The King of Street Fighters
In 1991 Capcom released a sequel to their game Street Fighter called Street Fighter II: World Warrior. This game would turn out to be one of the most influential games in the "fighting" genre of video games.
Here comes the King
Capcom's Street fighter II is the most influential and copied game in the fighting game genre. It can even be said that the reinvented the genre. The original Street Fighter never made the same impact as its sequel. The one-on-one fighting game with its unique characters, different fighting styles and special moves made a big impact in the arcades.
From its release to 1993 sales revenues for Street Fighter II were more than 1.5 billion dollars.
But more importantly was the impact the game had on video gaming. Street Fighter is one of the most copied games ever, following the success of the Street Fighter franchise came an immeasurable amount similar fighting games.
The Competition
There almost isn't a video company that hasn't released a fighting game similar to Street Fighter. A lot of companies tried variations on the theme by adding weapons, animals, cartoony characters or some other unique selling point. But in the end they were all clones of that one fighting game.
Not that it mattered because the formula where you take your character and fight against a human or computer controlled opponent in a one-on-one battle proved timeless.
At that time there have been many attempts to surpass the original but all attempts failed. Midway probably had the best contender with its gory fighting game Mortal Kombat.
Mortal Kombat was a huge success with its more mature take on fighting. The fatalities and over the top violence were a big hit in the arcades. Mortal Kombat was very different from the cartoony characters of Street Fighter and presented the gamers with (for the time) life like characters.
Another company that got it right was Nintendo. Its rendition of a fighting game was called Killer Instinct. It was unusual for Nintendo to release this kind of game. They were best known for their Mario and Zelda games which were more directed at an audience of all ages.
Killer Instinct was a cross between Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. It was not as violent as Mortal Kombat but looked a lot more realistic than Street Fighter.
SNK, the people behind the NeoGeo (Here more on SNK), specialized themselves in making fighting games.
They have produced some of the best 2-D fighting games besides Capcom.
Some honorable mentions are:
Samurai Showdown II
This game was set in medieval Japan and added weapons to the combat. It used zooming techniques and even had its own version of fatalities.
Last Blade 2
Also set in Japan, this is probably one of the most difficult and sophisticated fighting games. It never became as popular as the other fighting games from SNK like King of Fighters or Fatal Fury.
King of Fighters
Probably the most well known series from SNK. In this game SNK characters (also from other SNK fighting games) fought in a tournament to decide once and for all who was the strongest. There were characters from the Fatal Fury series, Samurai Showdown, Art of Fighting but also new characters. The character roster for King of Fighters has always been impressive.
SNK has a lot more great fighting games like:
- Kizuna encounter
- Fatal Fury
- Garou: Mark of the Wolves
- Art of Fighting
- Ninja Masters
- Waku Waku 7
- Breakers (this was the most scandalous Street Fighter clone)
- Rage of the dragons (a Double Dragon one-on-one fighting game)
3D Fighting
Sega were the first (as far as I know) to release a 3-D fighting game. In 1993 the released Virtua Fighter. Soon after other companies followed suit and released their 3-D fighting games. The best known besides Virtua Fighter are probably Tekken and Soul Blade (Soul Calibur) by Namco.
Virtua Fighter
Tekken
Although these games moved from 2-D images to 3-D the concept of the fighting games stayed the same.
Ironically Capcom themselves failed with their own 3-D Street Fighter game called Street Fighter EX.
The Here And Now
To this day Street Fighter is regarded as the King of Fighting games. Although fighting games are not as popular as they were in the 90's there are still a lot of fighting games being released. Series like Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive are still alive and kicking (pun intended).
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Among all these fighting games, Street fighters II and Virtua Fighter III, IV were my favorites.
2D fighting games cannot really surpass SF II, all the later comers were only adding new characters with newer, fancier super skills, but the spirit within was still defined and bounded by SF II, even with Capcom's own SF series. That's why when Capcom released Street Fighter II for Switch, I got one at once! Now I can enjoy the good old time at anywhere anytime! Thx Capcom and Nintendo!
I agree SFII is the blue print all following releases were based on. Virtua Figther was also a classic. I do enjoy Tekken 7 though its a real throwback to its origins
Thank you for this post.
Street fighter II brings back great childhood memories of playing at video rental stores, grocery stores and arcades, then having lines of adults standing in line to play against a 8 year old me.
It was amazing how often some of them would lose and get nasty and negative. Now we pay to have this experience hardwired to our home. Gotta love it ♥
Yeah, Street Fighter could make a lot of people rage when they lost. All in all it is just fun.
I still remember playing many of these games... oh... corrected... I'm still playing many of these games ;) I guess they are right when they say, "Boys will always be boys."
Indeed, I am also still into these games especially at when I have friends over. Nobody wants to lose with Fighting games....
Ditto! I concur.
Sonic Boom!
Haha I recently sold my Street Fighter arcade!
Man, you had the arcade? That is dope. I saw that they were selling smaller arcade cabinets (even table tops) but the prices were insane.
I had the Miss Pac-Man table arcade too and Dr Mario! Haha
I was a big vintage gaming system collector. I think I once told you I used to have a blog about it on blogger, The 72 Pin.
Such great times lol
Great blog post. I prefer Tekken out of the series, because it's easier to perform combos compared to the other fighters. Street Fighter is 2nd. If your looking for a PC Street Fighter game, then I recommend Street Fighter Online (www.streetfighteronline.com)
Thank you. I play SF 5 online (PC) and I just bought Tekken 7 for the PS4. Tekken is still a great fighter and fun to play. I had some people over last night and when they heard that I had Tekken, you just know that that was all we played.
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cool post. I think fighting games are bigger then ever!
thank you. I think they are getting better. Its more like quality vs quantity.
yeah others need to look at what Netherrealm is doing because they are putting out some of the best fighting games in terms of content.
just as a note too mvc Infinite looks so bad
I don't think they are "bigger than ever." I would suffice that the genre is doing better than it was. There is still vast room for improvement no doubt. I am excited about Dragonball FighterZ developed by Arc Systems. I've played the demo of Marvel vs Capcom Infinite and it's actually pretty good. I would still prefer 2D cel-shaded sprites over 3D models, but I think the game is getting unnecessary shade. It's become popular to bash for some reason. The combo-system is reminiscent of that from Tekken-Tag where you can tag in and out in the middle of combos. No where near as good as MvC 1 or 2, but better I think than UMvC3.
that's what I meant by bigger than ever. not bigger in size but in exposure. MvC infinite just looks bad, I think that's why people hate on it.
I'm not sure what they are comparing it to. To me it looks much cleaner than UMvC3 getting rid of all of the pseudo comic-book effects which didn't fit at all.
Just saying "it looks bad" is dismissive and lazy. I mean "WHAT" looks bad? The artstyle? The graphics? The lighting? The backgrounds? The VFX? Give me something tangible.
That's why I say people are hating on it for the sake of doing so because it is the popular thing to do. No one as of yet have given ANY explanation as to why it "looks bad." In my humble opinion this seems like one of these situations where people don't want to be the odd-person out so they go with the mob-mentality. Everyone else is saying it looks bad so I'd better say it looks bad too so I don't look like a fly on a piece of paper.
It's really just subjective anyway. To each their own. A lot of people are just blowing smoke and will have the game day one despite their rhetoric.
First of all I am not the voice of the people so I could not tell you. I was just saying what I think is the reason, and judging by your defensive response i would say that, that does seem like it is a reason why people dont like the game. Mvc 3 at least had a style, a comic book type look. you could take what you said and apply it to that game. Some people really like that games art style. I personally prefer the mvc 2 style.
For ME personally I think the game looks ugly aesthetically. The character models have really bad faces and they look oddly proportioned. The graphics look very simple. A lot of the marvel characters have had a lot of different designs over the years since they have been in so many forms of media, but I think that some of these designs are some of the worst. Cap for example has a terrible face and his costume just looks ugly.
Second the story looks extremely blaze. the trailer they showed at e3 seemed so uninspired. the games sotry looks like more of a cash grab that something that really needed to exist. the story seems forced, it looks like its just trying to capitalize on the marvel popularity.
Now I have not played the game so it could be amazing mechanically but for ME personally it looks bad based on what I have seen. It has given a bad first impression.
Lastly people can dislike something without wanting to feel left out. saying that is as ignorant as saying that everyone is liking something just so that they dont feel left out. Some people are like this, but to say that everyone is doing that is ridiculous. Take me for example I have legitimate reasons why I think the games looks kinda ugly, I could not give 2 shits about what other people think. I wont buy this game day one and people that bitch and do ad hypocrites.
and because of the lack of xmen
Samurai Showdown II was one of the toughest fighting-games I've ever played, but one of the most legendary.