| Art of Fighting 2 | |
| Developer: | SNK |
| Publisher: | SNK Saurus (Super Famicom) |
| Director: | Akira Goto |
| Producer: | Eikichi Kawasaki Hiroshi Matsumoto |
| Programmer: | John Guso |
| Artist: | Ayumi Tsuzaki Higashi Pon Kimura Ken |
| Composer: | Yasuhiro Naka Yasumasa Yamada Yoshihiko Kitamura |
| Series: | Art of Fighting |
| Genre: | Fighting |
| Arcade System: | Neo Geo MVS |
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.
The second installment in the Art of Fighting series added the "rage gauge"; similar to the "spirit system" of its predecessor, it limits 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.
Nearly every playable character from the first Art of Fighting, excluding Ryuhaku Todoh, returns in Art of Fighting 2. The game also adds three new characters, consisting of Yuri Sakazaki, Eiji Kisaragi, and Temjin, for a total of 12. While the previous game only allowed Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia to be used in the single-player mode, Art of Fighting 2 expands the mode to accommodate all 12 characters. Additionally, Geese Howard from the Fatal Fury series appears as a secret boss if the player meets specific requirements in the single-player mode. Geese is not a playable character, however, with the exception of the Vs. mode in the SNES version.
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.[1]
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.[2] 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.[3]
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".[4] [5] GamePro gave it ratings (out of 5) of 5 for graphics, 5 for sound, 4.5 for controls, and 4.5 for fun factor.[4] Electronic Gaming Monthlys four reviewers gave it ratings (out of 10) of 8, 8, 6, and 8.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7] Pocket Gamer found the fighting system too simplistic in comparison to other SNK works like KOF.[8] 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"[9] 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.[10]
Art of Fighting 2 was re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console in North America on 28 July 2008[11] and Nintendo Switch's ACA Neo Geo worldwide on 11 January 2018.