Much water has flowed under the bridge since Karate Champ and Yie Ar Kung Fu, but every season new trout swim down and new salmon go upriver in the never-ending cycle of arcade fighting video gaming.

Hyperkani’s UCF is one of those games we have to pay careful attention to. Graphics and animations are far from fulfilling your expectations, as the former are plain and the latter are plainer, quite literally. Sound is muteable, and gameplay is rough and uncomfortable.

However, there’s a faint glimmer of hope here. Moves are performed through on-screen gestures, meaning that here we have a true nature mobile fighting game that could show a way forward for street and king fighters. Although this game doesn’t allow combos at all, it’s easy to foresee how mobile fighting games will be in the near future: it’s as easy as drawing a path recreating the moves (i.e. Z for shoryuken). As soon as you can chain them as if it were a Swype keyboard, we can bet that the next big 2D fighting game will be mobile. Making use of the accelerometer would be great, too.

In any case, a game recommendable for reviewers, critics and hardcore old school historian fighting gamers. The rest can look elsewhere for something a little bit more playable.