New Fighter - Ryo Sakazaki (Art of Fighting)
Ryo Sakazaki is the main protagonist of SNK's fighting game franchise,
Art of Fighting, which started in 1992 and acts as a prequel series to Fatal Fury, taking place at
South Town in the same universe. It's plot focuses on
Kyokugenryu Karate practitioners, Ryo Sakazaki and
Robert Garcia, also known as "The Invincible Dragon and Raging Tiger", going after
Mr. Big to save the former's sister
Yuri before facing off their father
Takuma (under the guise of
Mr. Karate) and
Geese Howard himself in a sequel, who ordered both around to keep the latter in line (even having killed
Jeff Bogard, Terry's adoptive father in Fatal Fury, according to the Super NES version of AOF1). Later on, characters who debuted from this series became regular veterans in SNK's The King of Fighters franchise since the very first installment released on their Neo-Geo arcade/console system in 1994.
While I do understand
Champion of Hyrule
on the amount of SNK characters in a current roster, Art of Fighting actually had a huge, innovative influence on both the fighting game genre & industry as a whole, and introduced many staples/mechanics such as:
- Meters/gauges and super attacks/desperation moves
- Taunting (used to drain/decrease the opponent's spirit gauge)
- Dashing/running (used in lots of modern games such as later Street Fighter and Guilty Gear titles)
- Screen/graphical scaling (used to add a dramatic flair to each battle)
- Special pre-battle intros
- Visible/in-game battle damage (Soul Calibur is an example in later years)
- Secret bosses/guest fighters (a "dream match" against Ryo in Fatal Fury Special was so popular among gamers it inspired SNK to develop The King of Fighters; he later appeared in Wild Ambition as Mr. Karate II from Buriki One; Akuma is a famous example of the former term)
- Capcom's creation of Dan Hibiki for Street Fighter as a parody of Ryo and Robert in response to them ripping off Ryu & Ken (both franchises and Fatal Fury were designed by Takashi Nishiyama), with lots of references to the Art of Fighting seies.
In Fighters Legacy, for
his moveset (
techniques are listed above a linked section)'s character gimmick to differ himself from fellow SNK reps, Ryo will pretty much make use of a spirit gauge from the Art of Fighting series by charging it up with a Shield + Special input to increase damage of his special moves and allow for a powerful desperation move that decrease depending on attack strength (both normal & command input variants, becoming weaker when depleted).
And finally, an additional detail for Infinity Sorcerer's Geese boss fight is that if you play as Ryo during the battle, Geese will appear in
his young self from Art of Fighting 2 with "
A Kiss for Geese -Cyber Edit-" playing on the background instead.