1985 really was a crazy year for fighting games. Karate Champ's title theme sticks with me to this day. Happy to see a fighting game history video about the 80s. Great video as always.
Glad you mentioned exploding fist and IK, both classics. IK+ really iterated on that template. About halfway through loading Exploding Fist from tape it would make a really loud sampled Karate shout thing which made my jump the first time.
Just for completion I'd like to mention, that there was a successor to "Way of the exploding Fist" called "Fist 2". And Melbourne House even returned the "plagiatism favor" with a third part of Way of the exploding fist, which had 3 fighters at the same time too (just like IK+).
Also not a big fighting game person though I have played a little bit of Tekken and related games (Hyrule Warriors) and found them far more enjoyable than most fighting games. Still not my go to for solo play but great for co-op (now I just need some friends).
I agree that 1984's Karateka would be worth mentioning too. You could do three different punches, three different kicks, run and fight so many different enemies. I guess you could argue it was almost like a proto-Final Fight, but for the fluid fighting graphics, hit point graphs and the bosses it certainly seems very influential.
While not really related, a fun simulation to check out is Budokan: The Martial Spirit by EA (yes, EA!) for MS-DOS in 1989. It was also released on Amiga and later Mega Drive/Genesis. It’s interesting for a number of reasons-an array of styles/weapons, a built-in training mechanic, and variety of moves based on stances and controller motion/key presses.
Karateka was awesome (as a kid I used to beg my dad to sit on his lap while he played it on C64), however I think most people would consider it more of a beat-em-up. It does blur the lines, however, since you're always fighting one-on-one. Because it's a one player game it can't be considered a fighting game in the same veins as the others mentioned here.
I enjoyed Karateka but man as a kid I struggled to get very far. I loved the vibe though, running into opponents 1 by 1 gave each encounter more of an epic feel
My first was boxing for the intellivision. But the one that always sticks out is Karateka for the Apple II. The idea of making a fighting game into an adventure game was mind blowing.
This was my favourite arcade game as a kid. I’d beg my parents for $2 so I could go play a few games. It was 40c a game at the time. I’d always choose Guile or Ken. Sometimes older kids would come along and enter the game and smash me 😂 Good memories.
One detail not mentioned about Karate Champ is that on the player 2 side, the controls are reversed with left joystick controlling the attacks and right controlling the movements. This makes it all the more challenging to master on both sides.
Interestingly enough, what's considered the very first fighting game ever was made by Sega in 1976 with their boxing title Heavyweight Champ. Not only is it considered lost media, with no working arcade units known to exist, but we didn't even have footage of it until this year when a San Diego news channel posted a 1977 video report on a local Sega Arcade on their RUclips channel. Sadly another case one of those early pioneering games lost to time.
@@gamecat666 I seem to remember having Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story on SNES that could be played in 3 player mode (if you had the multi-tap). So that's at least one other. Oh and Guilty Gear Isuka on PS2 and XBox could go up to 4 player.
According to a PR rep from Capcom who I spoke with many years ago, the Street Fighter cabinets with the giant punch buttons were never meant to be sold to regular arcade places. They were intended specifically for amusement parks but they ended up being resold to the arcade places against Capcom's wishes.
I'm a bit surprised Karateka wasn't in the video. I understand this wasn't to be all inclusive, but Karateka was really huge in the early 80's and it was ported to a lot of platforms. It was a C64 (Commodore 64) killer app. It may also have been the first fighting game with a story. The first time I played it I was blown away. The movements seemed real and the fighting accurate (for the time). The graphics still hold up today! I hope this gets included in a future video.
Yeah....I still really like this game. It was one of the most impressive C64 games at the time. I found out just but recently, that it had a copy protection ingame which prevented the player of finishing it, if you had a pirate copy. And I was always asking myself at the time, why I just couldn't walk through a door....
I remember being hooked on a fighting game called Barbarian. can't remember what it was on as i played it at a friends house. If i remember right you could cut of the opponent's head and a little creature would walk on screen and kick it off screen. It was really cool i thought at the time.
I grew up playing IK+ and would love to see a in depth video about those games in some way. These historical videos from MVG are really something and my only complain about them are that they always feels a bit too short.
I never been a big fan of fighting games, but looking back at where it all started is definitely interesting. Would love for more videos about video game origins.
Flying Dragon: The Secret scroll for the NES is a port of Shanghai Kid and a very good one. Fighting is polished, frame rate is perfect and it also has 2d platforming scenes between fighting tournaments. It was not my first fighting game but by far the most memorable growing up. Always dreamed to have that kind of game with different gameplay modes aside from fighting in the same game.
I feel that MVG should've included Flying Dragon. I'm sure he's aware of the game, but he may have assumed that Shanghai Kid 'covers that type of game good enough'. Flying Dragon came out before Street Fighter (in Japan anyway) and was probably the first fighting game to include a super move, including a super meter that builds up like in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. The super move in Flying Dragon was even a super flying spinning kick, which definitely inspired Street Fighter's similar move. Flying Warriors is also in the same series, but I won't comment on it too much since I don't really remember it too well. (Edited for clarity).
Karateka (Apple II, 84), Way of the Exploding Fist (85), and International Karate (85) definitely all played their parts. Woah I forgot about Karate Champ! I would actually trace back to Swashbuckler (Apple II, 1982) as well even though it was swordfighting rather than punches and kicks. There were also boxing games but they tended not to be side-view games so makes them more different IMHO. My personal favourite when I was a kid was not an Eastern Martial Arts fighting game, but Rock'n Wrestle on the Speccy. It was published by Melbourne House, an Australian company, and I had a Speccy coding friend with a connection there who used to tell me about it while it was in development.
But there were side-view boxing games already as early as 1978, though only for off-brand systems... see here: ruclips.net/video/Et_G-klWoRY/видео.html. I would say that they did lay the groundwork for the later wave of Karate games, only the moves are different and maybe less varied.
Kinda agree, i don't usually play them and find most of them frustrating. The only ones i actually enjoy is Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat 1 and 3 and King of Fighters from 94 to 2k2. I kinda like SF because i remember it a lot specially sf1 and sf2 on the arcades.
It’s great to see these 8bit fighting games from my early gaming days. I used to sell them in the UK and I remember those C64 you mention being particularly popular on the “big 3” home computers of the day.
For me the evolution of top tier fighting games was Karate Champ, Yie Ar Kung Fu and Street Fighter 2. Nothing else ever really captured my imagination like those.
It's fascinating that Street Fighter's signature 6 button layout, which contributes to its intricate and technical gameplay, started out as a clumsy force sensitive button gimmick. In fact the whole game itself seems to have started as an idea to merge fighting games of the time with punching machines also found at nearly every arcade of the era.
Way of the Exploding Fist on the C64 had the scariest scream in all video games. When someone would load that game up during a slumber party, it would invariably bring parents into the room saying "It's time for you all to settle down and go to bed!".
That was a sample of Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon.....which is actually isn't scary at all. But I can see what you mean. At that age I didn't know that either.
@@markheselhaus5125 It was really scary because that game would take for-ever to load (without a fast cart) and we'd often (read: "always") forget to turn the volume down. We'd be reading Calvin and Hobbes or the Far Side comics quietly before hearing that, "CHEEEEHHHHYYYYYAAAAAAAAAA" come screaming out of the monitor.
There is a Street Fighter One Remake on MUGEN by a group called Valkyrie Project, which is much more playable than the original. All original 12 fighters are playable, it has counters, super combos, CD-audio music, upgraded graphics/backgrounds, and... Cody from Final Fight!
I never really thought of all the influences of something huge like MK or SF2. Interesting how all these not-so-great-games contributed a little something which all culminated in a style we still use today.
This was a great retrospective. My favorite of the ones I played of these was Yie Ar Kung Fu. Love the pace and the throwback to classic Martial Arts movies.
International Karate was a huge hit selling 1.5 million in the US. It just seemed so polished and playable. So good DataEast the makers of Karate Champ sued them!
I’ll never forget the first time I saw Street Fighter II. I was fortunate enough to go to Camp Woodward in 1991. FYI No I wasn’t a rich kid, Woodward use to be affordable back in the day. Anyways, on the first day of camp, I walked into the cantina and they had a SF2 cabinet. I was blown away.
just a tiny thing to clarify, but urban champion does not cause a dizzy state when your stamina reaches zero. the dizzy state happens when you get hit on the head by the flower pot thrown by the person in the building. instead, having your stamina reduced to zero makes your jab wind-up take as long as heavy blows and being hit by a jab will send you as far as a heavy blow. (i've been playing a lot of urban champion lately because i mean, sure, why not, someone has to look into this game)
Best "early years" compilation for fighting games I've seen so far. It's amazing how every few years some devoted historian finds more obscure rarities to fill gaps in theory of genre's evolution. Like, which game introduced "block" as a separate button? The very FIRST? 🤔
I remember the apple ][ having a game called "Swashbuckler" which used one of the most complex control systems in memory. Which came out in 1983...... And then there were story driven games like Karatika and such.
Watched this in the hope of seeing International Karate again, I loved the Amiga 500 version, ran fast and was crisp, for its time the lag was decent... Delighted to see that gem again... After all these years just watching it triggered memory of the moves and I was playing along with the clips, I had forgotten all the hours I played as a child on my elder brothers computer. Knowing which way I needed to push the joystick to execute the best move given the position of the players, it all came back to me from when I was around 8-9 yrs old. That game was all about the gap between players and the direction they faced, the correct move would make contact and the wrong one would not connect, for example if you were too close the kick would miss, but a headbutt would floor the opponent for a sec. I loved the spin and punch so if you walked passed each other, it was the best way to go instead of just turning to face the opponent id use this and often land a decent blow which knocked the other player back to the perfect distance to land a kneeling punch to the nuts.. Oh and there was some nice humour and easter eggs, awesome game for the era.. A bit simple for the Amigas capability's but cutting edge for the c64 when it came out and hella fun on both.. Thanks for the amazing content. Once again your on point. These games and their legacy is the backdrop onto which modern gaming's evolution belong.. Great stuff..
Heavy Nova and Rise Of The Robots were extremely influential games to the beat-em-up genre, I feel. You may wish to include an addendum including these games
I turned 4 years old in July 85, and I remember my local laundromat in my small town here in the US getting a Karate Champ machine, and my dad giving me a bunch of quarters to go play while he did laundry, and that was the game I remember spending most of my money on sitting on a stool so I could reach the sticks 😅
My favourite pre-Street Fighter 2 fighting game is absolutely IK+. It's still a blast to this day. Karate Champ, Yie Ar Kung Fu, Street Fighter 1 and Street Smart were games that I... don't like much, but I'd say they're the important ones.
As someone whose childhood sport was Shotokan Karate, these games would have been my favorite if I grew up in the eighties. I like how some tried to simulate tourney style karate bouts. There just isn't really a modern example.
What is interesting is that some of the producers of Street Fighter left Capcom and joined SNK. They released Fatal Fury which was in development during the same time as Street fighter 2.
Was definitely blown away when I first saw Yie Ar in the arcade back in the day. I was never a big fighting game player, but that one got me hooked for a while lol
There was a C64 game purely called "Thai Boxing 🥊" where you would fight another opponent and you could see the damage on their faces at the top of the screen. Wasn't strictly a side view fighter but it was one-on-one. I think it probably had a good overall influence
Really surprised you didn't include the absolutely amazing IK+ for the Amiga and ST! Probably the most playable and addictive fighting game on a home system of its time.
This video really shows how Street Fighter II was such an enormous leap and unprecedented breakthrough in the fighting genre. My conclusion is that the speed and complexity of fighting games doesn't really work well on 1980s hardware, but it didn't stop pioneering developers from trying.
The speed wasn't so much the problem, as the incredible amount of RAM required for all that artwork, as well as the sheer cost in man-hours to do all that pixel artwork. Basically, look at the Gameboy Color version of Street Fighter Zero/Alpha to see what 1980s 8-bit home computers could have done with a ton more RAM. Look at the Neo Geo Pocket Color SNK vs Capcom:Match of the Millenium to see what 1980s 16-bit home computers could have done with a ton more RAM (NGPC is significantly weaker than 1980s 16-bit home computers).
As a kid, I played the large pad version of street fighter at an arcade in a flea market. I remember the game felt hard and I did not understand it well. The next time I went to that arcade the pads were broken on the machine.
For me, it was Knight Games for the c64. It had tons of different modes, pvp, and lots of moves. Fighting Streets (SF1) for the turbografx CD was so frustrating that 8 year old me snapped it in half.
Very informative i really appreciate this video. For me fighting starts at street fighter 2 & MK for the genesis! I was a tad too young for arcades even thought i faintly remember them in the early 90's with like VF 2
Good morning MVG. When I wake up and have noticed that you have posted a new vid, it makes my day all that much more enjoyable. Keep them coming. Each one is very interesting. I vividly recall playing the version of Street Fighter with the two big rubber pressure-sensitive buttons. The manager stated that there was some sort of hoses that put spurts of air into a meter of some sort. Therefore, the more air the meter received, the stronger your punches and kicks were. Well, the game died and instead of repairing it, it was retro-fitted with SF II. Is it possible that you can do a vid about all of the illegal mod chips that were produced for SF II Champion Edition? (eg. the first one, the variances of each one, etc)
Thanks for the video, it was particularly interesting as a developer of a fighting game myself. I had heard of most of those but it's cool to have a full description and see what they brought to the table.
I like early fighting games, tbh. Yie Ar Kung Fu on the Spectrum? Brilliant! Sai Combat on the Spectrum? Serviceable. Barbarian on the CPC? EPIC. Budokan on MSDOS? SO MUCH FUN AND DEPTH! Panza Kick Boxing on MSDOS? Oh, boy, where do I even start. I think that the "push down the button then hit a direction" attack mode is unnecessarily vilified. It's true that SF2 (Sf1 was crap, tbh) was a revolution, but it's not like everything before it was the pits.
the IK+ three player mode on the c64 definitely added something that was forgotten until Smash bros on the N64 made mele brawlers popular again, that's for sure.
Karate Champ was in the movie Blood Sport. Van Damme and Donald Gibbson characters became friends while playing it. I like that International Karate was mentioned. My favourite was International Karate Plus on C64. There was 3 characters on the screen at the same time and 2 of them could be human players. That was awesome! Yie are Kung Fu was also my favourite! Cool video! Thanks!
I've always been terrible at 1:1 fighters (they never give you enough time to learn what to do), so IK+ with it's wonderful cheat button where you press T to drop everyone's trousers was great as when I was losing, pressing T would give me a vital chance to get away from a pummelling.
I played some karate game on the Amstrad CPC in Primary School. Wasn't a fighting game fan until the PS1 so I didn't play much of SF2 or any other fighters besides Killer Instinct until then. Now I love them and physically own over 80 of them.
I'm surprised you didn't mention International Karate + when you were talking about IK. The "plus" version came out 2 years after the original game and was also called Chop N' Drop in the US. It's notable for introducing something that hadn't been seen before - a third character. Although this character wasn't human playable, to have three fighters battling it out at the same time was something unique that introduced a whole new level of complexity to the genre. Of course, we see this influence of being more than just 1 vs 1 in many games today; the Super Smash Bros series, Powerstone, Kung Fu Chaos and PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale being some examples.
One game I believe is worth mentioning would be Karateka by Jordan Mechner, first released in 1984 for the Apple II. While its mechanics are fairly simple, it does feature a level progression with increasing difficulty, and some unique hazards m.
It always amuses me hearing about Melbourne House being a studio known for cutting-edge games, when for most of my life I've only seen them as the guys that made a Looney Tunes racing game for the PS2.
I always liked how Ryu and Ken are dressed white and red, like the players of Karate Champ. I don't know about martial arts, but as a player it's something I liked
In 1984, Nintendo released a Game & Watch device called Boxing that is a bona-fide fighting game using ye olde LCD segments. It's not fancy, but it was fighting on the go.
I thought you might have mentioned Karatika, a fighting game for the Apple II. It was programmed by Jordan Mechner (of Prince of Persia fame) and was released in 1984. We had a copy growing up on our Apple IIe, and I'm surprised to find out that it got a ton of ports, from the Commodore 64, through to Xbox 360 and iOS. Just goes to show how much of a lasting impression it made on people.
There was a freeware clone of International Karate to the Apple IIGS called “Sensei” that I really enjoyed the hell out of as a kid. Gorgeous 16-bit graphics, Amiga MOD music, and fast assembly code that overcame the IIGS’s pokey 2.6 MHz processor made it a favorite. I never knew where it drew its inspiration from until RUclips vintage game rabbit holes, but I didn’t know til now that International Karate was, itself, a clone!!
Great round-up of pre-SF fighting games! Another person mentioned Budokan by EA, which I will second. For me, although it doesn't quite fit, Pro Wrestling on the NES in 1986 primed me for Street Fighter 2, with its different moveset/special moves for each character. I really got into that and having my favorite characters/mains, although I didn't own a NES myself. SF2 really changed gaming and made a mark on me, although after MK3 came out I barely touched fighting games again until MK11. Street Fighter 2's variants remain the only SF games that I got into, my favorite being Ultra Street Fighter II on the Switch (itself a port of Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix on the Xbox 360/PS3).
karate champ was a game i absolutely loved when i was a kid, i used to play it on arcades with my mother (and we where both taekwondo students at the time as well). seen all this games in one video brings a looooot a good memories.
Urban Champion looks and sounds exactly like a game I played on the NES.. but don't remember the name of. I swear it wasn't that game, as I don't remember those fighter sprites. Wouldn't be surprised if they took the assets and used it in another game, but could just be my aging memory misleading me.
I played a lot of Karate Champ and a lot of Yie Ar Kung Fu as a kid. Yie Ar Kung Fu was one of my favorites, especially if the long jump was enabled. Some arcades disabled the long jump to make the game a lot harder.
![DDG & G Herbo - Nosey [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/I9Ra0Zc2NlQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I just love when MVG makes these "historical" videos, awesome.
Same here, they're some of my favorites on his channel.
I just love mvg talking
1985 really was a crazy year for fighting games. Karate Champ's title theme sticks with me to this day. Happy to see a fighting game history video about the 80s. Great video as always.
Glad you mentioned exploding fist and IK, both classics. IK+ really iterated on that template. About halfway through loading Exploding Fist from tape it would make a really loud sampled Karate shout thing which made my jump the first time.
Just for completion I'd like to mention, that there was a successor to "Way of the exploding Fist" called "Fist 2". And Melbourne House even returned the "plagiatism favor" with a third part of Way of the exploding fist, which had 3 fighters at the same time too (just like IK+).
I also thought IK+ needed a mention. I guess it maybe didn't add anything new to the genre but its influence (to me) seemed massive.
IK+ code was on its own level. So much faster.
I actually don’t play fighting games, but still thoroughly enjoyed this history lesson. Great video.
They're not my "thing" either, but I love anything to do with 8 bit consoles & retro gaming. 👍
You missing out .. if u did try 1 go with any Tekken game .. it pretty easy button masher a group of friends can easily get into ...
@@joezar33 Thanks for the suggestion.
Also not a big fighting game person though I have played a little bit of Tekken and related games (Hyrule Warriors) and found them far more enjoyable than most fighting games. Still not my go to for solo play but great for co-op (now I just need some friends).
Not every fighting game plays the same you got find the one that you do enjoy and stick to it for the time being.
Karate Champ was awesome, there were some big crowds and great competition at the arcade. Fun times.
Was also in the movie “Bloodsport” briefly.
I agree that 1984's Karateka would be worth mentioning too. You could do three different punches, three different kicks, run and fight so many different enemies. I guess you could argue it was almost like a proto-Final Fight, but for the fluid fighting graphics, hit point graphs and the bosses it certainly seems very influential.
While not really related, a fun simulation to check out is Budokan: The Martial Spirit by EA (yes, EA!) for MS-DOS in 1989. It was also released on Amiga and later Mega Drive/Genesis. It’s interesting for a number of reasons-an array of styles/weapons, a built-in training mechanic, and variety of moves based on stances and controller motion/key presses.
No footage of Karateka by Jordan Mechner of Prince of Persia fame? Quite solid game!
Great video as usual MVG
Karateka was awesome (as a kid I used to beg my dad to sit on his lap while he played it on C64), however I think most people would consider it more of a beat-em-up. It does blur the lines, however, since you're always fighting one-on-one. Because it's a one player game it can't be considered a fighting game in the same veins as the others mentioned here.
Man, I came down here to say this! Seems the game was pretty important to the folks who played it :3
same here. Karateka actually plays quite well, & kinda aged like fine wine.
Having to time my moves a second in advance due to its sluggishness on my C64 made it impossible to get very far...
I enjoyed Karateka but man as a kid I struggled to get very far. I loved the vibe though, running into opponents 1 by 1 gave each encounter more of an epic feel
My first was boxing for the intellivision. But the one that always sticks out is Karateka for the Apple II. The idea of making a fighting game into an adventure game was mind blowing.
I see you are a man of culture as well. I loved Boxing! 🥊
This was my favourite arcade game as a kid. I’d beg my parents for $2 so I could go play a few games. It was 40c a game at the time. I’d always choose Guile or Ken. Sometimes older kids would come along and enter the game and smash me 😂 Good memories.
As a fighting game dev it's nice to see the roots of the genre!!
One detail not mentioned about Karate Champ is that on the player 2 side, the controls are reversed with left joystick controlling the attacks and right controlling the movements. This makes it all the more challenging to master on both sides.
Interestingly enough, what's considered the very first fighting game ever was made by Sega in 1976 with their boxing title Heavyweight Champ. Not only is it considered lost media, with no working arcade units known to exist, but we didn't even have footage of it until this year when a San Diego news channel posted a 1977 video report on a local Sega Arcade on their RUclips channel. Sadly another case one of those early pioneering games lost to time.
IK+ on c64 is where it all started for me.
Fun times
The music gave me nostalgia, quite similar to Last Ninja music.
You good sir, are old.
IK+ on c64 and Amiga is still fun today. And one of the rare (or only?) fighting games where there are 3 players!
@@gamecat666 I seem to remember having Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story on SNES that could be played in 3 player mode (if you had the multi-tap). So that's at least one other. Oh and Guilty Gear Isuka on PS2 and XBox could go up to 4 player.
@@carn9507 Ah I didnt know that about Dragon, and it looks pretty good!
According to a PR rep from Capcom who I spoke with many years ago, the Street Fighter cabinets with the giant punch buttons were never meant to be sold to regular arcade places. They were intended specifically for amusement parks but they ended up being resold to the arcade places against Capcom's wishes.
I'm a bit surprised Karateka wasn't in the video. I understand this wasn't to be all inclusive, but Karateka was really huge in the early 80's and it was ported to a lot of platforms. It was a C64 (Commodore 64) killer app. It may also have been the first fighting game with a story. The first time I played it I was blown away. The movements seemed real and the fighting accurate (for the time). The graphics still hold up today! I hope this gets included in a future video.
Yeah....I still really like this game. It was one of the most impressive C64 games at the time. I found out just but recently, that it had a copy protection ingame which prevented the player of finishing it, if you had a pirate copy. And I was always asking myself at the time, why I just couldn't walk through a door....
I remember being hooked on a fighting game called Barbarian. can't remember what it was on as i played it at a friends house. If i remember right you could cut of the opponent's head and a little creature would walk on screen and kick it off screen. It was really cool i thought at the time.
Someone is working on a version of Barbarian for OpenBOR.
The original was insanely hard. It was also competing against Double Dragon which was the most popular game in arcades in 1987.
International Karate was my jam as a kid in the late 80's early 90's. Such nostalgia.
I grew up playing IK+ and would love to see a in depth video about those games in some way. These historical videos from MVG are really something and my only complain about them are that they always feels a bit too short.
Karate Champs is a great game. Made a cool cameo in Bloodsport.
Ah, Bloodsport. Great movie with a phenomenal soundtrack!
I never been a big fan of fighting games, but looking back at where it all started is definitely interesting. Would love for more videos about video game origins.
Flying Dragon: The Secret scroll for the NES is a port of Shanghai Kid and a very good one. Fighting is polished, frame rate is perfect and it also has 2d platforming scenes between fighting tournaments. It was not my first fighting game but by far the most memorable growing up. Always dreamed to have that kind of game with different gameplay modes aside from fighting in the same game.
I feel that MVG should've included Flying Dragon. I'm sure he's aware of the game, but he may have assumed that Shanghai Kid 'covers that type of game good enough'.
Flying Dragon came out before Street Fighter (in Japan anyway) and was probably the first fighting game to include a super move, including a super meter that builds up like in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. The super move in Flying Dragon was even a super flying spinning kick, which definitely inspired Street Fighter's similar move.
Flying Warriors is also in the same series, but I won't comment on it too much since I don't really remember it too well. (Edited for clarity).
@@christianb8900 Absolutely! Let's hope for a part 2, this is a great piece!
Karateka (Apple II, 84), Way of the Exploding Fist (85), and International Karate (85) definitely all played their parts. Woah I forgot about Karate Champ!
I would actually trace back to Swashbuckler (Apple II, 1982) as well even though it was swordfighting rather than punches and kicks. There were also boxing games but they tended not to be side-view games so makes them more different IMHO.
My personal favourite when I was a kid was not an Eastern Martial Arts fighting game, but Rock'n Wrestle on the Speccy. It was published by Melbourne House, an Australian company, and I had a Speccy coding friend with a connection there who used to tell me about it while it was in development.
Swashbuckler was a classic!
But there were side-view boxing games already as early as 1978, though only for off-brand systems... see here: ruclips.net/video/Et_G-klWoRY/видео.html. I would say that they did lay the groundwork for the later wave of Karate games, only the moves are different and maybe less varied.
Kinda agree, i don't usually play them and find most of them frustrating. The only ones i actually enjoy is Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat 1 and 3 and King of Fighters from 94 to 2k2. I kinda like SF because i remember it a lot specially sf1 and sf2 on the arcades.
It’s great to see these 8bit fighting games from my early gaming days. I used to sell them in the UK and I remember those C64 you mention being particularly popular on the “big 3” home computers of the day.
Interesting topic, excited to see this.
For me the evolution of top tier fighting games was Karate Champ, Yie Ar Kung Fu and Street Fighter 2. Nothing else ever really captured my imagination like those.
It's fascinating that Street Fighter's signature 6 button layout, which contributes to its intricate and technical gameplay, started out as a clumsy force sensitive button gimmick. In fact the whole game itself seems to have started as an idea to merge fighting games of the time with punching machines also found at nearly every arcade of the era.
Way of the Exploding Fist on the C64 had the scariest scream in all video games. When someone would load that game up during a slumber party, it would invariably bring parents into the room saying "It's time for you all to settle down and go to bed!".
That was a sample of Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon.....which is actually isn't scary at all. But I can see what you mean. At that age I didn't know that either.
@@markheselhaus5125 It was really scary because that game would take for-ever to load (without a fast cart) and we'd often (read: "always") forget to turn the volume down. We'd be reading Calvin and Hobbes or the Far Side comics quietly before hearing that, "CHEEEEHHHHYYYYYAAAAAAAAAA" come screaming out of the monitor.
There is a Street Fighter One Remake on MUGEN by a group called Valkyrie Project, which is much more playable than the original. All original 12 fighters are playable, it has counters, super combos, CD-audio music, upgraded graphics/backgrounds, and... Cody from Final Fight!
Nice to see you shining a spotlight on the history of FGs
I never really thought of all the influences of something huge like MK or SF2. Interesting how all these not-so-great-games contributed a little something which all culminated in a style we still use today.
My first introduction to Karate Champ was in the movie Bloodsport with JCVD 😊
I love your channel.
This was a great retrospective. My favorite of the ones I played of these was Yie Ar Kung Fu. Love the pace and the throwback to classic Martial Arts movies.
International Karate was a huge hit selling 1.5 million in the US. It just seemed so polished and playable. So good DataEast the makers of Karate Champ sued them!
I’ll never forget the first time I saw Street Fighter II. I was fortunate enough to go to Camp Woodward in 1991. FYI No I wasn’t a rich kid, Woodward use to be affordable back in the day. Anyways, on the first day of camp, I walked into the cantina and they had a SF2 cabinet. I was blown away.
This is a topic I'm VERY interested in. Thank you so much for sharing the knowledge
just a tiny thing to clarify, but urban champion does not cause a dizzy state when your stamina reaches zero. the dizzy state happens when you get hit on the head by the flower pot thrown by the person in the building. instead, having your stamina reduced to zero makes your jab wind-up take as long as heavy blows and being hit by a jab will send you as far as a heavy blow.
(i've been playing a lot of urban champion lately because i mean, sure, why not, someone has to look into this game)
Best "early years" compilation for fighting games I've seen so far.
It's amazing how every few years some devoted historian finds more obscure rarities to fill gaps in theory of genre's evolution.
Like, which game introduced "block" as a separate button? The very FIRST? 🤔
I remember the apple ][ having a game called "Swashbuckler" which used one of the most complex control systems in memory. Which came out in 1983...... And then there were story driven games like Karatika and such.
Karate Champ was featured in the movie Bloodsport, for those that may not have known that.
And now Tekken 8 and SF6 look hyper realistic lol how time flies
Watched this in the hope of seeing International Karate again, I loved the Amiga 500 version, ran fast and was crisp, for its time the lag was decent... Delighted to see that gem again... After all these years just watching it triggered memory of the moves and I was playing along with the clips, I had forgotten all the hours I played as a child on my elder brothers computer. Knowing which way I needed to push the joystick to execute the best move given the position of the players, it all came back to me from when I was around 8-9 yrs old. That game was all about the gap between players and the direction they faced, the correct move would make contact and the wrong one would not connect, for example if you were too close the kick would miss, but a headbutt would floor the opponent for a sec. I loved the spin and punch so if you walked passed each other, it was the best way to go instead of just turning to face the opponent id use this and often land a decent blow which knocked the other player back to the perfect distance to land a kneeling punch to the nuts.. Oh and there was some nice humour and easter eggs, awesome game for the era.. A bit simple for the Amigas capability's but cutting edge for the c64 when it came out and hella fun on both.. Thanks for the amazing content. Once again your on point. These games and their legacy is the backdrop onto which modern gaming's evolution belong.. Great stuff..
Heavy Nova and Rise Of The Robots were extremely influential games to the beat-em-up genre, I feel. You may wish to include an addendum including these games
I spent untold hours with IK+ on the Amiga. All these years later & I can still remember the music verbatim
Panza Kick Boxing it’s a fantastic kick boxing game that came out in the late eighties, early nineties.
Just to know, it was quite amazing to be a gamer.
I turned 4 years old in July 85, and I remember my local laundromat in my small town here in the US getting a Karate Champ machine, and my dad giving me a bunch of quarters to go play while he did laundry, and that was the game I remember spending most of my money on sitting on a stool so I could reach the sticks 😅
My favourite pre-Street Fighter 2 fighting game is absolutely IK+. It's still a blast to this day. Karate Champ, Yie Ar Kung Fu, Street Fighter 1 and Street Smart were games that I... don't like much, but I'd say they're the important ones.
This was brilliant stuff. So much I didn't know you shared. True gem of a video. Although your studio blew my OLED. I had look away.
IK+
Fighting games have come a long way. But the journey, with the past is a fascinating one. Experimental, creative, and evolved.
As someone whose childhood sport was Shotokan Karate, these games would have been my favorite if I grew up in the eighties. I like how some tried to simulate tourney style karate bouts. There just isn't really a modern example.
What is interesting is that some of the producers of Street Fighter left Capcom and joined SNK. They released Fatal Fury which was in development during the same time as Street fighter 2.
Was definitely blown away when I first saw Yie Ar in the arcade back in the day. I was never a big fighting game player, but that one got me hooked for a while lol
IK & IK+ were amazing even on the Amstrad CPC. Good memories and lots of unknown games, thanks MVG !
There was a C64 game purely called "Thai Boxing 🥊" where you would fight another opponent and you could see the damage on their faces at the top of the screen. Wasn't strictly a side view fighter but it was one-on-one. I think it probably had a good overall influence
Really surprised you didn't include the absolutely amazing IK+ for the Amiga and ST! Probably the most playable and addictive fighting game on a home system of its time.
This video really shows how Street Fighter II was such an enormous leap and unprecedented breakthrough in the fighting genre. My conclusion is that the speed and complexity of fighting games doesn't really work well on 1980s hardware, but it didn't stop pioneering developers from trying.
The speed wasn't so much the problem, as the incredible amount of RAM required for all that artwork, as well as the sheer cost in man-hours to do all that pixel artwork. Basically, look at the Gameboy Color version of Street Fighter Zero/Alpha to see what 1980s 8-bit home computers could have done with a ton more RAM. Look at the Neo Geo Pocket Color SNK vs Capcom:Match of the Millenium to see what 1980s 16-bit home computers could have done with a ton more RAM (NGPC is significantly weaker than 1980s 16-bit home computers).
The first fighting game was two kids beating the crap out of each other over 'being cheap' in Pong.
Perfect timing to upload this
As a kid, I played the large pad version of street fighter at an arcade in a flea market. I remember the game felt hard and I did not understand it well. The next time I went to that arcade the pads were broken on the machine.
Karateka, anyone?
As for the most (technologically) impressive game from the early 90s for me, it was the Mortal Kombat.
For me, it was Knight Games for the c64. It had tons of different modes, pvp, and lots of moves. Fighting Streets (SF1) for the turbografx CD was so frustrating that 8 year old me snapped it in half.
Absolutely great video! I hadn't heard of the majority of these games
i used to play Budokan a lot as a child on my Amiga 500. It's a great game featuring different martial arts and weapons
Great video. 'Barbarian' was another one on C64 that was a good un
Street smart was one of the first fighting games I remember owning. Also Mk, Sf, Ki, and clayfighters!
Very informative i really appreciate this video. For me fighting starts at street fighter 2 & MK for the genesis! I was a tad too young for arcades even thought i faintly remember them in the early 90's with like VF 2
Good morning MVG. When I wake up and have noticed that you have posted a new vid, it makes my day all that much more enjoyable. Keep them coming. Each one is very interesting. I vividly recall playing the version of Street Fighter with the two big rubber pressure-sensitive buttons. The manager stated that there was some sort of hoses that put spurts of air into a meter of some sort. Therefore, the more air the meter received, the stronger your punches and kicks were. Well, the game died and instead of repairing it, it was retro-fitted with SF II. Is it possible that you can do a vid about all of the illegal mod chips that were produced for SF II Champion Edition? (eg. the first one, the variances of each one, etc)
Thanks for the video, it was particularly interesting as a developer of a fighting game myself. I had heard of most of those but it's cool to have a full description and see what they brought to the table.
Karateka was another old classic that had the one on one fighting element which also had a surprise ending if you approached things the wrong way...
I like early fighting games, tbh.
Yie Ar Kung Fu on the Spectrum? Brilliant!
Sai Combat on the Spectrum? Serviceable.
Barbarian on the CPC? EPIC.
Budokan on MSDOS? SO MUCH FUN AND DEPTH!
Panza Kick Boxing on MSDOS? Oh, boy, where do I even start.
I think that the "push down the button then hit a direction" attack mode is unnecessarily vilified.
It's true that SF2 (Sf1 was crap, tbh) was a revolution, but it's not like everything before it was the pits.
the IK+ three player mode on the c64 definitely added something that was forgotten until Smash bros on the N64 made mele brawlers popular again, that's for sure.
Karate Champ was in the movie Blood Sport. Van Damme and Donald Gibbson characters became friends while playing it.
I like that International Karate was mentioned. My favourite was International Karate Plus on C64. There was 3 characters on the screen at the same time and 2 of them could be human players. That was awesome!
Yie are Kung Fu was also my favourite!
Cool video! Thanks!
I've always been terrible at 1:1 fighters (they never give you enough time to learn what to do), so IK+ with it's wonderful cheat button where you press T to drop everyone's trousers was great as when I was losing, pressing T would give me a vital chance to get away from a pummelling.
I played Karateka all the time.
I remember playing fatal fury which was sf1.5 before sf2
I played some karate game on the Amstrad CPC in Primary School. Wasn't a fighting game fan until the PS1 so I didn't play much of SF2 or any other fighters besides Killer Instinct until then.
Now I love them and physically own over 80 of them.
Karateka (1984) by Jordan Mechner, use rotoscoping the "motion caption" of the era
I'm surprised you didn't mention International Karate + when you were talking about IK. The "plus" version came out 2 years after the original game and was also called Chop N' Drop in the US. It's notable for introducing something that hadn't been seen before - a third character. Although this character wasn't human playable, to have three fighters battling it out at the same time was something unique that introduced a whole new level of complexity to the genre. Of course, we see this influence of being more than just 1 vs 1 in many games today; the Super Smash Bros series, Powerstone, Kung Fu Chaos and PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale being some examples.
One game I believe is worth mentioning would be Karateka by Jordan Mechner, first released in 1984 for the Apple II. While its mechanics are fairly simple, it does feature a level progression with increasing difficulty, and some unique hazards m.
It always amuses me hearing about Melbourne House being a studio known for cutting-edge games, when for most of my life I've only seen them as the guys that made a Looney Tunes racing game for the PS2.
I always liked how Ryu and Ken are dressed white and red, like the players of Karate Champ. I don't know about martial arts, but as a player it's something I liked
In 1984, Nintendo released a Game & Watch device called Boxing that is a bona-fide fighting game using ye olde LCD segments. It's not fancy, but it was fighting on the go.
I thought you might have mentioned Karatika, a fighting game for the Apple II. It was programmed by Jordan Mechner (of Prince of Persia fame) and was released in 1984. We had a copy growing up on our Apple IIe, and I'm surprised to find out that it got a ton of ports, from the Commodore 64, through to Xbox 360 and iOS. Just goes to show how much of a lasting impression it made on people.
In 1987 we were like....whoa! Street Fighter's graphics look ultra realistic!
Ah, early fighting games. What we called “beat-‘em-ups” at the time. :-)
There was a freeware clone of International Karate to the Apple IIGS called “Sensei” that I really enjoyed the hell out of as a kid. Gorgeous 16-bit graphics, Amiga MOD music, and fast assembly code that overcame the IIGS’s pokey 2.6 MHz processor made it a favorite. I never knew where it drew its inspiration from until RUclips vintage game rabbit holes, but I didn’t know til now that International Karate was, itself, a clone!!
IK+ and Barbarians on the C64 were my favourite fighting games growing up
Pleased that Uchi Mata gets some love.
Guess what I’m firing up tonight ;)
Shanghai Kid was not Data East, it was Taiyo, which later became Culture Brain. Its actual name is Hiryū no Ken, and it spawned a long-run franchise.
Great round-up of pre-SF fighting games! Another person mentioned Budokan by EA, which I will second. For me, although it doesn't quite fit, Pro Wrestling on the NES in 1986 primed me for Street Fighter 2, with its different moveset/special moves for each character. I really got into that and having my favorite characters/mains, although I didn't own a NES myself. SF2 really changed gaming and made a mark on me, although after MK3 came out I barely touched fighting games again until MK11. Street Fighter 2's variants remain the only SF games that I got into, my favorite being Ultra Street Fighter II on the Switch (itself a port of Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix on the Xbox 360/PS3).
Cool video! I knew just a couple of these games. Never heard of the others. Great work!
Thanks MVG, as always, great video!
karate champ was a game i absolutely loved when i was a kid, i used to play it on arcades with my mother (and we where both taekwondo students at the time as well).
seen all this games in one video brings a looooot a good memories.
Good one! I played IK+ on Amiga a lot before SF2, and a bit of the vs modes in Golden Axe and SoR as well.
Urban Champion looks and sounds exactly like a game I played on the NES.. but don't remember the name of. I swear it wasn't that game, as I don't remember those fighter sprites.
Wouldn't be surprised if they took the assets and used it in another game, but could just be my aging memory misleading me.
Love the research, effort and attention to detail. Thank you 😊
I played a lot of Karate Champ and a lot of Yie Ar Kung Fu as a kid. Yie Ar Kung Fu was one of my favorites, especially if the long jump was enabled. Some arcades disabled the long jump to make the game a lot harder.
Omg! MVG, you read my mind. Literally yesterday i was wondering about this very question