Warrior

Gameplay

Warrior was a competitive two-player game viewed from directly above. Two stick-figure knights faced each other in a dungeon, each controlled by a joystick. Players moved their knight and swung their sword to strike the opponent. The playfield included pits that players could knock each other into. The overhead perspective and simple stick-figure warriors were perfectly suited to the vector display.

Historical Significance

Warrior is recognized as the first one-on-one fighting game in arcade history, predating Karate Champ (1984) by five years. While simple by later standards, the core concept — two characters facing off in direct combat — established a genre that would eventually include Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and thousands of other titles. The game demonstrated that vector graphics' strength in depicting animated figures through simple line segments.

Fun Facts & Legacy

Tim Skelly designed the game to be played exclusively as a two-player experience — it had no single-player mode. The overhead perspective was chosen specifically because stick-figure knights looked best from above on a vector display. The game's dungeon environment included a pit in the center that players could strategically use to push their opponent to defeat. Warrior is sometimes called the grandfather of all fighting games.