This retro fighting game lets you duke it out as your favourite scientists

The most celebrated scientific minds humanity ever produced never got a chance to all be in the same room at the same time… but if they had, you can bet a little ego-jostling might take place. But what if things went further? What would physical combat among our revered science heroes have looked like?

Luckily for us, we don't have to try to imagine how such a super-sci-stoush would go down. Thanks to Science Kombat, a new arcade fighting game from the crew at Superinteressante magazine, we can actually get in on the action, stepping into the ring with our pick of history's greatest researchers.Like a kind of brainiac Mortal Kombat but with more pixellated Street Fighter 2vibes, Science Kombat gives you the choice of duking it out as Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, Pythagoras, Alan Turing, or Marie Curie.

An awesome lineup, to be sure (although it would have been nice if a few more of our female science pioneers were represented amongst the combatants).

Each of these fighters has special moves loosely based on their fields of expertise. For example, Stephen Hawking can generate energy-sapping black holes, Nikola Tesla brandishes a humongous energy weapon, and Pythagoras has a mean hypotenuse-esque uppercut to rival SF2 Ryu's dragon punch (if you know what I mean).

But don't just take our word for it: the game is totally free, so check it out, although you'll need to be on a desktop computer to play (sorry, phone users). Pro tip: hit the little button on the bottom left of the screen to change the language to English first up.

You control your fighter with the cursor keys, W is light hit, and E is heavy hit. Once you've chosen your character, don't forget to learn the advanced commands, so you can perform their special moves. Have fun!