Elemental Challenge Day Fourteen: Fighting
5 min read
I’ll do you a favor and skip the “Let’s get ready to rumble” cliché while you cash me ousside, howbow dah? The Fighting genre (Fighters) is a fast and furious one, whether 2D or 3D, and it’s been a staple of gaming since 80’s arcades. Typically they’re characterized by 1v1 bouts spread over a few rounds, with the objective of reducing your opponent’s health bar. Over the years, they’ve become more and more complex, inaccessible even, though once you git gud at ’em you can really impress some babes. So I hear, at least. Taking down the AI, or better, a human foe with close combat combos, air combos, and elaborate specials brings a feeling nearly more exhilarating than in any other sector in gaming. These rely on muscle memory and mastering them achieves a kind of instant hand-eye-coordination trance where your fingers and hands can input incredible moves in microseconds… or you can just button-mash your way to victory.
Are you ready? FIGHT!!
The Green Screen Mage
Dragonball Z Budokai 2 or 3. I honestly don’t remember which one I played when I was younger. Honestly, I don’t care much for fighter games, but this is Dragonball Z! Also, Vegeta’s downward kick was such a cheat move. I loved it.
The Black Humor Mage
I love Super Smash Bros Melee because of the gameplay, but I love Brawl because it has way more characters and stages. So what’s the best remedy? Project M babyyyy. I haven’t had this mod for very long, but it makes Brawl so much better and the perfect Smash game. Smash for Wii U came really close though.
The Midnight Mystic Mage (Sublime Reviews)
Street Fighter II. This is one of those undeniable classics that I personally spent my time playing on the Super Nintendo. It would be fun to be able to know how many hours me and my sisters/friends actually put into this game way back when. Fun little story line and a great.
The Spoony Bard Mage (Nerd Speaker)
While I grew up playing a lot of Mortal Kombat and Smash Bros., the one fighting game that definitely absorbed most of my hours and attempt to actually get decent was Soul Calibur 2. I had it for GameCube, and would constantly play with my friends during high school. Used to main Voldo, Ivy and Maxi. My friend played Nightmare, and we could never beat him. I still have nightmares about his Nightmare.
The Final Fourteenth Mage (Cilla vs. Games)
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3. When the Wii U first came out I ended up trading it in for the price I paid for it and getting five games instead. One of these happened to be Naruto UNS3. I had been wanting to watch Naruto for ages but the vast amount of episodes really put me off. Learning about the story through UNS3 was fantastic and I immediately began to watch the series. When I caught up and the series went into a year long filler session I started to read it instead. I loved the combat system in this game as well as the roster of characters. It’s true that UNS4 has a larger roster and some nice mechanical additions eg. being able to change between team members on the fly. However UNS4 took many different canon scenes and altered them severely and that really didn’t sit right with me. Therefore UNS3 will always be my preferred game in the series.
The Hopeful Handheld Mage (Retro Redress)
Aside from the great combat, Virtua Fighter 5 had a great single player mode. Rather than the usual ‘beat everyone and a cheap boss to get an ending that doesn’t happen anyway because it’s not canon’ arcade mode, Virtua Fighter did something more realistic. It cast you as an arcade game player, touring arcades and working your way through the ranks. The more you won, the more you could customize your character. Cue Wolf Hawkins – fashion model.
It’s almost like a ‘single player e-sport mode’ and is a feature I wish more games would use.
The Rage Mage
……
The Well-Red Mage
I have a really hard time getting into new tournament fighting games, so my favorites are inevitably titles that I’ve played to death. Of these, three stand out: the first DarkStalkers, Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, Super Smash Bros. series. I was great at these, to varying degrees, at some point in my life, just to cover my tracks with as much vague language as possible. In the arcades, I can distinctly remember besting teenagers when I was a preteen with DarkStalkers and MvC2 (it’s all about Tron, bone claw Wolverine, and Servbot in that game). I used to dominate in high school as blue Kirby in Super Smash Bros., much to the dismay of the other students who simply wanted to play GoldenEye, and I’ve had moderate success as Bowser, Solid Snake, and Mr. Game and Watch in later entries (minus the Wii U game in which I tried to play as Mega Man my boy but sucked bad), but I’m going to have to give the ultimate nod to DarkStalkers: the Night Warriors. It was the first fighting game I got really, really good at. It was the first time I “owned” a character, Rikuo, and I only ever played as the merman, using his devious tricky fish attacks to catch opponents off guard. I liked all the bizarre characters, especially the bosses Huitzil and Pyron. Though I’ve never been as good at fighters since, these sepia-toned memories still represent major gaming peaks for me.
Well? Did you barely break a sweat or did you get K.O.’d? Don’t worry, tomorrow’s challenge features a genre that’s thankfully much more slow-paced, but it’ll test your brain more than your body. All you have to do is come back again, point your cursor in the right direction, and click.
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Tekken (King, Armor King, Yoshimitsu) Soul Edge/Calibur 2-4 (never played 1 as no Dreamcast) *Sighs* (no main as ya gotta play em all to get weapons/story) Killer Instinct (Kilgore or Spinal) Dead Or Alive (do I really need to say why ;P no shame!) Mortal Kombat (Scorpion, End Of)
Smash Bros (Yoshi, Bowser or, at a push, Captain Falcon or Ganon) Street Fighter I don’t really enjoy, but I guess, Blanka or Dhalsim!?
I love Mortal Kombat! I played the SNES version so much when I was a kid. 😉
Me too! The “watered down” version but at least my parents couldn’t bug about the non-existent blood 🙂
Haha true! I didn’t have a Genesis as a kid so I didn’t even realize the SNES version was a bit censored… that was before ESRB ratings too, haha!
I think it was one of the games which contributed to developing the ESRB ratings too, right?
I think you are right! I remember when I first started seeing ESRB ratings on games I was like why is this even a thing?! It seemed silly to me as a kid, but I understand why they do it!
Yeah I think it benefits non-gaming parents the absolute most. I’m not for ten year olds playing GTA..
Bloody Roar: Primal Fury for the Game Cube.
Love the character depth & fast furious gameplay.
I loved the PlayStation one. Busuzima was the best!
I want to say Street Fighter II and be done with it, because it’s the staple, classic fighting game, but I was much better at the TMNT fighting game whose name eludes me now. Of course there’s Mortal Kombat where the “K” obviously stands for “kill.” Nowadays I’m more of a turn based fighter lol. I’m not so great at button mashing or speedy combos 😋
TMNT fighter… we talking the rare one on the SNES?
I think that’s the one! One of the fighters was this anthropomorphic shark. He was my go-to guy!
Ah I wish I’d played that game somehow. Now it’s super rare!
Like a steak D: (I..don’t know. It’s kind of late and I’m in a silly mood lol)
I nominate Super Smash Bros: Melee on the Game Cube. I found this game was a good balance between the simple Super Smash Bros and the overly complex Super Smash Bros: Brawl games. I liked the simple gameplay of the Super Smash Bros games. I liked the expanded set of characters in this game (which was larger than the original game), but included less useless characters than the later game. I enjoyed the two single player games (with Classic providing a simple challenge and Adventure adding a more developed story), which were not too long and complicated like the Subspace Emissary. I also enjoyed the challenges and collecting the trophies to find out about other Nintendo games. I liked the way this game used more characters with deflecting or absorbing moves, which were useful against the projectiles. I enjoyed the stages as well (I avoided some of the stages in the original game because the colour scheme was so blinding). I also found this game used a wide range of weapons, but less extreme power-ups.
What is Darkstalkers? What are the bizarre aspects? Why did you particularly play as blue Kirby in Super Smash Bros? I am also happy someone chose Street Fighter 2, I like the way the story just consisted of fighting a number of opponents, until an animated sequence shows how defeating M. Bison helps the character.
Melee is a great game! As for Darkstalkers, check out our review for more info. It’s unique in that it’s themed around movie monsters.
My final night down here in the comments! Wheeeeee~
Super Smash Bros. Melee will always have a close spot to me. It’s what I played extensively with my friends, and how I met most of them now that I think about it. Melee was one heck of a gorgeous sequel, and I’m sure I burnt an entire summer helping my brother 100% the thing- grinding coins for trophies must have made up at least 30% of that. Though they didn’t get a lot of love in Brawl, and even less thereafter, I was a giant Ice Climber fan. Too bad they never made it into Smash 4!
Movin’ on up!!!
There are hundreds of great fighting games to choose from. World Karate Championship, Mortal Kombat II, Virtua Fighter II, Tekken Tag Tournament II, Bloody Roar, Dead Or Alive. Hell, even Divekick is pretty cool. But when you get down to brass tacks, the Street Fighter II series is hands down the best fighter of all time. Of those games, I tend to like Super Street Fighter II Turbo the best. It has a large roster, and is one of the most well rounded in terms of balance. SSFIIT (and all of the SFII games really) is also great in being deep for the enthusiasts. Over twenty years later, it is still one of the most played fighting games in tournaments. But it is also great at being accessible. So many fighting games since, have piled on a ton of complexity that needs to be understood in order to enjoy them. It can be daunting to play something like Guilty Gear for a newcomer. Not so much with Street Fighter II. It has all of the fundamental stuff in the simplest of functions. Knowing when to block, looking for openings, looking for an opponent’s mistakes. All there. A beginner doesn’t even need to concern themselves with doing flashy special moves. True, knowing how to do QCF, and charge moves do give you extra tools. But those tools are useless if you don’t know when to use them. But over time, you can learn the specials, cross ups, and combos. SFII is also the one series where you can take some of what you’ve learned (not everything) into other fighters. So Super Street Fighter II Turbo is my go to.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo wins by default for sheer length of title. Just kidding, it’s so legendary even my kid brother knows about it and he’s scared to play it.
Reblogged this on Sublime Reviews and commented:
All my life I had to FIGHT!!! Elemental Challenge day 14 is Fighting games. My favorite goes out to the old classic Street fighter 2. Stop by The well-Red Mage and let us know your personal favorites.
If I could get a refund for all the money I spent on Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter, I might actually be rich. Lol
Back when you could actually play as Cyclops before they nerfed him to a support role! He was my favorite member of the X-Men growing up.
Yeah. They nerfed Cyclops but left that cheating weasel Iceman alone! MAN that got was cheap! XD
Ugh that stupid giant ice ball move? That’s spam fodder when an ability covers the whole screen.
Not only that, but he always does the same moves in the same string every time!
Arctic blast…Arctic Blast…Arctic Attack!
Enough already!!
Reblogged this on Retro Redress.
I was never all that great at the fighting genre. I loved (and still love) Street Fighter, but I don’t think I’ll ever be more than a beginner. Myself and a handful of friends dumped more hours into Super Smash Bros Melee back when we were in college than I could ever care to admit… I remember legitimately feeling like we had experienced every type of match possible. We had seen it all.
BUT, to go with a more traditional-fighter response, I was really surprised how much I fell in love with the Mortal Kombat that released in 2011. It was all I played for a handful of months, and we threw it on at all of our get-togethers for the better part of a year, all of a sudden having a blast taking turns going 1-on-1 and even spectating. I never tried out the next iteration that came out a few years ago, but always meant to.
Super Smash Bros almost won this category for me, but a game I played with my friends years ago snuck in and stole the show: Dead or Alive. I loved playing it with my friend on his Xbox whenever he wasn’t thoroughly stomping me in Halo. Despite his better-honed videogame skills (gained from owning a game system, which I did not), I managed to defeat him several times per session. I was probably the master of cheap kick moves from Kasumi. I never played the story mode, so I don’t know if it was a decent game there, but it was tons of fun.
Dead or Alive the bikini volleyball game? We don’t have a category for that. 😉
I am almost 100% sure the game I’m talking about is also called dead or alive.
https://deadoralive.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Dead_or_Alive_5_characters
I cheated earlier and used this to get one of the character’s name. I don’t know what iteration of the game we played.
I’m teasing! 😀 I haven’t played either so that’s about the extent of my knowledge when I read the words Dead or Alive. Sorry!
I never really got into fighting games past the SNES, but when I was a kid, two games stood out in the genre: Mortal Kombat III, and Killer Instinct. I may have raved about this game recently but it’s hard to remember where.. but boy was that game sweet. Ah! I think it was in the ‘favorite idle animation’ monthly question that was making its rounds.
Anyway, Killer Instinct made fighting games more accessible, in my opinion. Particularly after playing MK3 for years, in which you didn’t just “pick up and play”, you needed to practically study the manual to learn the moves. Killer Instinct made it much easier as all the character moves shared a good portion of the key inputs, so you could experiment and learn the character better.
Sabrewulf 4 Lyfe <3 One love and I'm out 😀
Killer Instinct with that black cartridge! I was just explaining the phrase “C-c-c-combo breakerrrr!” to my kid brother the other day. Can’t remember who my main was though.
Ick… fighting games. But I guess if I’m playing along I’ll say Soulcalibur.
SEE comment to iplayedthegame
This is probably the hardest one for me to pick because fighting games are my go-to genre (alongisde 2D paltformers) and there have been so many that I loved … MKII, Street Fighter Alpha 2 Dash, Guilty Gear Judgement, Bloody Roar Primal Fury … my faovurites vary daily and usually revisit all of the above on a regular basis.
Right now though, I’ll go with BlazBlue Centralfiction. There are a lot for reasons for that, much of which will be covered when my review goes live. In short though, it has a huge, varied roster, it plays smoothly and at speed, and it’s an absolute blast. To give you an idea though, here’s a vid of an online amtch that shows off what the game can look like when you know what you’re doing : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXpP-ZnPI3A
Ah Bloody Roar! I forgot about that one. Busuzima for the win! I gravitated toward trickster archetype characters in fighters, for some reason. Thanks for sharing the vid!
Bloody Roar is a sadly forgotten franchise. I really think it would do well of they released a HD remake or a new title. The transformation gimmick worked surprisingly well I thought.
It was very fluid and a nice quirk to set it apart from other blocky 3D fighters. I liked the second one a lot!
I actually saw both 1 & 2 today at a con. I was so tempted but those, Croc and Alundra would’ve cost me near £200 and there were just so many other stalls.
In terms of sheer number of hours, it has to be Soul Calibur. I loved the mission mode in it.
Always hear good things about Soul Calibur… I’ll have to pick it up on that elusive someday.
I used to bump elbows with other gamers in these ancient gathering places called arcades. Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 and Street Fighter 2 turbo were my bread and butter. I could go to my local arcade with a couple bucks in change and play all day.
I don’t know if I’m getting old and slow, or just never converted from arcade stick to controller well, but with most modern fighters, I’m now useless.
Bumping elbows, not being put down by faceless trolls, was something that made gaming in the arcades great. At least if someone insulted you in those days, they did it to your face.
I’m right there with you on modern fighter impotency. I tried picking up Injustice since I love the story arc and the characters but I just couldn’t do it.