Retro Game Review: Yie Ar Kung-Fu

My money is on the little guy.

Platform: Arcade
Released: 1985
Developer: Konami

Background: Yes folks, there actually were fighting games before "Street Fighter II" came along (There had to be an original "Street Fighter," right?). Now truth be told, compared to SFII and "Mortal Kombat," they weren't that great. One of those early arcade fighters was "Yie Ar Kung-Fu," a Konami contribution to the genre. You played as the fighter Oolong and had to defeat 11 other fighters over the course of two gauntlets. The fighters were faced in a set order and supposedly got harder as you went, but some of the middle fighters seemed easier to me.

Oh, and did I mention you only had three lives to do this? My bad.

Graphics: 3/5
It's like watching Looney Tunes fight. OK, the fighters don't look that much like cartoons, but they don't look overly real either. The black outlines on the fighters' sprites is so thick their movements look more like goo than anything. The backgrounds aren't that bad, which saves this game visually.

Sound: 3.5/5
There is in-fight music, sound effects and a little bit of speech throughout.

Controls: 2/5
Don't expect fluid movements while playing this. You can punch and kick, high and low, as well as jump. The problem is that when you jump, you don't have much control over how high or how far. And kicking while in the air is difficult - scratch that - nearly impossible. The direction of your jump is shown by the little yellow arrow that follows your guy around.

Gameplay: 2.25/5
I'll admit this game is fun to play - at first. But once all of its little quirks begin to come out, you'll quickly become tired of it. And since it's an early fighting game, the hit points on each character aren't perfect, which means you might clock a guy in the head two or three times but only actually hit him once. I was torn between giving this game a 2 or a 2.5 for gameplay, so I settled for the middle.

Overall: 2.69/5
It's no "SFII: Hyper Fighting," but if you want to see how fighting games were in the early stages, check out Yie Ar Kung-Fu. You probably won't be finding it in many arcades these days, but there are ported versions available on newer home consoles (Warning: the NES version is completely different from the arcade). It probably won't dazzle you with top-notch graphics, sound and gameplay, but it'll give you a good idea on how far fighting games have come.