Characters of the Art of Fighting series
The following is a list of video game characters featured in the Art of Fighting fighting game series developed by SNK. The Art of Fighting series serves as a prequel to the Fatal Fury series, with the three games taking place between 1978 and 1980, over a decade before the events of Fatal Fury: King of Fighters. The initial two games are set in South Town, the same setting as the Fatal Fury series, as martial artists Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia face several foes after Ryo's sister Yuri went missing. The second Art of Fighting 2 is a direct sequel starring far more playable characters with the leads alongside Yuri and Ryo's father [|Takuma] participating in the King of Fighters tournament in order to have revenge against the host Geese Howard for orchestrating Yuri's kidnapping. The third Art of Fighting game takes place in the fictional Mexican town of Glasshill Valley as several fighters travel around the area for their own purposes with Ryo and Yuri searching for the missing Robert.
Many characters from both Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury appear in The King of Fighters series, which is set in its own universe that ignores the continuity established in the Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury games so that the characters from both series could battle without having to age any of them. Ryo Sakazaki and his allies are also featured as guest characters in other games such as Buriki One, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum and Capcom vs. SNK. In certain games, Ryo has aged and became his father's successor under the new alias Mr. Karate.
Creation
Shortly after the release of the fighting game Street Fighters release, a headhunter approached director Takashi Nishiyama and convinced him to leave Capcom and join nearby studio SNK. Nishiyama took planner Hiroshi Matsumoto and the majority of his team with him and abandoned the Street Fighter IP. In SNK, Matsumoto directed the fighting game Art of Fighting starring the leads Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia. The cast were created by Matsumoto as an homage to the Capcom fighting games' characters. Artist Youichiro Soeda said that Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia's debut was unique to other games based on the company because the story did not focus on fighting tournaments but instead on the duo's quest to save Yuri Sakazaki. From the marketing side, SNK wanted to show the characters as big sized as possible on screen, leading to the zoom ins when they get close. In the early development prototype, this was so extreme that characters were only visible from their knees to upper body as they got closer on the screen. However, this changed and development scaled this down to be more manageable. Nevertheless, they still accomplished their goal of having some of the biggest and most detailed sprites among the fighting games of that generation.While Ryo was modeled after American actor Patrick Swayze, Robert's inspiration comes from different personalities such as Steven Seagal, Andy Garcia and Don Johnson. Since the game primarily had mainly men, the staff had problems deciding on a female fighter. This eventually resulted in the creation of King created to be strong as modeled after was the actress Grace Jones famous for the James Bond franchise. However, the final design was more andrdogynous almost llike a man. Meanwhile, the other female character, Yuri, was given a more fragile portrayal despite having the same voice as King. The staff used voices for the characters. In charge of the art was Shinkiro who has said he had no problems with designing Ryo because he himself had not been rich. Designing Robert Garcia, who was rich, caused him "trouble".
SNK developer Yasuyuki Oda reflected that both Art of Fighting and the other IP Fatal Fury seemed to appeal to fans of male-oriented series like Fist of the North Star and Dragon Ball. The first game was famous for exploring Southtown, the setting of Fatal Fury. The inclusion of portraying several macho fighters led to dilemma of including more female character with Mai Shiranui standing out as SNK's first female fighter. With Mai's high popularity in Fatal Fury, SNK decided to include Yuri in Art of Fighting 2 as a playable character which received similar response. In Art of Fighting, there are so many villains, but everyone acts polite. They don't lay hands on anyone until it's a fair fight, and they don't sneak up on the player from behind. Yuri's popularity led to the creation of unique characters related to her but none of them made it to the actual game until her ending sequence. 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. Ryuhaku Todoh was also an early candidate for inclusion in Art of Fighting, but for some reason was later dropped. Yuri's popularity led to the creation of unique characters related to her but none of them made it to the actual game until her ending sequence. 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.
Art of Fighting 3 the first game in the series to use motion capture for its animation inspired by Virtua Fighter. Ryo was modified to feel more realistic to play. In retrospect, they felt that the only way to know Ryo's story was playing Art of Fighting as SNK kept developing KOF among other products where Ryo was playable but was not explored. In regards to the third Art of Figthting, the game was noted to be called "Gaiden" as a result of the story focusing now on Robert rather than Ryo. Ryo's rivalry with Kasumi Todoh in Art of Fighting 3 was created as a parallel to Art of Fighting where as both fighters are looking for their relatives.