More now than ever, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (that’s the ERSB to you and me) is becoming the first source for sneaky gamers to discover which games are going to be released for their favourite consoles. Yesterday it was discovered that Art of Fighting Anthology would be getting a release on the Nintendo Wii. When you say? Ah, we don’t know yet.

SNK Playmore had already announced that it was to bring its Art of Fighting series to consoles in North America, but its release on Wii instead of or in addition to the other next-generation platforms might come as a surprise to some. Art of Fighting Anthology will feature a collection of 33 playable characters from throughout the long-running series, the original of which was released in 1992.

Although overshadowed nowadays by the likes of Namco’s Tekken and SEGA’s Virtua Fighter, Art of Fighting was responsible for introducing a number of innovations into the 2D beat-em-up genre. The first of these were special attacks including those in the form of a “spirit gauge” and in a fight back in desperation. The former saw a bar being filled below the player’s health in reserve for hard-hitting attack, however the more special techniques a player uses the more the gauge depletes, reducing the power of said attacks in the process. “Desperation Attacks,” meanwhile, can only be performed when a character’s health is incredibly low in an often-futile attempt to regain a foothold in any given violent bout.

Are you ready for some classic beat-em-up action?

In addition, Art of Fighting was the first in its genre to introduce graphical scaling, meaning that as characters move apart from one another, the camera zooms outwards in order to achieve the best perspective over the playing field for both competitors – a technique preferred to a fixed viewpoint across the width of the screen and now a staple feature in modern fighting games.

The only downside to the ERSB’s site is its lack of specific information with regards to a release date, which so far no one knows… Well, except maybe for SNK Playmore, but they would do, naturally. We’ll keep you posted!