Fighting game

This article is about competitive one-on-one fighting games. For scrolling fighting games where players face off against many opponents, see Beat 'em up.

Although Street Fighter II was not the first fighting game, it popularized and established the gameplay conventions of the genre.

Fighting game is a video game genre where the player controls an on-screen character and engages in close combat with an opponent. These characters tend to be of equal power and fight matches consisting of several rounds, which take place in an arena. Players must master techniques such as blocking, counter-attacking, and chaining together sequences of attacks known as "combos". Since the early 1990s, most fighting games allow the player to execute special attacks by performing specific button combinations. The genre is related to but distinct from beat 'em ups, which involve large numbers of antagonists.

The first game to feature fist fighting was Heavyweight Champ in 1976, but it was Karate Champ and The Way of the Exploding Fist which popularized one-on-one martial arts games in 1984 and 1985 respectively. Also in 1985, Yie Ar Kung Fu featured antagonists with differing fighting styles, while 1987's Street Fighter introduced hidden special attacks. In 1991, Capcom's highly successful Street Fighter II refined and popularized many of the conventions of the genre. The fighting game subsequently became the preeminent genre for competitive video gaming in the early to mid-1990s, especially in arcades. This period spawned numerous popular fighting games in addition to Street Fighter, including the successful and long running franchises Mortal Kombat and later Virtua Fighter and Tekken.

The genre's popularity stagnated as games became more complicated and as arcades began to lose their audience to increasingly powerful home consoles near the end of the 1990s, though new franchises such as Dead or Alive, and the Soul series achieved success. In the new millennium, the genre remains popular but retains a much smaller proportion of enthusiasts than it once did, due to the increasing popularity of other genres and internet multiplayer gaming.

Definition

Fighting games are a type of action game where on-screen characters fight each other. These games typically feature special moves that are triggered using rapid sequences of carefully timed button presses and joystick movements. Games traditionally show fighters from a side-view, even as the genre has progressed from two-dimensional (2D) to three-dimensional (3D) graphics. Street Fighter II, though not the first fighting game, popularized and standardized the conventions of the genre, and similar games released prior to Street Fighter II have since been more explicitly classified as fighting games. Fighting games typically involve hand-to-hand combat, but may also feature melee weapons.

This genre is distinct from beat 'em ups, another action genre involving combat, where the player character must fight many weaker enemies at the same time. During the 1980s publications used the terms "fighting game" and "beat 'em up" interchangeably, along with other terms such as "martial arts simulation" (or more specific terms such as "judo simulator"). With hindsight, critics have argued that the two types of game gradually became dichotomous as they evolved, though the two terms may still be conflated. Fighting games are sometimes grouped with games that feature boxing or wrestling. Serious boxing games belong more to the sports game genre than the action game genre, as they aim for a more realistic model of boxing techniques, whereas moves in fighting games tend to be highly exaggerated models of Asian martial arts techniques. As such, boxing games and wrestling games are often described as distinct genres, without comparison to fighting games.

Game design

Virtua Fighter is rendered in 3D, but is typical of most fighting games in that most action takes place in a 2D plane of motion. Here, one player ducks the other's attack.

Fighting games involve combat between pairs of fighters using highly exaggerated martial arts moves. They typically revolve around primarily brawling or combat sport, though some variations feature weaponry. Games usually display on-screen fighters from a side view, and even 3D fighting games play largely within a 2D plane of motion. Games usually confine characters to moving left and right and jumping, although some games such as Fatal Fury: King of Fighters allow players to move between parallel planes of movement. Recent games tend to be rendered in three dimensions and allow side-stepping, but otherwise play like those rendered in two dimensions.

Attacking and defending

Aside from moving around a restricted space, fighting games limit the player's actions to different offensive and defensive maneuvers. Players must learn which attacks and defenses are effective against each other, often by trial and error. Blocking is a basic technique that allows a player to defend against attacks. Some games feature more advanced blocking techniques: for example, Capcom's Street Fighter III features a move termed "parrying" which causes the attacker to become momentarily incapacitated (a similar state is termed "just defended" in SNK's Garou: Mark of the Wolves). In addition to blows such as punches and kicks, players can utilize throwing or "grappling" to circumvent "blocks". Predicting opponents' moves and counter-attacking, known as "countering", is a common element of gameplay. Fighting games also emphasize the difference between the height of blows, ranging from low to jumping attacks. Thus, strategy becomes important as players attempt to predict each others' moves, similar to rock-paper-scissors.

An integral feature of fighting games includes the use of "special attacks", also called "secret moves", that employ complex combinations of button presses to perform a particular move beyond basic punching and kicking. Combos, in which several attacks are chained together using basic punches and kicks, are another common feature in fighting games and have been fundamental to the genre since the release of Street Fighter II. Some fighting games display a "combo meter" that displays the player's progress through a combo. The effectiveness of such moves often relate to the difficulty of execution and the degree of risk. These moves are often beyond the ability of a casual gamer and require a player to have both a strong memory and excellent timing. Taunting is another feature of some fighting games and was originally introduced by Japanese company SNK in their game Art of Fighting. It is used to add humor to games, but can also have an effect on gameplay such as improving the strength of other attacks. Sometimes, a character can even be noted especially for taunting (for example, Dan Hibiki from Street Fighter Alpha).

Goals

The player's objective in a fighting game is to win a match by depleting their rival's health. Mortal Kombat even allows the victor to perform a gruesome finishing maneuver called a "fatality".

Fighting game matches generally consist of several rounds; the player who wins the most rounds wins the match. Fighting games widely feature life bars, which are depleted as characters sustain blows. Each successful attack will deplete a character's health, and the game continues until a fighter's energy reaches zero. Hence, the main goal is to completely deplete the life bar of one's opponent, thus achieving a "knockout". Beginning with Midway's Mortal Kombat released in 1992, the Mortal Kombat series introduced "fatalities" in which the victor kills a knocked-out opponent in a gruesome manner. Games such as Virtua Fighter also allow a character to be defeated by forcing them outside of the fighting arena, awarding a "ring-out" to the victor. Round decisions can also be determined by time over (if a timer is present), which judges players based on remaining vitality to declare a winner.

Fighting games often include a single player campaign or tournament, where the player must defeat a sequence of several computer controlled opponents. Winning the tournament often reveals a special story–ending cutscene, and some games also grant access to hidden characters or special features upon victory.

Multiple characters and players

In most fighting games, players may select from a variety of characters who have unique fighting styles and special moves. This became a strong convention for the genre with the release of Street Fighter II, and these character choices have led to deeper game strategy and replay value. Although fighting games offer female characters, their image tends to be hyperfeminized, and they have even been featured as pin-up girls in game magazines. Male characters in fighting games also tend to be hypersexualized, with extra-broad chests and shoulders, huge muscles, and prominent jaws.

Custom creation, or "create–a–fighter", is a feature of some fighting games which allows a player to customize the appearance and move set of their own character. Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium was the first game to include such a feature, and later fighting games such as Fighter Maker, Soulcalibur III, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, and Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 adopted the concept. Some fighting games allow the player to create other types of game content: Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for example, features the ability to create custom stages.

Fighting games may also offer a multiplayer mode in which players fight each other, sometimes by letting a second player challenge the first at any moment during a single player match. A few titles allow up to four players to compete simultaneously. Several games have also featured modes that involve teams of characters; players form "tag teams" to fight matches in which combat is one-on-one, but a character may leave the arena to be replaced by a team mate. Some fighting games have also offered the challenge of fighting against multiple opponents in succession, testing the player's endurance. Newer titles take advantage of online gaming services, although lag created by slow data transmission can disrupt the split-second timing involved in fighting games.

History

Early fighting games: 1970s to 1980s

Fighting games find their origin in boxing games but evolved towards battles between characters with fantastic abilities and complex special maneuvers. Sega's black and white boxing game Heavyweight Champ was released in 1976 as the first video game to feature fist fighting. It used boxing glove controls that could be moved up and down for high and low punches, and inwards for striking. Like later fighting games, it was viewed from a side-view perspective. The game was followed in 1983 by Champion Boxing, Yu Suzuki's debut title at Sega AM2. However, Technōs Japan's Karate Champ from 1984 is credited with establishing and popularizing the one-on-one fighting game genre. A variety of moves could be performed using the dual-joystick controls, it used a best-of-three matches format like later fighting games, and it featured training bonus stages. It went on to influence Konami's 1985 release Yie Ar Kung Fu, which expanded on Karate Champ by pitting the player against a variety of opponents, each with a unique appearance and fighting style. The player could also perform up to sixteen different moves, inlcuding projectile attacks, using a combination of buttons and joystick movements while standing, crouching or jumping. Also released in 1985, martial arts game The Way of the Exploding Fist achieved critical success and subsequently afforded the burgeoning genre further popularity.

Both Karate Champ and Yie Ar Kung Fu provided a template for Capcom's Street Fighter in 1987. Street Fighter found its own niche in the gaming world, partially because many arcade game developers in the 1980s focused more on producing beat-em-ups and shoot 'em ups. Part of the game's appeal was the use of special moves that could only be discovered by experimenting with the game controls, which created a sense of mystique and invited players to practice the game, although similar controller motions used for grappling maneuvers in the earlier Brian Jacks Uchi Mata were deemed too difficult. Following Street Fighter's lead, the use of command-based hidden moves began to pervade other games in the rising fighting game genre. Street Fighter also introduced other staples of the genre, including the blocking technique as well as the ability for a challenger to jump in and initiate a match against a player at any time. The game also introduced pressure-sensitive controls that determine the strength of an attack, though due to causing damaged arcade cabinets, Capcom replaced it soon after with a six-button control scheme offering light, medium and hard punches and kicks, which became another staple of the genre. Meanwhile, home game consoles largely ignored the genre. Budokan: The Martial Spirit was one of few releases for the Sega Genesis but was not as popular as games in other genres. Technical challenges limited the popularity of early fighting games. Programmers had difficulty producing a game that could recognize the fast motions of a joystick, and so players had a hard time executing special moves with any accuracy.

Rise and peak: early 1990s

Enthusiasts playing fighting games at a video arcade

The release of Street Fighter II in 1991 is often considered a revolutionary moment in the fighting game genre. Yoshiki Okamoto's team developed the most accurate joystick and button scanning routine in the genre thus far. This allowed players to reliably execute multi-button special moves, which had previously required an element of luck. The game was also highly successful because its graphics took advantage of Capcom's CPS arcade chipset, with highly detailed characters and stages. Whereas previous games allowed players to combat a variety of computer-controlled fighters, Street Fighter II allowed players to play against each other. The popularity of Street Fighter II surprised the gaming industry, as arcade owners bought more machines to keep up with demand.

SNK released Fatal Fury a few months before Street Fighter II. It added a two-plane system where characters could step into the foreground or background. Meanwhile, Sega experimented with Dark Edge, an early attempt at a 3D fighting game where characters could move in all directions. Sega however, never released the game outside of Japan because it felt that unrestrained 3D fighting games were unenjoyable. Several fighting games achieved greater commercial success, including SNK's Art of Fighting and Samurai Shodown as well as Sega's Eternal Champions. Nevertheless, Street Fighter II remained the most popular, spawning a special Champion Edition that improved game balance and allowed players to use additional characters. The popularity of Street Fighter II led it to be released for home game consoles and allowed it to define the template for fighting games.

Many American developers tried to capitalize on the template established by Street Fighter II, but it was Chicago's Midway Games who achieved unprecedented notoriety when they released Mortal Kombat in 1992. The game featured digital characters drawn from real actors, numerous secrets, and a "fatality" system of finishing maneuvers with which the player's character kills their opponent. The game earned a reputation for its gratuitous violence, and was eventually adapted for home game consoles. The home version of Mortal Kombat was released on September 13, 1993, a day that was promoted as "Mortal Monday". The advertising resulted in line-ups to purchase the game and a subsequent backlash from politicians concerned about the game's violence. The Mortal Kombat franchise would ultimately achieve iconic status similar to that of Street Fighter with several sequels as well as movies, television series, and extensive merchandising. Numerous other game developers tried to imitate Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat's financial success with similar games; Capcom took unsuccessful legal action against Data East over the game Fighter's History. That same year saw the release of the Sega Activator, a Mega Drive (Genesis) peripheral that allowed motion detection of the player's physical movements, based on the Light Harp invented by Assaf Gurner. It was marketed as a new way to play fighting games, such as Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but the device was a commercial failure due to its "unwieldiness and inaccuracy."

Sega began to attract attention with the 1993 release of Virtua Fighter in arcades. It was the first fighting game with 3D polygon graphics and a viewpoint that zoomed and rotated with the action. Despite the graphics, players were confined to back and forth motion as seen in other fighting games. With only three buttons, it was easier to learn than Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, having six and five buttons respectively. By the time the game was released for the Sega Saturn in Japan, the game and system were selling at almost a one-to-one ratio. Meanwhile, the 1993 title Mortal Kombat II captivated American audiences, and is considered the best Mortal Kombat game in retrospect. SNK released The King of Fighters '94 in arcades, where players choose from teams of three characters to eliminate each other one by one. Eventually, Capcom released further updates to Street Fighter II, including Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II Turbo. These games featured more characters and new moves, some of which were a response to people who had hacked the original Street Fighter II game to add new features themselves. However, criticism of these upgrades grew as players demanded a true sequel. By 1995, the dominant franchises were the Mortal Kombat series in America and Virtua Fighter series in Japan, with Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams unable to match the popularity of Street Fighter II. Throughout this period, the fighting game was the dominant genre in competitive video gaming, with enthusiasts popularly attending arcades in order to find human opponents.

Relative decline: late 1990s

In the latter part of the 1990s, the fighting game genre began to decline in popularity, with specific franchises falling into difficulty. Electronic Gaming Monthly awarded the excess of fighting games the "Most Appalling Trend" award of 1995. Although the release of Street Fighter EX introduced 3D graphics to the series and continued the success of Street Fighter II and Street Fighter Alpha, the Street Fighter: The Movie arcade game was regarded as a failure. Street Fighter EX was also a commercial failure Street Fighter: The Movie used digitized images from the Street Fighter film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Capcom released Street Fighter III in 1997 which featured improved visuals and character depth, but was also unable to match the impact of Street Fighter II. Despite excitement in Japan over Virtua Fighter 3 in arcades, the limited hardware capabilities of the Sega Saturn led Sega to delay a console release. Sega eventually released the game for its Dreamcast console, but the company became unprofitable and was forced to discontinue the console. Meanwhile, SNK released several fighting games on their Neo-Geo platform, including Samurai Shodown II in 1994, Real Bout Fatal Fury in 1995, The Last Blade in 1997, and annual updates to their King of Fighters franchise. Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves from 1999 was considered one of SNK's last great games, and the company announced that it would close its doors in 2001.

In retrospect, multiple developers attribute the decline of the fighting genre to its increasing complexity and specialization. This complexity shut out casual players, and the market for fighting games became smaller and more specialized. Furthermore, arcades gradually became less profitable throughout the 1990s due to the increased technical power and popularity of home consoles. Even as popularity dwindled, the fighting game genre continued to evolve; several strong 3D fighting games also emerged in the late 1990s. Namco's Tekken (released in arcades in 1994 and on the PlayStation in 1995) proved critical to the PlayStation's early success, with its sequels also becoming some of the console's most important titles. The Soul series of weapon-based fighting games also achieved considerable critical success, beginning with 1997's Soul Edge (known as Soul Blade outside of Japan) to Soulcalibur IV in 2008. Tecmo's Dead or Alive (released in 1996 in Japanese arcades and 1998 on the PlayStation) spawned a long running franchise, known for its fast paced control system and innovative counter attacks. The series again included titles important to the success of their respective consoles, the latest installment being Dead or Alive 4 for the Xbox 360. In 1998, Bushido Blade, published by Squaresoft, introduced a realistic fighting engine that featured three-dimensional environments while abandoning time limits and health bars in favour of an innovative Body Damage System, where a sword strike to a certain body part can amputate a limb or decapitate the head.

Video game enthusiasts took an interest in gaming crossovers which feature characters from multiple franchises in a particular game. An early example of this type of fighting game was the 1998 arcade release Marvel vs. Capcom, featuring comic book superheroes as well as Street Fighter characters. In 1999, Nintendo released the first game in the Super Smash Bros. series, which allowed match-ups such as Pikachu versus Mario.

Recent history: 2000s

The early part of the decade saw the rise of major international fighting game tournaments such as Tougeki – Super Battle Opera, and famous players such as Daigo Umehara. Several more fighting game crossovers were released in the new millennium. The two most prolific developers of 2D fighting games, Capcom and SNK, combined intellectual property to produce SNK vs Capcom games. SNK released the first game of this type, SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium, for its Neo Geo Pocket Color handheld at the end of 1999. GameSpot regarded the game as "perhaps the most highly anticipated fighter ever" and called it the best fighting game ever to be released for a handheld console. Capcom released Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 for arcades and the Dreamcast in 2000, followed by sequels in subsequent years. Though none matched the critical success of the handheld version, Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO was noted as the first game of the genre to successfully utilize internet competition. Other crossovers from 2008 included Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. The most successful crossover, however, was Super Smash Bros. Brawl, also released in 2008 for the Wii. Featuring characters from Nintendo's various franchises, the game was a runaway commercial success in addition to being lavished with critical praise.

In the new millennium, fighting games are less popular and plentiful than in the mid 1990s, with multiplayer competition shifting towards other genres. However, SNK reappeared in 2003 as SNK Playmore and continues to release games. Arc System Works received critical acclaim for releasing Guilty Gear X in 2001, as well as its sequel Guilty Gear XX, as both were 2D fighting games featuring striking anime inspired graphics. The fighting game is currently a popular genre for amateur and doujin developers in Japan. The 2002 title Melty Blood was developed by then amateur developer French-Bread and achieved cult success on the PC. It became highly popular in arcades following its 2005 release, and a version was released on PlayStation 2 the following year. While the genre is generally far less popular than it once was, arcades and their attendant fighting games are still reasonably popular in Japan. Virtua Fighter 5 lacked an online mode but still achieved success both on home consoles and in arcades; players practiced at home and went to arcades to compete face-to-face with opponents. Tekken 6 was positively received, selling more than 3 million copies worldwide as of August 6, 2010. In addition to Virtua Fighter and Tekken, the Soul and Dead or Alive franchises continued to release installments. Classic Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat games have been re-released on PSN and Xbox Live Arcade, allowing internet play, and in some cases, HD graphics. Street Fighter IV, which incorporated online multiplayer modes, was released in early 2009 to critical acclaim, having garnered praise since its release at Japanese arcades in 2008. Street Fighter's successful revival has sparked a renaissance for the genre, followed by titles such as Super Street Fighter IV, Deadliest Warrior: The Game, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter X Tekken, and Tekken X Street Fighter.

See also

• List of fighting games
• List of fighting game companies