Yie Ar Kung-Fu

Yie Ar Kung-Fu is Konami's 1985 kung-fu tournament: Lee, a young martial artist, fights his way up a ladder of specialist opponents - Chain, Weapon, Pole, Fan, nunchaku-wielding Staff, and the boss Blues - each built around one fighting style, each demanding a different answer from your own arsenal of punches, kicks, jumps and the legendary flying knee.

It is the other half of the fighting-game genome alongside Karate Champ: one-on-one duels against characters with distinct styles, a health-bar format that later became genre standard, and boss characters treated as personalities. The opponent design is the actual content - each fighter weaponizes one thing, and the game is really a set of duels against projectiles, reach and rhythm rather than one shared AI. Konami's sprite work made every hit read clearly, the soundtrack injected genuine martial-arts-cinema energy, and its characters crossed into pop culture (the female fighter Lin Sun headlined Konami's own comic adaptations). Between this and Karate Champ, the genre's two founding philosophies - judged technique versus style matchups - were both on the board by 1985.

• ▸A ladder of style-specialist opponents, each a distinct duel
• ▸The genre-standard health-bar duel format, established here
• ▸A full martial-arts move set including the flying knee and somersault
• ▸Martial-arts-cinema presentation at Konami's mid-80s peak