Fight, K.O. ,flawless, special, desperate move, parry, QCF; These words and many others have become part of the videogames jargon since many years ago, they have permeated the culture to unknown levels and become part of our life, a sample of this is the recent transmission by ESPN of the EVO tournament, competing on rating with other sport events and more surprising the rise of famous programers, writers , project directors to the level of rockstars.
In the middle of all this maremagnum its convenient to locate some reference points to catch the big picture and later, dive into details, for this reason we'll talk about 5 of the most significant / representative games / franchises in the fighting games genre.
I. Street Fighter
The icon, the legend , the alpha and omega, the chosen one, yada, yada, yada; Sure we know, before street fighter there were another fighting games but their mechanics were crude and simple, unpolished, and very limited, with the coming of SF features, such as the addition of more action buttons (6 to be precise), varied enemies, joystick sequences that helped to develop a more complex game.
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| The legend |
The boom of the metagame
With the arrival of its successor (SF II) the meta-game grow in importance, evolved to create a new level of challenge you could know the movements of your adversary's character, game style (aggressive/defensive, mixed) and use this information to feed your game plan, the meta-game provided deepness since simple aspects as the chose of the character's screen selection and the side of the arcade cabinet you preferred to use.
The roster
8 characters were something impressive , despite the fact that two of them shared the same movements repertory; their unique abilities gave them advantages/disadvantages the player should know to get the maximum of opportunities to win. The wide selection gave the players the capability to express themselves through their favorite character, game style and set of moves; Even more with the personalized story endings, the battle winner quotes (some of them also personalized) added deepness to their personalities and help to strengthen the the player/character bond.
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| "The" fighting game. |
II. Mortal Kombat
More tan the similarities, were the differences with SF the key to engage the players, the unusual button configuration and its arrange, instead of 6 buttons MK uses only five, high punch/kick, low punch/kick and defense, this config gave the ability to buffer inputs and execute special moves while defending and avoid cross-up attacks.
MK a healthy saga that survived dark years with awful chapters its nowadays one of the stars of the FGC, hosted on great events and with enough fans to compete with its rival SF.
The battle continues...
The roster
7 characters ignited the passion, far from the colorful SF graphics, the digitized graphics showed a realistic warriors, on a more somber palette of colors, with Athletic bodies far from the barbaric muscles of the SF warriors, the combat seemed raw and bloody very bloody , lots of red splashing everywhere and the battle cryes drilling your ears it was a fest for the eyes, sudenly you felt you where watching a martial arts movie.
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| Your sex is on fireeee ♫ |
The graphics
The election of digitized graphics was a major a risky but succesful, it enhanced the game a more serious tone, creepier and gory far from the childy vibrant colors of SF and Its clones.
The fatalities
To accomplish the mission of shake the world and get attention terrorize, nothing better than terrorize the censors, along with the blood the game included a finishing move , a special input command to kill your beaten opponent, cut his/her head , tear off their backbone, burn it in flames, take out the still beating heart.
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| Johny Cage wins... FATALITY! |
III.-Tekken
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| Tekken 7 |
The leap from 2D to 3D started with virtua fighter, later NAMCO came into scene to rise the 3D games to the next level, the master level, dividing the 3D to a new stage, not only using 3D environments and characters, but evolving the way the matches were played "thinking in 3 Dimensions".
Altough Virtua Fighter jump to the ring before, the charismatic characters and the deeper mechanics of Tekken inmediately put it on the reflectors , gaining popularity in the arcades its launch on the playstation skyrocketed it, gaining a lot of devote fans whom still play it more than 15 years later.
The big number of moves available for each character, the real 3D fight and the exclusive 3D moves such as the side step, the roll background, roll foreground added layers of complexity to the until now, most dificult fighting game saga in terms of learning curve.
IV. King of fighters
The pupil overpasses the master, born under the shadow of Street Fighter,KOF was far from being another clone, developed its own personality, adding new mechanics to the classical repertory of the genre, team vs team mode, chi charge, avoiding techniques, dash forward/backward and a constant evolution from one version to another.
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| that guy looks like you son. |
KOF has one of the most meritorious achievements, beyond the creation of a great community, a robust gameplay, lovely characters (Choi lovely?), e.g; KOF kept the alive the flame of the fighting games through the most difficult years of the genre.
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| KOF 98 Roaster |
V. Soul Calibur/Edge
Ocasionally, in some games, one or two characters port weapons and even use them, V.G. Yoshimitsu; Using the experience acquired with Tekken the not so obvious next step for NAMCO was to experiment and wow!, what a experiment, a new sub genere had borned, starting its life as Soul Edge/blade and later Soul Calibur.
The game incorporated some new mechanics, broke the limits of the human body thanks to the varied weapons used, some traditional as nunchuks, katanas and bo and some other barely known , sudenly the martial arts movies from the 70-80s came alive with outstanding music and memorable scenarios, NAMCO did it again , get the pole position in a growing subgenre.
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| Soul Edge |
To say that SC its a nice game its saying nothing , the SC beauty goes farther, the sum of its parts was a holistic product, a perfect game despite its fails, the game offered hours of fun , discovering constantly new ways to improve your game, the high replay value of the game in console put SC on a high niche, hard but not impossible to surpass.
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| Soul Edge |
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| Soul Calibur for DC, the perfect game. |
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