Art of Fighting 2

Art of Fighting 2 is fighting game developed and released by SNK in 1994. It is a direct sequel to Art of Fighting involving both new and returning characters fighting each other in the King of Fighters tournament.

Gameplay

The second installment in the Art of Fighting series added the "rage gauge"; similar to the "spirit system" of its predecessor, it limited the use and effectiveness of special attacks. This time the bonus stages are reworked: to increase the rage gauge, the player's character has to chop down a tree with one punch, to increase the maximum health meter, the player's character must defeat a number of punks under a certain time limit, and the Initiate Super Death Blow stage has now been adapted for each character's super special move. In single player mode, the player has now access to ten more characters besides Ryo and Robert and can choose their first foe. The final boss by default is Mr. Big, though it is possible to fight Geese Howard as a secret boss if the player meets specific requirements in single player mode; Geese is not a playable character, however, with the exception of the VS mode in the SNES version.

Plot
The game's story is set a year after the original in 1979. Geese Howard, a rising star in South Town's criminal underworld, summons all 12 fighters both veterans and newcomers to the city for a martial arts tournament, "The King of Fighters". Geese was the final boss and series original antagonist of SNK's other related fighting game franchise Fatal Fury, whose story took place two years after the events of Art of Fighting 2 where the late Jeff Bogard had been murdered by the hands of his former Hakkyokuseiken sparring partner Geese, which sparks the revenge of Jeff's adoptive sons Terry Bogard and Andy Bogard to fight in Geese's next King of Fighters tournament which takes place a decade later in 1991. The events of all three Art of Fighting sagas is canonically a prequel trilogy to the Fatal Fury series.

Production
Development of the game took a year. For the new characters, SNK were unable to connect them to the story, so that meant they had more freedom in designing them. The idea was making clashy and cool designs like Kisaragai, and Temjin. They wanted  to rival King of Fighters in that way. Balancing them was the most difficult task. As the first game the staff were trying to pursue an interesting story, which necessarily meant more emphasis on the CPU battles. Art of Fighting 2 was meant to be more of a The King of Fighters-style, “fighting tournament” game. To that end, they intended for the vs. play to be more important this time. Geese Howard's popularity in Fatal Fury and his younger look from the first original video animation influenced his appearance in Art of Fighting 2 as a hidden boss.

Reception
The game was praised by both GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly for having far better graphics, sound, character selection and gameplay technique than the original Art of Fighting, though three of EGMs four reviewers complained that in single player mode the opponent AI is "incredibly cheap". GamePro gave it ratings (out of 5) of 5 for graphics, 5 for sound, 4.5 for controls, and 4.5 for fun factor. Electronic Gaming Monthlys four reviewers gave it ratings (out of 10) of 8, 8, 6, and 8. Computer and Video Games gave it a 95% score, calling it "easily the best beat-'em up to appear in recent years", comparing it favorably with recent Street Fighter II incarnations but criticizing its high £150-175 cost. Nintendo Life found the game superior to the first one due to its improved single player mode as well as system though he still had mixed feeling about the enjoyment the fighting system can give. Pocket Gamer found the fighting system too simplistic in comparison to other SNK works like KOF. Despite praising the improvements, Hardcore Gaming felt that the gameplay was too similar to its predecessor. The Super Nintendo port was panned as the "version is nothing short of a disaster, with horribly inaccurate visuals, atrocious controls, and slaughtered game physics" IGN agreed, finding the AI too challenging while the visuals instead feel like a stepdown, ruining SNK's attempts to improve the formula they established.

Art of Fighting 2 was re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console in North America on 28 July 2008 and Nintendo Switch's ACA Neo Geo worldwide on 11 January 2018.

References

Art of Fighting
1994 video games
ACA Neo Geo games
Arcade video games
D4 Enterprise games
Fighting games
2D fighting games
Hamster Corporation games
Neo Geo games
Neo Geo CD games
Nintendo Switch games
PlayStation Network games
PlayStation 4 games
Saurus games
SNK games
SNK Playmore games
Video game prequels
Video games developed in Japan
Virtual Console games
Windows games
Xbox One games
Multiplayer and single-player video games