Art of Fighting 3 is a marvelous fighting game, specifically a marvelous single-player fighting game. While I will sing high praise for the entirety of the Art of Fighting series (again, especially as a single-player experiences), the third entry really is the gem. The city street grit and grime of the first entries in the series is replaced by dusty roads and the vivid color thats reflecting off the rural Mexican landscape that AoF3 has transitioned to from South Town of the first two titles. A family crisis still needs to be solved, and Robert has become the central hero this time in place of Ryo (who now plays side-kick).
The trademark enormous sprites and zooming camera are still present but a new touch of flash has been added with smooth motion-captured animation and fast dial-em-up combos. As the flyer suggests, the animation was captured from stuntmen and fighters. Its an extremely impressive and smooth look. Unlike other capturing techniques done by contemporaries, SNK took that captured human-motion, converted it into 3D models, and then rotoscoped over the 3D animation. The few extra steps cuts down on any sort of uncanny valley (and thankfully isnt just sprites made from digitzed actors like in Mortal Kombat). The heavy impact movesets of the previous games is still present, but now there are quick moving, pre-built, combos the user can “dial in” with a string of quick rythmic commands that feel like the final touch to round-out the fighting style.
Unfortunately AoF3 is a bit of a lost child within the 2D fighting library. Coming out in 1996 it was already facing enormous competition, plus was a third entry in a series that never became much of a name to being with, PLUS it had scarified nearly all of its established cast of characters in favor of a new location, PLUS PLUS the wave of 3D fighters was establishing itself and taking the lime light away from 2D fighters as a whole.
I can’t recommend it enough that you spend some time with this title (and its soundtrack!). Its widely available at this point for pretty much anything you’d prefer to play it on.
Further Reading (viewing): Here is a nice bit of video for those more familiar with the game, or just want to see a curiosity. Its a tournament focused singularly on fighting as the AoF3 final boss character Wyler! Conducted by Game Center Mikado, an arcade in Japan that hosts and streams a wide variety of fighter game tournaments, often with special stipulations like this.