Fighting game

Fighting games or fighters are video games in which players fight each other or computer enemies, usually employing some variation of the martial arts. Along with fixed shooters, they are traditionally at home in the arcades, and are considered separate from sports games such as wrestling, boxing and "ultimate fighting" games.

Note on naming:

The term beat 'em up is commonly used to specifically describe games in the scrolling fighting game sub-genre. However, among some players (particularly those from the UK), the phrase can refer to versus fighting games.

Scrolling fighting game

File:Double Dragon.png

Screenshot of Double Dragon.

In this type of fighting game, also known as a beat 'em up, scrolling beat 'em up or occasionally brawler, one or more players (most often two, but sometimes as many as six) each choose a unique character, and team up to punch, kick, throw and slash their way through a horde of computer-controlled enemies. The fighting occurs in a series of side scrolling stages, some with a powerful boss enemy at the end. In the most common variation, players can move away and toward the screen as well as left and right, although earlier scrolling fighting games such as Kung Fu were more likely to allow only one-dimensional movement plus jumping.

Typically these games are 2D side-scrollers with players generally moving from left to right, but there have been some three-dimensional versions which allow relatively free movement throughout a level and the ability to face in all directions.

Two major milestones in this genre are Double Dragon and Final Fight. Some of the most popular games from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s followed suit. At its height, the side-scroller was one of the most popular kinds of arcade games, but they have since fallen out of fashion. Capcom was known for making several scrolling fighting games, ranging from original titles such as Captain Commando and the Final Fight series to licenced works such as Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, Knights of the Round and Alien vs. Predator Capcom's most recent scrolling fighting game is Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance, which incorporates RPG-like gameplay.

While a few 3D scrolling fighting games exist (notably Sega's Die Hard Arcade and Spikeout, Squaresoft's The Bouncer and Konami's remake of 1989's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), they are much more a niche genre than the 2D iterations were.

Versus fighting game

File:Street Fighter 2.png

Screenshot of Street Fighter II.

In the versus, or competitive, type of fighting game, two players (sometimes more) each choose a character, then fight against each other over several rounds. The winner of a round either knocks out his opponent (usually by depleting an energy bar to zero), comes closest to knocking him out, or (in some 3D titles) sends him out of the ring.

In contrast to side-scrolling fighting games, most versus fighting games are competitive rather than co-operative. Some offer players the chance to battle as teams (2v2 or 3v3 being most common) instead of one-on-one. The characters can be alternated in either a tag team (characters can be switched out in the middle of the round) or elimination mode (team whose members lose the individual rounds loses the match). In a few of these team versus games, players can opt to play on the same team, usually in a tag team fashion. Because of their competitive nature, versus fighting games are conducive to tournament play.

One of the main attractions of this game type is the large number of characters each game has, all of whom usually have a distinct appearance and fighting style: for example, the characters of the Street Fighter series come from around the world; characters of The King of Fighters series have very well defined personalities and backstories, as well as distinct and differing abilities; those of Eternal Champions were taken from distinct historical periods; the cast of the Guilty Gear series simply seem to differ wildly from one another; and characters from the Mortal Kombat series range from criminals to Shaolin monks to gods. Depending on their discipline, characters may be unarmed or armed with mêlée weapons (swords, sticks, nunchaku, etc.).

Due to the fall in popularity of scrolling fighting games, the terms fighting game and fighter are generally taken to refer to versus fighting games.

The 2D/3D difference

File:Soul Calibur 2 - Xbox - Screen 002.jpg

Screenshot of Soul Calibur II.

Versus fighting games can be either two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D).

Characters in 2D fighting games (Street Fighter, The King of Fighters, early Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, Killer Instinct) are hand-drawn/digitized and animated sprites, and can move left and right and duck and jump, but in many games they can't sidestep or move 'closer to the screen'. The player's viewpoint scrolls in various directions but stays at a fixed angle. The 2D fighter's characteristic gameplay mechanics are exaggerated jumps, projectile attacks, and an "air/ground/low" attack/block system.

In 3D titles (Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, Tekken, Dead or Alive, later Mortal Kombat games), the characters and stages are 3D polygon-based models. The camera's viewpoint is not fixed and can rotate and move in any direction, and the characters can sidestep as well as duck and jump. In contrast with the gameplay of 2D titles, jumping and projectile attacks are minor elements. Often a "high/mid/low" system is used for attacking and blocking. Thus, the gameplay in 3D fighters is generally two-dimensional as well, although in the XZ dimensions instead of XY, although there are exceptions such as Power Stone and Tobal No. 1. These games usually have slower attack speeds than two dimesional fighting games, because instead of a punch being represented by a two frame animation, a 3D game usually has a motion captured punch animation which is allowed to play fully, causing the overall attack to be slower-but more realistic.

External links

SNK-Capcom dot com- fansite

Scrolling fighting game

Versus fighting game

The 2D/3D difference

See also

External links