With Evolution 2022 ending this past weekend, fighting game conversations have been a huge talking point! To the most hardcore frame-data keeping player to the casual, but enjoyable fan, fighting games host a myriad of content for most to enjoy. Come for the competition or come for the story lines! I’ve grown up with fighting games majority my entire life, with my first video game ever being Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo on the Super Nintendo. With that being said, I’ve played so many fighting games and have amassed a list of my 10 favorites! This list is in no real order and is just a culmination and possibly: expect a sequel to my least favorite fighting games. Let’s go!
Bloody Roar– Furry-fighters beware! Honestly, one of my most slept on franchises ever! It can be a bit stiff in cases, but the mid-fight transformations into animals, based on who you picked, was a great selling point for late elementary/early middle school me. I hope we get a redo of the series soon, it’s well needed
Super Smash Bros– I’m not one to put this into the “party game” category, this is literally fighting! My favorite memory of this game was walking into a Best Buy as a kid and seeing this on display and being amazed that there was a game that had Link and Pikachu on the cover with Mario. While I may have missed two games in this series, SSB will always be one of the greatest fighting games for me!
Mortal Kombat– I’ll say this now: I suck at MK. I’m not too keen on this game’s mechanics sometimes and that’s okay. I love the character designs and the fatalities, a trademark for this franchise! I will say that it’s still one of my favorites because I’ve played all of them and enjoy the lore. It also helped spawn another fighting game, made by the same team that makes Mortal Kombat…
Injustice: Gods Among Us– I LOVE this franchise! The DC comics trademarked fighter, which uses the Mortal Kombat engine, is by far the best use of the company in a fighting game I’ve ever seen (Thanks MK vs DC for starting this). I know I said I didn’t like the engine in the previous entry, but it’s mostly due to movesets I refuse to learn, unless it’s Batman and Superman duking it out! If this wasn’t enough, the comic book series tied to this game is one of my favorites and I can’t wait for another entry!
Tekken– You knew this was coming. Tekken has been in my game history since the very first and I’m glad to have watched this series take flight from the humble beginnings of the Playstation one all the way to Xbox One/ PS4/ PC. Who doesn’t love the lore as well, developing one of the dopest stories on family trauma, with some of the best character designs in gaming history? Also: Please buff Yoshimitsu!
Fatal Fury/King of Fighters/Garou– I’m linking these three together to better represent SNK has a whole because each of these games are detrimental to the genre. The SNK brand started out as a super strong contender to the power house at the time, Capcom’s Street Fighter, and quite possibly the only company of that time to force Capcom to improve more and more! The lore being much stronger than Capcom’s, with character designs I can now say are better than Street Fighter’s (Unless we count the newest Street Fighter, then wait a sec on that one), SNK has been well! Besides the team-based fighter is a bit harder to get into, the newest ones have been casual friendly and that’s great for new players!
Dead or Alive– What? There IS fighting in this game, you know! Team Ninja’s foray into the fighting game market does feature female characters with “questionable” clothing options and even more “questionable” jiggle physics, but it’s still a great franchise. I’m hopefully that the focus on fighting and less on “other” in the next sequel means more people can play and enjoy this engaging fighter.
Marvel vs Capcom– What an entire time to be alive for this mash up! Originally starting from the X-Men: Children of the Atom fighting game from Capcom, it was a matter of time before the mash-up of the century would happen. I was probably nearing 4th grade when this dream match collab happened and it was a wicked fever dream for little me to see my favorites fighting on the same screen at the same TIME. You just had to be there as a youth seeing Ryu trade hadoukens with Iron Man! The 2nd iteration, hosting the biggest roster in the series, was also a crowd favorite at the time. It’s not balanced at all, but casual players didn’t care because Magneto and Akuma were playable on the same team and probably filled many fanfics (Ya’ll have any btw?).
Capcom vs SNK– Another mash-up of the millennium! To see Terry Bogard and Iori Yagami battling with Guile and Morrigan?? The real dream bout! Also, the S.N.K and C.A.P groove system makes each character on the roster play different 6 times! Engaging in either Street Fighter 3’s parry system to King of Fighter’s 3 power meter use, you had ways to customize your playstyle with ease! This 3-on-3 fighter, with a way to ratio to one fighter if you want, kept the competitive edge going while keeping casual players happy with the great cast!
Street Fighter– The granddaddy of them all! Capcom, after releasing Street Fighter 1 in arcades and it playing pretty poorly, had one more chance to wow us and boy did they. With the strategic fighter, and multiple balance ports, it was the best tournament fighter and was next to none in both simplicity and competition. Ranking in heavy arcade and tournament use, it seems Street Fighter will live on for another lifetime! I love this franchise so much and honestly, Street Fighter 6 is going to be so damn good!
And there was my personal list of my favorite fighting games. Do you have any you’d like to add? Comment here and let me know and always, please subscribe for more content like this!