Art of Fighting 3

Art of Fighting 3 (AOF3)
Developers	SNK
Systems	Neo Geo JP: March 12, 1996
	PlayStation 2 (via Art of Fighting Anthology)
Online Play	Rollback (via Fightcade 2)
Player Resources	Old Japanese Atwiki
	hara96, top JP player
	THRtanuma, top JP player
Community Channels	Art of Fighting Series Discord

Art of Fighting 3: The Path of the Warrior (龍虎の拳 外伝, Ryuuko no Ken Gaiden; aka Art of Fighting Side-Story) is the third entry in the Art of Fighting series, developed by SNK and released in 1996 for the Neo Geo arcade system. Unlike the previous two games, Art of Fighting 3 would take a much more unique approach to its gameplay and graphics to stand out more from SNK's other titles, featuring cutting-edge graphics and inspirations from 3D fighting games of the time to its core gameplay. Art of Fighting 1 and 2 were both known for their hardware limits pushing graphics, but Art of Fighting 3 features even more effects such as rotoscoped graphics that utilized live-action filming, dynamic lighting across the game's stages based on the time of day and/or whether lighting is present, and even multi-layered sprite stacking as can be found in this example.

Story

After the King of Fighters tournament, Robert Garcia decides to go on a date with his friend Ryo Sakazaki's sister, Yuri. Then suddenly, a man ends up on the road in front of Robert's car, dropping a woman's bag. Robert recovers the bag for the woman when she approaches it, and a reunion between Robert and Freia Lawrence occurs, whom they have not seen each other since childhood. Unfortunately, her father had died in the time they had not seen each other. Their fathers did research together, until Robert's father decided it was too dangerous to continue, and abandoned the lab with research data. Said data in hand, Freia goes off to the mansion of a man named Wyler, and Robert chases after her. Wyler is after Freia, however, so that he can complete an elixer for ultimate power, and in order to do so, he needs data that Freia is hiding

What kind of game is Art of Fighting 3?

Art of Fighting 3 is most often described as being like a "2D Tekken" or a "2D Virtua Fighter" of fighting games. This means a focus on movement, whiff punishments, poking, okizeme, frame data, launchers and juggles. It’s also a game of managing your special moves with care, otherwise you’ll deplete your meter too quickly, encouraging players to balance offense and defense. This is meant to encourage players to carefully select when they use their special moves, making for a risk vs reward type of management to the meter system.

Wiki Roadmap

75% complete

In Progress / Completed

To-do

Completed All character pages updated to a modern format Karman and Kasumi's pages are fully completed (minus combo specifics and general polish) Decent mix of combos. Room to add more for all characters, but is pretty good for now FAQ/Controls/Mechanics/etc. pages are all completed as far as they can be (wouldn't be surprised if there's some hidden mechanic that's missing) Matchups and character strategy relatively completed (Mostly) Completed frame data In Progress Character pages that still need to be fully finished (7/10) Update info on respective character pages General proofreading currently being worked on Character images being gathered

Active and Recovery frame data needed for all characters (hitbox viewer necessary), plus any potential i-frames that are missing/whatever other wonkiness Hitboxes images needed for everyone We need a hitbox viewer at all, I don't know debugging or lua scripting Calculate KSV for all moves, including airborne/juggle KSV and counter hit bonuses Try and figure out how 4A counters actually activate Update matchup info (probably rewrite all of it, I don't know every single matchup 100%) Make minor changes to Lenny, Rody, Wang pages to better reflect actual game meta