Earlier today I wrote about how crazy it was that Arc System Works looked to update BlazBlue: CentralFiction after over decade. Well, not to be outdone, SNK decided to do some reveals at EVO, such as an update to Art of Fighting 3: The Path of the Warrior… a game released in 1996! This game is older than a lot of the people reading this. The big news from this game is that Art of Fighting/King of Fighters/SNK staples King and Yuri Sakazaki are now new playable characters for this 30 year old fighting game.
This new update, dubbed The Path of the Warrior: Art of Fighting 3 R, will be released on Steam. This re-release will not only see King and Yuri added to the roster, but also a patch list of changes to rebalance the game, as well as something every fighting game should have now: rollback netcode, to make online player matches, well, work.
The Path of the Warrior: Art of Fighting 3 R, as well as the earlier news about BlazBlue: CentralFiction, add to an interesting conversation about fighting games: If the developer still has the code, and are going to re-release games anyway, why not pull from their classic sprites, change a few numbers on a sheet, and go all out with a brand new patch and characters to entice a few more sales? While, inevitably, the vets of these games will generally prefer whatever version they played the most on, in this case the arcade version of Art of Fighting 3: The Path of the Warrior, there’s no harm in doing some small work to see that these new versions of the game have their own unique appeal.
We have no window on the release date for The Path of the Warrior: Art of Fighting 3 R, but it does seem to only be in development for PC through Steam.