Sango Fighter

The year is 1993, Sound Blaster speakers crackling with the sounds of sword fights, and on the monitor, characters in period Chinese attire are clashing. Street Fighter II was dominating the arcades back then, but this was something different — this game came from Taiwan and nobody really knew about it.

Sango Fighter is a fighting game set during the late Chan dynasty period, an era Westerners know mostly from Koei's strategy game Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Chaos, warring states, heroes with spears and swords. Instead of Ryu and Ken, you've got characters inspired by Chinese history and literature. For a teenager from Czech Republic, it was exotic in just the right way.

The gameplay is straightforward — classic one-on-one fighting on a fixed background, a selection of several fighters, each with their own move set. You can handle the controls even on a keyboard without a gamepad, which was a lifesaver for most of us back then. Special moves aren't rocket-science complex like in the arcade giants of that era, so the game doesn't feel inaccessible. On the other hand, the depth of the fighting system is proportional — after a while you'll realize the opponent's repertoire is limited and the AI plays pretty predictably. For 1993, it was solid performance for a small Taiwanese studio; these days you can tell.

What made Sango Fighter interesting back then and what sets it apart even now is precisely this setting. Western fighters had ninjas and street gangs, this one had generals from the Chinese Middle Ages. The graphics were surprisingly clean by 1993 PC standards and the characters were well-animated. The game reached me as shareware on a floppy disk from a classmate — you couldn't legally get it any other way in the Czech Republic back then. Today it's freeware, so your conscience is clear.

Who will Sango Fighter appeal to today? Mainly those who want to taste what PC fighters looked like when Street Fighter console ports were still a distant dream. And also fans of Chinese history and pop culture — the game has that right wuxia story atmosphere, even if it doesn't develop it in depth. Half an hour with an emulator or straight in your browser will take you back to when a floppy disk from a friend meant an entire weekend.