Fūun Shōrin Ken is similar to Yie Ar Kung Fu, except not nearly as good. Like most early fighters it doesn't have a multi-player mode. The point of the game is to defeat ten challenging opponents. Moves are executed similar to most early fighters: To input a command, hold a direction and a button at the same time. The controls are slightly different from other games, though. Jumping is executed by holding up, as in many modern fighters. When holding button A and a direction, the character executes an attack. The attack will then be repeated for as long as the button combination is held. Certain attacks can be executed by merely holding a direction. Hit detection here is similar to Karate Champ. The controls might be a little awkward at first, as with many early fighters, but it doesn't take long to adjust to them.

The game uses a health meter like modern fighting games. Every once in a while a bowl of food appears and that can be collected to replenish lost health. Stages 3, 4, 9, and 10 have platforms at multiple levels that one can jump onto.

Like it's predecessor, the second Fūun Shōrin Ken title was released exclusively for the Famicom Disk System. Unfortunately, it still doesn't include a multi-player mode. The gameplay is quite different from the original. Attacks are performed by tapping A or B to do a mid level punch or kick. To perform high or low punches and kicks, tap up or down and the corresponding button at the same time. Jumping is executed by taping A and B at the same time. A very powerful jump kick can be executed by tapping A, B, and down at the same time. The hit detection is a little bit better than the original. As with a modern fighter, certain moves deal more damage than others. The game always starts with the same first boss, a palette swap of the playable character. After that the player progresses through a series of levels, each with two opponents to choose from. The final boss is always the same character and is impossibly difficult.

Certain levels have special conditions that affect play. In one stage wind blows the characters to the left or right during the fight. There is also a level where lightning can strike the combatants

The audio is good and the background music provides a decent mood during the fights. The graphics here are fantastic. They can't really be appreciated from looking at screenshots. The first level looks amazing. Levels after that have fewer background details, but they have nice touches like lightning flashes or plants blowing in the wind.

Barbarian was a fairly popular fighter for its time, although it remains questionable how much of that popularity was thanks to the British erotic model Maria Whittaker posing on the cover. In the states, where the game was known as Death Sword, the box only shows an ugly dude, and it wasn't nearly as beloved there. As Computer & Video Games revealed in a feature in its 6/1987 issue, Barbarian also was the second fighting game after Karateka to use rotoscoping for its animations. Barbarian doesn't ever try to hide which barbarian it is aping, and audio consists of effects yanked directly from the movie Red Sonja.

Controls use the usual Exploding Fist scheme, although the swordfighting brings a few of its own peculiarities. Animations are generally slower and wider, as the Conan look-a-likes have to swing their heavy swords. Especially for untrained players this can be very frustrating as all their moves are interrupted by the enemy striking first. The roll, which doesn't deal any direct damage but knocks the opponent of his feet, is especially vicious in that regard. There is also a swing that immediately slices the opponent's head off when executed at the correct range, the first fatality and the first instant kill in a health-based fighting game. Unfortunately, this means that most fights against the CPU only involve knocking the opponent down to get some distance, and then trying to land the beheading strike before they get too close. After each match, a goblin appears to drag away the unfortunate loser. If the fight was ended by a beheading, he joyfully kicks away the head while doing so.

Barbarian was ported to every single computer platform that had any kind of market significance in the late '80s. The differences are mostly cosmetic, and of course in the controls. The recommended platforms are Commodore 64, Atari ST and Amiga. In most versions, Maria Whittakers only on-screen representation is standing next to the evil wizard on a balcony in one of the stages. The Commodore versions add her lying to his feet in his throne room. Only on the Commodore Plus/4, she appears naked!

A version was also planned for NES but was cancelled before it was released. There was also a sequel called Barbarian II in Europe and Axe of Rage in America, although it's more of an action adventure than a 2D fighter.

Street Fighter has been mostly forgotten in favor of its sequel, but this is where the legend begins. It's easy to see why they won't talk about this too much, though, because it's bad. The basic foundations for the series are there, Ryu and Ken travelling the globe to challenge ever stronger opponents, the special moves executed through joystick motions, even some more of later popular characters.

Only Ryu and Ken are playable, and other than in later games they're still just head swaps, but migthy Sagat makes his first appearance as the game's final boss, still without his trademark scar across the chest. Mike is the prototype for Balrog/Bison (the boxer), although he appears in casual wear. Others disappeared from the series until the Street Fighter Alpha prequels: Adon and Gen don't look too different from their later incarnations, but the punk Birdie is still white and has a human build. The stick-fighting Brit Eagle only ever reappeared in Capcom vs SNK. The rest were abandoned for good, and for good reason, too: the generic ninja Geki, the generic shirtless kickboxer Joe, the generic chinese kung fu fighter Lee. Only Retsu, a Japanese monk type with super bushy eyebrows has some redeeming elements to his design.

The problem is, the original Street Fighter just doesn't work very well. The controls are among the worst in fighting game history, as they just don't work most of the time. Trying to execute a special move is a crapshoot. Street Fighter also has strange walking animations for Ryu and Ken. They do that Bruce Lee style hopping-around-while-fighting walk thing, and they can't attack mid step. The movement and the controls make this game too frustrating to play.

Even worse is the "deluxe" arcade cabinet, which has two giant pressure-sensitive pads instead of six buttons. They're meant to be punched according to the strength of the desired move, which of course makes the controls only even less accurate. Because players didn't respond well to it, it was eventually phased out in favor of the now standard Capcom six button layout.

The regular cabinet alongside the deluxe variant with pressure-sensitive pads.

The audio is kind of what would be expected from a 1980s action movie with Jean Claude Van Damme. It has digitized voices, with Ken and Ryu yelling out the names of their special moves. The American version has the voices changed to English. There's also some really awkward English voice acting in between fights.

Despite all of the game's problems, the graphics are amazing. The backgrounds are especially detailed. The China level is the most beautiful, with its lushly detailed deep background and billowing clouds above. Capcom included a lot of nice touches like the Grand Funk Railroad reference in the America level or the names of other Capcom games spray painted on the wall in the title screen.

Street Fighter (Commodore 64, US)

In its time Street Fighter still wasn't considered too rotten for a fighting game, and ported to several platforms. The TurboGrafx CD version, which was retitled Fighting Street, is the most accurate of the early ports. Despite being one of the first titles for the system, it only uses the CD format to play arranged music, while all of the strange voices are still synthesized. The IBM PC, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, and ZX Spectrum ports make this terrible game seem even worse. There are two Commodore 64 versions, one made in the US and one in Europe. The American C64 version is the better of the two, but that's not much of an achievement, considering how miserable the other is. Surprisingly, the computer versions retain all ten opponents, although they only have one background per country instead of one per character (which means 5 instead of 10).

There also was a Korean pirate clone for MSX and Master System called Street Master. It was released well after Street Fighter II, and squeezes in Chun Li and the redesign for the boxer, but is otherwise based on the original game. The only other opponents are Joe, Gen and Geki (here referred to as "Ninja"). The player is always named Ken, but he wears white trousers and no shirt. Player two gets to choose from the opponents. It's hard to imagine, but its controls are even worse than any of the official versions. This is 100% unplayable territory, now.

Eventually, the game was more accurately ported to the PSP in Capcom Classics Collection Remixed and to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2. The game was ported so well that it actually is more fun and much easier to play than any of the other versions. Still not great compared to its peers, though.

After Street Fighter was completed, its designers Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto left Capcom for SNK. Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting are often condemned as Street Fighter rip-offs, but as a matter of fact they're true spiritual sequels to the original. In a rare interview with 1UP.com, Nishiyama even referred to Fatal Fury as "his" Street Fighter II.

The Karate Kid, another product sold by the infamous licence shlocksters at LJN, is once again not a pure fighting game. It starts out in a gym recreating the Karate tournament at the end of the first movie, where Daniel-san fights his opponents 1-on-1. But immediately after that comes the trip to Okinawa that kicks off the main plot of the second movie, where the game switches to side-scrolling brawler stages, with the occasional boss fight at the end. However, similar to Trojan, there is also a two player mode that's more along the lines of the karate tournament, while it takes place in front of backgrounds from the Okinawa stages.

The controls are the same in either mode: The two buttons are for punches and kicks, which can be combined with directional presses for some variation. Just pressing an attack button on its own consumes a special move use, either the Crane Kick or the Drum Punch. These can knock out ordinary enemies at once, which is a blessing, as they can be very tenacious otherwise. Special move charges can be regained either as dropped powerups from enemies or by succeeding in the various bonus rounds. There's the usual splitting of plates, and a stage where daniel has to avoid a swinging hammer, but the coolest of them all is the fly-catching-with-chopsticks game. The other characters from the movie only appear floating in the air as health recharges. Only Daniel's would-be girlfriend Kumiko is on the same rock platform where the final fight takes place, backing off backwards each time the combatants come too close to her. If she falls down the rock, it's game over.

Like many early brawlers, The Karate Kid suffers from stiff controls and frustrating hit detection. For a 1-on-1 fighting game, the mechanics are a bit too shallow, even for its time.

In the same year, a game called Karate Kid Part II was developed independently for Amiga and Atari ST. This was a very generic Exploding Fist clone with some beautiful stage backgrounds.