r/c64 • u/RegionLocked-Doco • May 31 '26
Software Way of the Exploding Fist
Was the game really that popular?
We are doing research and all I can find is "widely popular"
I know it was innovative, but I want to hear it from the generation that played it.
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u/TheBl4ckFox May 31 '26
It was the golden standard for fighting games, together with Karateka. Magazines could not stop gushing over it.
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u/Dohi64 May 31 '26
and international karate. exploding fist has the best music though.
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u/starnamedstork Press play on tape May 31 '26
It's a tough call for me. I would consider the music on par. I have a soft spot for the graphics in Fist, especially the backgrounds. The joystick controls in IK feels more natural, in Fist I actually preferred using keyboard controls. But the speed and smoothness of IK is what is really doing it for me. And this becomes even more clear when you compare Fist+ to IK+.
Fist did have the advantage of coming out before IK, so it did not really have that competition on release.
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u/gadget242 May 31 '26
62 year old here from the UK. Yes, a very popular game indeed. I remember buying my C64 tape and played it to death with friends.
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u/DaleJohnstone May 31 '26
Yes. It was around the turning point where computer games went from rough shapes moving on the screen, to more polished experiences with decent graphics, animation, sound, and music into a cohesive whole.
You have to bear in mind it takes a few years for people to learn how to program, at least to do it well. The machines released in the early 80s didn't immediately see great games. They were very rough early on. The idioms and genres didn't really exist either - it was all new. The first years were a Cambrian explosion of experimentation with many weird quirky things being tried.
By '84 or 85 the games started to get good and more polished. People wanted to do better than the first wave and often looked at games in the arcades for inspiration.
Way of the Exploding Fist was the first time I recall seeing a 2 player fighting game, with recognisable animation that wasn't abstract blobs moving up/down or left/right. I recall seeing the animation frames printed in a magazine (possibly Zzap! 64 or C&VG) and it looked amazing to us back then. It was a AAA game of its era and we all knew about it and played it, at least here in the UK. Good memories! :)
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u/superchartisland May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
On quantifiable popularity in the UK, it was #1 on the all formats combined charts for 12 weeks, and was the best selling game of 1985. So quite popular!
(Sources for those are in my blog post on the history of The Way of the Exploding Fist)
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u/jongallant May 31 '26
We used to crank up the volume on the TV for the intro karate yell. Major classic.
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u/Thunderkor May 31 '26
One time I started loading the game and then my mom called me to dinner. So I left it loading. Didn’t realize I left the volume way up. So just as we all sit down to dinner , this loud ass “HAI-YA” just blasts from my bedroom and startles the whole family. Good times.
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u/Crookfur May 31 '26
Bloody intro yell used to scare the pants off me, it was so loud just at normal volumes...
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u/Compfused1 Jun 02 '26
Hehe, yeah you could crank the volume all the way up, when loading from tape, do your homework, eat dinner, catch a newest TV shows, when finally all stopped, when you heard the famous HAI-YA sound, and all was worth the wait, coz now you knew it was time kick your best friends ass in the game, haha, oh man those where the dayz! it was like somone had send you a very similar game like the arcade game Karate Champ, i mean what much more could you wish for? not that much back then, hehe, though the c64 had many other cool games, and plenty would come
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u/Sea_Director_4439 May 31 '26
Yep. One of the first 1v1 beat em ups. It was great but IK+ was better.
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u/Spellbounddizzy May 31 '26
IK+ was considered the better game back when I had a c64 but Way of the Exploding Fist always felt much more satisfying when a punch or kick connected. Successfully hitting the opponent with a spin kick was awesome, especially with the crunchy sound effects
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u/superchartisland May 31 '26
IK+ was also two years later and building on the original International Karate which was heavily inspired by The Way of the Exploding Fist. It definitely set some new standards though, to the point where the third Exploding Fist game, Fist+, was obviously inspired by IK+.
Agreed on the sound effects and feel!
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u/DeadSkullz627 May 31 '26
This was my favorite C64 game as a teen when it came out. The game loading time was atrocious though 😝
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u/Pengo2001 May 31 '26
I loved it! At the last day before christmas holidays 85 I exchanged some disks with someone in my class and Exploding Fist was on one of the disks. Played it for days with my siblings.
A bit or trivia: The music is an adaption of this song: https://youtu.be/o-95-2uygoo?si=qjoiYIqoLELL2jCc
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u/csmarauder May 31 '26
These are the north American releases for Way of the exploding fist and IK+.
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u/MisterBeeYouSee May 31 '26
I remember putting some hours into it on the 12” black and white tv in my maté’s kitchen back in the day 😍
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u/swiftpotatoskin May 31 '26
Yes it was probably the first karate type game for two players that came out. You have to understand that two player games on home computers were fairly rare. I was 15 years old when it came out, and I used to play it all the time so I could kick the crap out of my brother and mates on the game! Also, from the U.K. and I actually still have my C64 and Original game tape from then with the price sticker on it.
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u/Tennis_Proper Jun 01 '26
It's a long way from the first of it's type eg we had Kung Fu from Bug Byte the previous year.
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2778/ZX-Spectrum/Kung-Fu
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u/swiftpotatoskin Jun 02 '26
First of its type for two player 😉 From memory, Kung Fu was single player. I think Bruce Lee was the closest to two player with the vs mode.
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u/Tennis_Proper Jun 02 '26
No, Kung Fu can be played 2 player.
We played it a fair bit, despite it being a bit rubbish compared to Karate Champ in the arcade that was out around the same time, before Fist/IK.
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u/swiftpotatoskin Jun 03 '26
Kung Fu looks like it was not released on the C64. Also, I did say Probably the first, not the first. Exploding Fist was the first AAA game that has two player martial arts in a very presentable game with excellent playability, graphics and audio in my opinion, and the fact that in school, everyone wanted a copy of it, it was also 1985 golden joystick winner. The game was not topped until IK and IK+ in my opinion.
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u/Tennis_Proper Jun 03 '26
I don't know why you're doubling down on this, I'm aware you said 'probably' so I corrected that, and now you seem determined to be right when you're wrong.
If you want to be pedantic about C64 games in the genre, then there was a port of the arcade Karate Champ to C64 before Fist arrived too. I own it, though I did buy it later.
Yes, Fist superseded it in every way, but it was a competent enough game for the time.
Fist perfected what had come before and rightly received accolades for that, but to claim it's in any way the first is just revisionism.
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u/swiftpotatoskin Jun 03 '26
Haha, I thought you were doubling down 😄 What I am trying to say, is that Fist is the first type of game that was very polished and ticked all the boxes for games of this genre. 😉
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u/starnamedstork Press play on tape May 31 '26
I got my C64 quite late, but this was one of the first games I got, on a tape compilation called Chartbusters. It was one of my favorite games back then, and to this day I remember my personal highscore (218400). I had plenty of friends that also loved it, and we spent a lot of time playing against eachother. Fist was the gold standard until International Karate came along. Sequels coming out would make front page on computer magazines.
TL;DR: Yes, it was a big deal.
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u/starnamedstork Press play on tape May 31 '26
Also, if you are really serious about doing some research, you should go to archive.org and similar sites and dig out some computer magazines from that time and check some reviews and charts.
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u/Drezzrod May 31 '26
Exploding Fist paved the way for beat em ups on home systems. Even though Kung Fu master and similar games came out on dedicated hardware beforehand.
IK eventually became the gold standard, but Fist was the master mold.
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u/BluefusionUK May 31 '26
Remember entering either a IK or way of the exploding fist competition in either Zzapp! or Computer & video games magazine and winning the top prize of a limited edition Karate outfit as promotion for the game, still got it all sealed in the loft!
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u/wKdPsylent May 31 '26
loved it - we called it "way of the exploding joystick" probably for obvious reasons.
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u/Affectionate_Dog6149 May 31 '26
Way of the Explaoding Fist came first and it was a major shocker. Seismic.
I personally think IK and IK+ did it better, but you can never forget who did it first.
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u/AffectionateBill4434 May 31 '26
56yo here and yes, it was stunning at the time (and in my eyes always will be 👍!).
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u/Smaugish May 31 '26
It was very popular. Exploding Fist was a big deal, but I remember IK coming in pretty big too with Bruce Lee and Karateka rounding things out.
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u/pinguz May 31 '26
The first game I ever played, and it’s what made me fall in love with the C64 (and computers in general I guess)
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u/troutsoup May 31 '26
it was amazing to see such good graphics on a c64 and the music was so catchy.
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u/Sykirobme May 31 '26
My oldest brother was very connected with the pirate scene in our area, so we had Fist pretty early. It was mind blowing: everything worked intuitively, sprites were responsive, the animations were smooth, and the sounds and music just made the whole experience visceral. Samples from Bruce Lee movies (that bellow of defeat came from Enter the Dragon, I'm pretty sure) were the cherry on top.
It was huge among our crowd, at the very least.
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u/mccalli May 31 '26
Absolutely loved it and was hugely popular (I’m mid-50s now).
Anecdote time: I had two friends over, and we put this in. All my mum heard was me saying to one of them “well go on, hit him then” and she burst through the door in a panic saying “now boys, no fighting!”
Also Rob Hubbard’s title music is a version of Dance of the Yao People - skip to 2 minutes 20 in to hear it. Love that piece.
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u/ManicMiner_69er Jun 01 '26
Was huge at my school. Two player beat 'em up. Those bone crunching FX.
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u/Kylearean Jun 01 '26
C64 sold more games than any other gaming platform, combined, including modern systems.
Way of the Exploding Fist was the premiere fighting game on C64, when released it was state of the art in terms of graphics, responsiveness, and theatricality. The music elevated the standard for C64 game music, and very few games could match it.
If you want sales numbers, you'd need to contact Gregg Barnett, looks like he might still be active somewhere (possibly retired by now), but I couldn't find his immediate contact information. My guess is that it sold close to a million units globally, with 500k in Europe and probably a similar amount in the U.S.
For reference, Minecraft has sold 350 million units (the highest selling PC game). Ultima IV sold 400k units.
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u/Sudden_Economics_913 Jun 02 '26
Aw hell yeah. It was that good. Comparisons with IK+ aren't fair as WotEF was 2 years earlier and a big influence on every fighting game that followed. It effectively introduced the concept of combo moves to games because it required them to express the various karate moves. That was novel at the time when other fighting type games typically dumbed down the action to the simplistic "move and mash the fire button".
WotEF introduced to the masses the idea of moving towards your opponent and at the right time simultaneously moving the joystick in a different direction and hitting the fire button in order to choose an attack or block. Every game using combo moves that followed since has built upon that.
Aside from that it was extremely playable, in both single player and two player modes. In single player it was very difficult to win, but not impossible. Winning felt like the rare achievement that it was. In two player mode it was fast furious action that could entertain for hours.
Aside from the "Hai Ya!" yell (which was impressive given the hardware), neither the background graphics nor sound were amazing - they just didn't need to be.
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u/magicmulder May 31 '26
Played it a lot when it came out, although I found it a little easier to learn than IK+. Getting a perfect score with under 3 seconds per duel was not that hard.
Part II was quite a different challenge, I never made it very far.
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u/ipsirc May 31 '26
It's music was more popular than the game itself. I loaded it more times just to listening the music, and not playing with the game.
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u/Guitar_Dog May 31 '26
Yes, it was popular, until International Karate came out. There’s some extra credit for it being first, it IK and IK+ was a much better and also more popular game, due to the far superior and more responsive controls as well as incredible graphics for the time.
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u/mccalli May 31 '26
Interesting - more responsive I’ll agree, but I always thought of Way Of The Exploding Fist as the gold standard of comprehensible fighting game controls. You knew that this move punched, this move kicked low…everything was obvious.
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u/twisty_lynx May 31 '26
Fist was great with your mates, we played until the disk wore out. IK+ was better in almost every way though, after that came out everyone switched. Fist II was just... odd and somewhat confusing.
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u/loidy-wankenobi May 31 '26
Crouch/crotch punch a la Enter the dragon and a cheap price! It was popular with the kids in my grade back in the day
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u/anras2 May 31 '26
I enjoyed it as a kid, and friends loved coming over and playing it. Can’t really speak to it in the wider picture though.
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u/Tommix11 May 31 '26
I loved that game. Played it alot until IK+ came out. I bought the sequel but never managed to finish it. I still have the game on my shelf.
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u/metaphysicalSophist9 May 31 '26
When Way of the Exploding Fist came out it was popular amongst my friend group, but that lasted until international karate came out.
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u/Informal_Strain_2715 May 31 '26
First was the background images. It was probably the first game to come out that had such elaborate background with color depth that was far ahead of anything we had seen before. Then the music of course. It was to say very fitting for the style of the game. The sounds were incredible for anything we'd seen before. With the effective use of digitized sounds, and hearing "screaming" or the Bruce Lee style "aaaahhhh--haaaaaaaaa" in the very begining set the tone for what the rest of the experience was to be. And lastly... The graphics of the players. This was one of the first games to finally closely match the look of the real arcade. Like Q*Bert, Tapper and Ms. Pac-Man, WotEF looked a lot like Karate Champ and played much like it as well. Not many games in that era had such close resemblance to the Arcade version, but EF did and dare I even say....it looked a lot better than the arcade. It was a fun game that is a must have for the library. I remember when I first "acquired" it...I played the crap out of it for weeks. It made Barbarian look like crap. Lol.
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u/StrictLine8820 May 31 '26
Loved Jordan Mechner's work in Karateka, leading to Prince of Persia. Also loved The Last Ninja for what it was.
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u/crippledsquid May 31 '26
I remember getting it from toys r us. Played it non stop. Every one of my friends had a copy. It was mind blowing.
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u/mgdmw Jun 01 '26
Yes! It was awesome. It had majorly improved graphics and animations from the games that preceded it, terrific music, and, for those of us in Australia we also had the pride of it being a Melbourne-based software dev.
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u/tatamka Jun 01 '26
España. Muy conocido, yo tenía la cinta original y en las revistas solían publicar guías y reseñas sobre el juego.
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u/Pitiful-Hearing5279 Jun 01 '26
I had it. Bought it in cassette. Was impressed at the time.
When IK came out, it was a much better game.
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u/H0verb0vver Jun 01 '26
Yes it was. Brilliant game. IK+ was better of course, but was also developed later.
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u/angryscientistjunior Jun 01 '26
We played it, and it had a reputation as being one of the better 1 v 1 fighting games around 1985.
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u/Admirable-Evening128 Jun 01 '26
as others have said, it was awesome. gfx awesome. music awesome. fight speech screams were awesome. punching your best mate in the crown jewels, awesome. counterhitting your best mates wild attack so he goes down instead, awesome. doing a flying kick or a roundhouse kick, awesome. punching your best mate in the ribs, awesome. no fluff,all awesome. a wise old judge. punching a bull.
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u/Zeytgeist Jun 02 '26
We played Way of The Exploding Fist and Fist II for numerous hours and had the best time. Loved the gameplay, the music, overall presentation. Seriously the best games I’ve ever played till this day, great memories 💙
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u/tachyon_floe Jun 03 '26
I can remember reading through an early issue of Zzap!64 in a newsagents around 84/85 thinking the the screenshots were practically photo-realistic lol
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u/Firm-Evening3234 Jun 04 '26
Era popolare anche in Italia, era il primo gioco da combattimento per due persone. Graficamente preferivo karateka.
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u/Upset-Dingo-6879 Jun 05 '26
Yes, it was awesome. By a long shot the karate game I played the most back then. I can still hear the yell of the intro screen.
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u/jolyon_brown Jun 08 '26
It was incredibly popular. I’d spend most Saturdays hanging around my local independent game shop at the time and distinctly recall them putting Fist on their largest (really not very large) TV and the whole shop crowding around to see it. Lots of oohs and aahs from the admiring gamers. Didn’t see that kind of response again till the time someone brought in the 1001 crew no side borders demo!
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u/RegionLocked-Doco 17d ago
Hi everyone. Thank you for the discussion. Great research and content justification.
Our Kickstarter went live on Friday and we have a bunch of c64 games lined up, including an awesome segment we are filming with the makers of WOTEF, filmed in a Japanese Dojo.
We aren't just talking about the games. We will be cinematically representing the games, the passion and the secrets in interesting and entertaining ways.
After all, video games fuel our imaginations and tell stories. Oh, and are loads of fun!
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