This was a brand new cast of prominent characters and it really looked like the ones we knew and loved were being thrown toward the wayside. I've heard Street Fighter III being called the Freak Show and that is very unfair as it is still a great game! There were later versions that made up for the lack of a good roster, but the damage was already done and the port failed to meet expectations, as well as the arcade port. So, what else, Street Fighter III became a cult classic. This is also very true for Mortal Kombat at the time. Both franchises were having a lot of trouble breaking into the 3D world. While MK saw more success, Street Fighter IV came out ahead while MK vs DC was being Heroically Brutalized.
It was at this point that Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Fighting Vipers, Battle Arena Toshindin and many other titles started to cascade the market. Why wait on Street Fighter III when Tekken TAG was right there and ready to take our quarters? Virtua Fighter hit the market with a ferocious bang because it was the very first 3D Fighting Game, beating Tekken by mere months.
This should give you a little peek at how turbulant the Fighting Game industry was. I haven't even gotten into how MK and SF had so many knockoff fighting games, it was growing a bit comical. That's not even going into how they made Street Fighter the Movie the Game. It was obviously a time of experimentation with brand new technology and a lot of people were trying to rush to get in the blood, the guts, the special moves and the new and diverse characters and stages. A lot of them went way over zealous with the concept, in fact. Tattooed Assassins had literal thousands of Fatalities, so it was obviously leagues better and more remembered than Mortal Kombat ever was.
What was I talking about? Oh, right. Once home consoles replaced arcades, the 3D Fighter became the norm, while indie games stuck with the 2D Fighters of varying degrees of quality. That one solid brick of time, from 1996 to 2011, that is the frame of time where fighting games hit their best stride. That was when Street Fighter IV and Mortal Kombat 9 were the most prominent in their respective fighting game genres. That was also when the 3D era started and died with Mortal Kombat as a whole. It was also when Virtua Fighter came and went with a bang both ways. Put in Soul Calibur, Power Stone, along with an entire era of Tekken, Bloody Roar, and even ClayFighter is remembered with apparent fondness. It sure as hell beats Mortal Kombat Zubsero (that was a mistake and I'm keeping it there).
Fighters on the Sega Systems do not get nearly the credit they should. Is it because of Battle Arena Toshinden URA? I certainly hope not because that was Playstation's mess to begin with. If you want to touch the fourth entry with a ten foot pole, be my guest. It went the way of Final Fight and Dragon Ball GT Final Bout, straight into Guilty Pleasure territory. By all means, love them all you want, just take a shower afterward.
 |
| But Sonic, this is a Fighting Game Article! What are we doing here?! |
The fighting game is definitely one of those genres that deserves more than one partner in a local multi-player (or 2-4 player party as we old timers used to call it) and if they don't have that, don't bother anymore. Seriously, if your game is nothing but online play and internet play, you have already lost ridiculous amounts of money. What happens when people stop playing it and there is no single-player? Street Fighter 6 didn't seem to take this well into heart because if you rely on Single player to unlock characters, you are ready for a grind of epic proportions and not the fun kind. Do not give into fully online Fighting Games, they are a waste of time in the long run and only serve as temporary practice sessions at best. This is something you can get from any decent, run of the mill single player fighter.
So, for a quick overview of preference.
Street Fighter
As said before, a great king of the genre and a fantastic overall buy if you get any of the anniversary editions. If you find the Sega Saturn Anniversary, do not pass it up and buy it immediately if you are able. Either way, get the current one one on the current gens. Those are golden era games from the Sega Genesis to the Dreamcast and are to be celebrated.
Mortal Kombat
.jpg)
Has a few more holes in its library than SF but still considered overall better by many. Special Forces, Subzero and a dark part of the 3D era brought about a dry period, but after all was rebooted to MK9, that was when the franchise piqued. Will it reach that high point again? If they stop with the micro transactions and WB greed grinding, maybe.
X-men
X-men vs Street Fighter, X-men: Children of the Atom and plenty of other guest appearances in many other fighting games have brought this bunch into quite a bit of their own gaming. The Konami Beat'em Up game will be known for its arcade port, but it should have been on the Saturn with the rest of its 2D peers. Either way, Marvel vs Capcom still brings these bunch to the videos, so keep them coming, but remember where they were best.
Tekken
Yes, yes, boo, hiss, Playstation. This is still a great bunch of games, even though the anime was Dog ****. Oh, sorry, I meant Dog Shit. The story is interesting, though the characters apparently have no actual goals outside of "You killed X, now I killed Y, so now I kill Z" or save Z or whatever. It's a little better than the Virtua Fighter story but not the MK lore. Either way, it's confusing and it's just better to punch him in the face. Wait, Yoshi-
Soul Calibur
Mitsu? The hell is he doing in Tek- I mean, Soul Calibur? That's weird. Apparently Yoshimitsu found his way into two fighting franchises that were not especially connected but they did it anyway. It's like a cyberpunk version for Tekken and a Feudal Japanese for Soul Calibur, but it's him with the same moves and weird... everything. With the specialization in weapons, though, he feels more at home here, honestly. Many didn't even know he was in one or the other franchise because there were a lot of purists that didn't know the two were slightly related. With so many swords, a huge axe and some really fast sticks, Soul Calibur is able to offer a better flavor for a lot of people. It caters to weapons so readily that Link, Darth Vader, Yoda and Spawn were all invited in Soul Calibur 2. Spawn used a hand axe. It was cool!
Dead or Alive
Dead or Alive was a good franchise********************. You know, when they weren't trying to sexualize EVERY SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER FOR EYE CANDY AND JIGGLY JIGGLY BOUNCY BOUNCY NAKED NAKED NAKED VERY NAKED. The real problem was that the creator tried to play it off as "I love them like my daughters". I have a daughter, sir, and I promise you, loving her like that is quite illegal and seen as grooming and that is not a subject I want to breach on this article! The bottom line is, yes, sex is nice and fun, but no, do not pass it off as innocent haha tongue-and-cheek innocence. You either slap the porn tag on your game or you shut your mouth and let people interpret it how they will. It was a decent fighting (BOOBIES ASS TATAS BOUNCY BOUNCY BOUNCY) game, but it was a little unfocused.
Virtua Fighter
It is tight. It is masterful. It is sacred and should remain as it is. Do not touch!
Power Stone
Aweome fighting games! The first one was the best one, by far, but the second one kind of went a little too far into the Smash Brothers realm. It relied a little too heavily on stage battles taking care of the difficulty while the actual fighters are thrown to the wayside and basically have to survive the level just like you do.
Battle Arena Toshinden
Total garbage? Well, no, but it certainly wasn't great. You can say that it's unbalanced and the anime is even worse than Tekken's, but it does have some flashy graphics and funny, nonsensical characters. While that may sound like the opposite of nit-picking, honestly, it's not much worse than that. The voice acting was terrible and the games only really got worse as time went on, but it had a small niche for a moment there. Call this franchise the best of the worst, because at least it was one of the original Soul Calibur knockoffs. Just a shame it failed to be a PS exclusive.
Mortal Kombat Ripoffs
Mace: The Dark Age, Blood Storm, Primal Rage, as you can see, it's a half-bag. Honestly, you can pick up any one of these and have some kind of fun, but Mace and Primal Rage were at least successful enough to warrant remembering to some degree. BloodStorm was just too generic and the graphics just couldn't live up. Time Killers probably has the best reputation out of all of them but that's because they double dipped into this story with Street Fighter the Movie the Game, as they were both created by the same studio. The creator of both of them was so pathetic that he argued with me on Twitter that the arcade and console ports of the game were completely different. My argument was that I didn't give a rat's hairy ass.
Street Fighter Ripoffs
Street Fighter Ripoffs cover a much more brought scale of games because these are considered the kid versions of the game with no blood. Sure, you still smash lead pipes into face and smash faces into lead pipes, but it's for kids! Body Blows, Power Moves and all kinds of other titles started popping up when I looked up Street Fighter Ripoffs. I had no idea about any of them. Then there was finally Fatal Fury, Clay Fighter and TMNT: Tournament Fighters. Okay, now I'm in business because I've actually owned them or a friend has owned them where I could play them. Street Figher 1 was GARBAGE but it was still seen as the first REAL fighting game because the sequel came forth and blew everything out of the water at the time. Mortal Kombat was just a year off but until then, Street Fighter II spawned ridiculous amounts of knockoffs. But seriously, Street Fighter was just a knockoff of Dragon B---
The most popular of these was One Must Fall, which was all about giant robots. I actually played this game and never beat the final boss. I never found this game again to try a second time. Either way, Fighting Vipers was seen as the lesser Street Fighter, though it has a hint of Dead or Alive in it as the women have their clothes and armor knocked off with punching and kicking. Fighting Vipers really got notoriety through Fighters Mega Mix on the Saturn, other than that, it was pretty mediocre as a knockoff of Virtua Fighter.
