' in it (technically a completely different game, since it had to be loaded separately). If you're using emulators, it might be a different file entirely, but it was a part of the official release (other side of the disk?).

It plays slightly differently from the original Exploding Fist, although I can't remember the exact differences, I think you weren't knocked down from every hit, and the scoring might have been different.

[zzz]

zzz said:

"I need to define "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."

What the hell? My original definition works way better.

I rethought this. Yours does work better for what needs to be said in that definition. Some people consider beat-em-ups and fighters to be the same thing, and I never thought to mention that point. So forget that I said anything. It works well as it is.

chaoticgood said:

Fist 2 actually also had an one on one fighting 'mode' in it (technically a completely different game, since it had to be loaded separately). If you're using emulators, it might be a different file entirely, but it was a part of the official release (other side of the disk?).

It plays slightly differently from the original Exploding Fist, although I can't remember the exact differences, I think you weren't knocked down from every hit, and the scoring might have been different.

SHIT!

I will try to write something that makes sense of this.

[chaoticgood]

chaoticgood said:

Fist 2 actually also had an one on one fighting 'mode' in it (technically a completely different game, since it had to be loaded separately). If you're using emulators, it might be a different file entirely, but it was a part of the official release (other side of the disk?).

It plays slightly differently from the original Exploding Fist, although I can't remember the exact differences, I think you weren't knocked down from every hit, and the scoring might have been different.

SHIT!

I will try to write something that makes sense of this.

This site seems to have it:
acrosspark.com/hf/index.php?page=/hf/en/releases.php
"Fist 2 (Tournament)"

Also, I added a couple of c64 games to your list topic, which you may want to check out.

[zzz]

Ok, as far as I can tell the fighting mode in Fist 2 IS WotEF. The only difference is that the point system has been eliminated. It has been replaced with a numbered health system. You just keep hitting your opponent and then they fall down. I am not 100% certain, but some attacks seem to cause a guaranteed knock down.

[zzz]

I just played the normal mode in Fist 2 some more. I could see maybe calling it a fighter, even though you spend more time walking around then anything else. However this is iffy, because there are obstacles and platformer-ish elements, like difficult jumps that have to be made, and other stupid shit besides fighting. So it might be more accurate to call it a 2-D action game with fighter sections. During fights it is exactly like WotEF, except there is a health bar. Here is a brief write up for it that you can do whatever with. I might be best to make it a part of the WotEF write up, because the only pure fighter part, "training mode", is more or less WotEF. Anyways, here it is:

Fist II: The Legend Continues (1986) Commodore 64/ZX Spectrum

Fist 2 is really a 2-D action game rather than a fighter. You move the guy from the original along repetitive terrain, climb ladders, jump over pits, and occasionally fight battles. These battles play EXACTLY like WotEF, except with the point system replaced with a health bar. There is also a "training mode", which plays like a 1 on 1 fighter. This is the same as the action mode's battles, but the health bar is replaced with health points. Making it more or less a remake of WotEF. Oh, and the action mode is shit and is best avoided. The training mode is inferior to WotEF, so just go with the original instead. There is also a ZX Spectrum port, which is the same, but crappier.

[chaoticgood]

zzz said:

I just played the normal mode in Fist 2 some more. I could see maybe calling it a fighter, even though you spend more time walking around then anything else. However this is iffy, because there are obstacles and platformer-ish elements, like difficult jumps that have to be made, and other stupid shit besides fighting. So it might be more accurate to call it a 2-D action game with fighter sections. During fights it is exactly like WotEF, except there is a health bar. Here is a brief write up for it that you can do whatever with. I might be best to make it a part of the WotEF write up, because the only pure fighter part, "training mode", is more or less WotEF. Anyways, here it is:

Fist II: The Legend Continues (1986) Commodore 64/ZX Spectrum

Fist 2 is really a 2-D action game rather than a fighter. You move the guy from the original along repetitive terrain, climb ladders, jump over pits, and occasionally fight battles. These battles play EXACTLY like WotEF, except with the point system replaced with a health bar. There is also a "training mode", which plays like a 1 on 1 fighter. This is the same as the action mode's battles, but the health bar is replaced with health points. Making it more or less a remake of WotEF. Oh, and the action mode is shit and is best avoided. The training mode is inferior to WotEF, so just go with the original instead. There is also a ZX Spectrum port, which is the same, but crappier.

Sounds pretty accurate to me; Fist 2 got bad reviews when it was released. I agree about the other games I posted at your list as well, Human Killing Machine was also notoriously awful even when it was released, which is hardly surprising since it was made by Tiertex, also responsible for the fake 'Strider 2'...

[aggroger]

So far it's really great,it still misses some games ( such as the gory Barbarian or the interesting Budokan ) but so far so good.Kudos to zzz.
EDIT: the article misses IK+.And misses the fact that the IK games were programmed by Archer MacLean ( the same guy who created Mercury in 2005).Furthermore,ironically enough Fist+ plagiarizes IK+ !

[Discoalucard]

Oh, this is Part 1. Barbarian and Budokan are definitely part of the article, it's just not fully formatted yet.

[CRV]

- Karate for the Atari 2600 is from 1987, not 1980.

- From the Warrior entry:
"If you are into vector graphics, go play Blaster or something."
Blaster is not a vector game.

[YourAverageJoe]

Rez is a vector game...

[zzz]

ke

smsgenny said:

- Karate for the Atari 2600 is from 1987, not 1980.

- From the Warrior entry:
"If you are into vector graphics, go play Blaster or something."
Blaster is not a vector game.

I could be wrong, but I am almost certain that you are wrong about both of those.

[CRV]

1) Karate on Wikipedia
1987. Note the box also mentions the 7800, which was not available in 1980.

2) Blaster on Wikipedia
Game has a raster display.