Yie Ar Kung-Fu

The modern fighting-game duel was beginning to emerge in a 1985 arcade cabinet.

When Konami's arcade game appeared in 1985, Karate Champ had already established one-on-one martial-arts competition. There, a clean strike stopped the action and scored a point. Yie Ar Kung-Fu kept the exchange going until one fighter's segmented health meter was empty.

Oolong could perform 16 attacks from a joystick and two buttons, while enormous jumps made combat faster and less grounded. His opponents were not interchangeable karate fighters either: each had a distinct identity, weapon or style.

Historians of fighting games have identified differentiated fighters and in-round health meters among the conventions Yie Ar Kung-Fu helped establish. The game helped move the genre from scoring martial-arts techniques toward the continuous, character-driven duel later fighters would build upon.