History of One-on-One fighting games

[BobSega]

This talk of one-on-one martial arts games has made me want to talk about some of the earlier games of this type. Do people here have memories of the first Street Fighter game? lol. I tried that in the arcade and found it really hard to get the hang of.

Heres another one-on-one martial arts game I found recently on an coin-op called 'Konami Classics' which has a range of games created by Konami in the early 80s.

There was a game called Yie Arr Kung Fu, that I think Konami created in 1985, where you played the role of 'Oolong' and had to fight about 10 varying opponents and these opponents had differing weapons. Its a fun game. You have a range of different martial arts moves but no fantastic moves like Street Fighter.

There was also a game called 'Karate Champ' where you fought in a Karate tournament. If I remember right, you controlled your opponent only with a joystick and no buttons! lol

Anyhow anyone else want to reminisce about old one-on-one fighters?

[ShadowAngel]

Karate champ was interesting without any buttons and it was the first one-on-one fighting game ever. Another great old game was "International Karate" and the follow up "International Karate +". Some people say that until now they're the best Karate Games.

The First Game that i played was Street Fighter 2 around 1993 i think i put all my money in the coin op ;D

A funny story was with my Brother around 1993 he bought the game "Eternal Champions", a street fighter clone from sega, for the genesis/mega drive. The game was so difficult that he took the cartridge and throwed it agains the wall so it broke into thousand pieces ;D

A really interesting game is "Bushido Blade" don't know if that one counts as you fight with weapons. But in this game you play without Life bars or Time Limit, the fight can be over after some seconds up to some minutes. And for example if you hit your enemy's legs he can't go or run and if you hit his arms he can't use his weapon proberly.

Another interesting thing is that some japanese beat em ups have german titles, like "Einhänder" or "Ehrgeiz".