Yie Ar Kung Fu, one of the earliest fighting games, joins Switch and PS4

Here is a sneak peek at Destructoid: Konamis Yie Ar Kung Fu, who is nearly 35 years old and one of the first games to set the standards of the fighting game genre, is now available for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.

The port costs $ 7.99 and is courtesy of Hamster Corp.’s Arcade Archives (and, of course, Konami). Obviously it was two weeks ago and I missed it.

For video game historians, Yie Ar Kung Fu is an important work. It and the Karate Champ of Data East (1984) established the one-to-one convention that games are played out today. Karate Champ, whom I played a lot during the summer vacation of 1985 (ah, the memories), was more of a sports video game as it tried to mimic the movements and rules of a judged karate contest. The action was stopped and a full or half point was awarded once a strike landed.

Yie Ar Kung Fu, whom I have only seen on an ice rink in Winston-Salem, faces 11 opponents, many of whom use combat-style weapons. Instead of a scoring system like Karate Champ, it features a health alert for both fighters, which when completed results in a knockout – again a device that has since been used in fighting games.

Despite their fundamental contributions, neither Data East nor Konami became major players in the fighting game genre as it evolved at a rapid pace in the early 1990s thanks to the advancement of hardware and other innovations.