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[Ristamar]

Nice. I skimmed the feature, and I'll probably read it all later this week.

Perhaps I missed something, but they seem to mention Yie-Ar Kung Fu quite a bit, but they never actually go in-depth about the game itself. Seems like a terrible omission. That was my favorite fighter by a wide margin before SFII emerged.

 

[AstroLad]

There was a pseudo-sequel to Pit Fighter called Guardians of the Hood, it's a Final Fight ripoff with the same spazzy digitized graphics. It's even more unintentionally hilarious because there's a lot more to do.

Good point, but we need a real sequel to Pit Fighter (just like Wasteland and Fountain of Dreams). I can't even count the number of PetitionsOnline I've set up but I have to think they are starting to pay attention. Still though this is not a knock on Guardians at all. The game was great in its own right and revolutionized BEUs but unfortunately its influences are less omnipresent today's than Pit Fighter's.

Major respect RIP classic BEUs.

 

[Timedog]

I'm pretty sure Pit Fighter and Gaurdians only use Italian actors, which I think is design genius.

-Timedog

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Pretty decent article. Didn't know much about a couple of those arcade games before so it was nice to get some coverage on that stuff from so long ago. Other than that, it has some little issues with info, weird choices of some of the titles, and a disturbing lack of The Bilestoad for the Apple ][. Karate Champ, bitches.

 

[AstroLad]

I'm pretty sure Pit Fighter and Gaurdians only use Italian actors, which I think is design genius.

-Timedog

The Jacko cameo was also really unexpected at the time.

 

[nightez]

Pit Fighter looks alot like Mortal Kombat. I guess that where Midway got started in fighting games.


Yie Ar Kung Fu used to be great back in the day.

 

[Christopher]

holy shit!!

I remember that Pit Fither art work on the arcade or whatever, that is like the epitome of early arcade for me ...well MK2 really, but still that's old goodness.

 

[djtiesto]

I played Pit Fighter over MAME recently, the game is terrible and is so broken, you can win just by doing the same moves over and over. The animation is janky, and digitized graphics have aged horribly. Astro Lad you can't be serious with your praise for this game???

 

[AstroLad]

I played Pit Fighter over MAME recently, the game is terrible and is so broken, you can win just by doing the same moves over and over. The animation is janky, and digitized graphics have aged horribly. Astro Lad you can't be serious with your praise for this game???

I'm just saying I have to loll when I hear people herald SFII without so much as a mention of a game that preceded it and had some revolutionary elements (e.g., 3Dish fighting by allowing up-and-down movement on the field, realistic graphics, etc.). The game itself might not hold up any better than SFII but you have to give it credit for its innovations and gameplay at the time, and definitely playing it on MAME doesn't do justice to the awesome feeling of playing on the cab.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Why does the article take the tone that fighting games had 'something good' before SFII ruined it?

I agree that all fighting games today are essentially SFII clones, following a narrow and technical formula.... but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The alternative was... well... too simple to be any fun.

I'm more concerned over the crachety "YOU KIDS GET OFFA MY LAWN" mentality of this part:

Why do I need to do 720s, or weird pretzel motions, or whatever to execute a move in a video game? What purpose does this serve? Are developers doing this simply because they are not willing to change? The problem this poses is that it prevents players from having every possible kind of attack available without having to master any, simply so they can even be attempted. Players need to immediately have everything that is available directly in front of them when they begin playing a game for it to be accessible.

It's because most of the titles in that list were primitive, so primitive that the easy-to-pick-up-and-play factor wasn't enough to keep them fresh for years; the complexity was needed for that to happen. Absolutely no need to go on a rhetorical bashing session in order to praise one section of the genre's lifespan.