The unique position that fighting games hold in video game history is due to the fact that the genre has steadily progressed from the low-intensity, community-driven hijinks of the ’70s and ’80s arcades to the moral temples of suburbia known as living rooms in the first decade of the 21st century.
Fighting games in the arcade had always been a cesspool of drama waiting to happen because the design of the entire experience was conducive to competition and sometimes ill will. The fact that these experiences with your friends, when they were next to you, only amplified the feeling that these were your friends and that they were almost always better than the computer. My friends and I would go to the arcade, do our homework on a few game cabinets (usually beat ’em ups like Final Fight or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Capcom’s Marvel series), then spend the rest of the evening (after we’d done all our homework) in front of the Street Fighter II machine until our number of quarters ran out. Once we did that and our parents came to pick us up, we’d go to the local pizza place and chill out there until our ‘stay up too late’ option kicked in.
When I first saw Street Fighter II, I was totally hooked. The towering game machine was right in the middle of the arcade, and all around it were the kinds of kids whose parents had besieged the now-Eighties games that I used to play with, my biblical side-scrolling “runners” to come to life in the warp of visual and auditory fantasy. In the whole history of video games, only a few had ever managed to approximate that sensation of a painting coming to life as a drapery of hand-drawn frames unfurled. Street Fighter II was one of them a morphology epic where each combatant seemed to have a visual language of his or her own.
The golden age of arcades is often marked as the time from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. During this era, the arcade fighting game genre coalesced and began to evolve into something truly unique. Moreover, the arcade itself was the hub of gaming during this time, the place where gaming culture could (and did) exist in its purest form. When players ventured to their local arcades, they could expect to face off against others who loved their games. And from that sprang a new form of gaming that featured direct competition and skill-based gameplay mechanics that are still largely found in today’s games, from Street Fighter to Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds.
Capcom’s 1991 title Street Fighter II was a landmark game that established the one-on-one fighting genre and set the bar for what was to come. While the 1987 game Street Fighter laid down the basic framework, it was the 1991 release that really nailed the format and set it on the path to success. It featured a memorable, diverse set of characters, each with its own unique set of moves. Street Fighter II was balanced, too, in a way that its predecessor was not, which meant that you could pick any character from the roster and have a fair shot at winning a fight.
The excitement of approaching the Street Fighter II cabinet, a quarter at the ready, prepared me to act as a heat-seeking missile, moving across enemy lines when any challenger arrived. The arcade buzzed; it was as alive as a character in an Elmore Leonard novel. Groups formed naturally around the game, and there was an ambient sense of anticipation when an SF fan spotted an SFII machine that was not otherwise occupied.
By the time SFII came out, the arcade was where I plied my trade as a part-time gamer. And a big part of the world that had it in common with me was that SFII was a game where duals of wits and reflexes took place on the game screen.
The triumph of Street Fighter II led the way for a deluge of fighting video games, each carrying its own fresh take on the genre. Mortal Kombat, famed for its deathly and brutal moves, and the “digitized” presentation of its characters, was one those early descendants of “Street Fighter II.” And what it and The King of Fighters series did was to push the possibilities of the fighting genre to new levels, testing the limits to which this essentially very basic video game form could go, and in the process, creating totally new gaming experiences.
For game enthusiasts, arcades turned into dueling arenas. Competitions, mostly in the form of tournaments and the chasing of high scores, were held on the weekends and during vacation times. These were at the heart of what a fighting game aficionado did in the 1990s. Because back then, that’s who you were if you played a fighting game; you participated in a community, in one-way or another. The competitive factor at the heart of these titles was something serious in and of itself. And even in its cartoon presentation, “Fighting Street” was a hard and bitter scene of the daily back alley.
The more sophisticated the technology of home consoles grew, the more the genre of fighting games started to establish a presence in people’s homes, which had formerly been the most reliable venue for the same in arcades. The whole experience of carrying out intense battles and competitive gameplay has been attempted to be replicated at home, with the absurd difference that one does not have to pay a pocketful of change to have more fun.
The desirable aspect was counterbalanced by the whole accessibility and reach the same titles had for the common console gamer. The transition to 16-bit gaming was unforgettable, with the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis leading the charge. Both were more than capable of handling the era’s best games, which in my case, was always something from the Street Fighter series. These consoles offered a fantastic visual upgrade, audio remixes, secret bonus stages that were all consistent with the arcade versions of the games I loved. Even better, most of them had adjustable difficulty levels, so could you really feel like the champion you always wanted to be without any of those pesky arcade quarters? Indeed, with the ports of Street Fighter II for these consoles, mostly anyone could call their home an incredible arcade rec room—and I did just that.
The victory of Street Fighter II on consoles set the stage for other fighting games to follow suit and transition from the arcade to people’s houses. A particularly memorable one was Mortal Kombat. The console version’s premiere was engulfed in the flames of the fiery debate on the game’s controversial violence. In particular, the Genesis version introduced the immensely controversial “blood code,” which was required if what was the game’s infamous violence was going to be even half way depicted in all its gory glory. Yet showing itself to be more than just a force of controversy, Mortal Kombat became, almost overnight, a must-have for any and every gamer who was even half-way a fan of fighting games; and it left an impact that is not too dissimilar from what we see in the Mortal Kombat games today.
The era of PlayStation saw significant game evolution in fighting games. Games like Tekken and Soul Edge from the mid-to-late 1990s expanded what was possible to do with video game consoles. That era did not have the heady power of modern game consoles or the appointment of gaming on a PC. Yet, for the time, those games were competing well against arcade games in a similar style and pushing the boundaries of what was possible with a late-’90s game console.
One could argue that Tekken 2 and Soul Edge were the first games to really make an impression with 3D graphics; Virtual Fighter tried, but Sega’s Saturn was a poor platform for that game. Tekken 2, with its launch, effectively made the PlayStation the platform for 3D fighting games.
The shift to consoles also led to the emergence of home-based competitive gaming. Players could now practice and perfect their play at home, and with that newfound expertise, they began to organize and compete in local gatherings. However, the amazing rise of esports that we see today started from the very poor base of competitive video gaming that existed at that time. Really, Street Fighter II built a whole new base of players when it came to the competition. But the suck when I was a kid was that you really weren’t on the video game scene unless you lived near an arcade.
The fighting game genre was remade for the better by online play. It was just the start, though, that made long-time, die-hard fans like myself really drop our jaws in awe of what had begun. The internet was what the arcade wished it could be: a place where players could go, the paths they could choose, and the way those paths might intersect in fantastic online fights that wouldn’t and couldn’t occur to the same brilliant degree if the challengers couldn’t virtually populate the same insane forest of a possibility space.
The evolution of the fighting game genre achieved a major milestone with the 2008 launch of Street Fighter IV. The title brought a new level of excitement to a fanbase that was just starting to feel the first pangs of next-generation withdrawal. It delivered a stunning, timely antidote to that collective malaise, harking back to a time when the arcades reigned supreme. Street Fighter IV combined the best aspects of the series with some much-needed advancements, like new superb graphics, a retooled physics engine, and the eventual arrival of a multiplayer mode that allowed devoted disciples to take on fighters from around the world.
Also, with web-based diversions, we’ve seen the ascent of a new industry: competitive video gaming. Known as “esports,” top players now come together in places around the world to play against one another in front of audiences that number into the many thousands. They compete on a stage for real money and a lot of prestige. Workaday people mostly fill these virtual audiences, but in-person crowds often turn up as well for events like these. For instance, last year, the Evolution Championship Series (Evo) took place in front of 12,000 people, with another 180,000 watching the live stream. Not a single one of those people was promised free chow.
The rise of platforms such as Twitch has served to enhance the appearance and, indeed, the reality of the pay-to-watch model of video gaming; people sit in their homes and watch “pros” play for hours at one stretch. There are nuisances, of course. The pros are good; those who watch and learn from them raise their median skill levels, and the magic of the narrative as well as human competition pushes the hours. Skilled gamers are Twitching with reliable gate receipts promised by the parent platform. The pro live netcast will sometimes topple YouTube for sure.
Super Smash Bros. is more than just a game, it’s a whole lot of them. Part of its astounding success is due to the variety of experiences it offers and its sheer number of cameos from other well-known properties. In a way, Smash Bros. is one of gaming’s premier crossover events, showcasing a mix of different characters and styles from all across the board. And while we often hear talk of “balance” in fighting games, how many of your personal mains (and their subsequent iterations) have you seen in a top-tier fight at a “Pro Tour” event? There never was, and I bet there will never be, an equal or better fighting game to be entered into the U.S. National Video Game Team Hall of Fame.
With the introduction of cross-platform play and solid online infrastructure, integrated into modern consoles, PlayStation Fighting Games now provide an almost perfect console-to-console or console-to-PC competitive experience. In all the Mortal Kombat 11/Aftermath tournaments I have run or competed in, there have been almost no reports of top 8 players suffering game malfunctions like netcode issues or fatal bugs—save for one situation in which a player pressed a certain button at a certain frame during gameplay that caused their avatar to walk off the stage, only to reappear a few seconds later.
When we look to the future, there seems to be no change of pace, fighting games are still a rapidly growing genre. Technological advancements, a good contest of the imagination, a battle of wits, and a vibrant player-vs.-player competitive scene not only assure the next great fighting game but the right fighting game for the EVO World Championships or the near future of the Olympics. Yūichi Toyama says that the future of fighting games is not ‘making one better than the next.’ It’s about enabling the next ‘vision’ of the next great artist with their imagination.
The most expected advancements are the integration of fighting games with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). These technologies can potentially create immersive and dynamic combat experiences. They can give fighting game enthusiasts a taste of what it’s like to be the characters they use when battling. We’re still in the early days, but there are already quite a few VR experiences with combat – the most successful of which is likely the undisputed champ of VR consoles, Sony PlayStation VR. One of the most exciting and enjoyable launch titles for it was Superhot VR; I wouldn’t say it was a traditional fighting game, but it’s definitely a combat experience.
How might the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence improve fighting games? Current developments can be classified in two ways. The first is embodied in the opponents who show up in the game. Building characters with advanced AI makes for gameplay that is more challenging and varied. Such characters learn how to fight by being trained on a large number of matches. These characters know the ways. The second is enjoyed by the player who competes. Current AI does not stop with mere gameplay but can now be used to analyze that gameplay. After this analysis is performed, human competitors can be given certain pointers about how to improve. In other words, AI now serves a metafunction. AI for advanced opponents and AI for meta-opponents both make for very interesting times in the field of fighting games.
Inclusivity and accessibility in gaming are becoming more and more important as we advance into the future. Developers now put an emphasis on making games that many people can access easier, and they fill them with features such as customizable controls, easier difficulties, and the addition of visual and auditory cues for those who need them. Focusing on these aspects better allows a larger and more diverse player base to get into fighting games. These set of players, from the novice to the experienced, then have the opportunity to become a part of several communities that inhabit various fighting game communities.
The surge of independent developers has breathed new life and fresh takes into the old genre of fighting games. Indie gems like Skullgirls and Rivals of Aether give a burst of color to unique art styles and witty writing that haven’t traditionally had much of a home in a group of games often associated with reading instruction manuals over childhood friends’ shoulders. Skullgirls, a new fighting game for PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and the PC, resembles what a young girl might dream up after going to see The Rockettes. It’s a wild, vibrant show that owes as much to comic books, Tex Avery, and 1940s jazz as it does to the gaming medium.
Online infrastructure and community interaction are pivotal to the future of the fighting game genre. As the internet becomes faster and more reliable, the potential for games to be played in a lag-free and fair environment goes up. The likelihood of developers making a ludicrous amount of money from the single-player experience akin to what Capcom did in Street Fighter V diminishes unless the amount of content offered offline also becomes increasingly substantial. The guarantee of online and offline play with balance and help from your friends means that strategy is going to amount to more than random button-mashing.
Certainly, the shift of the fighting game genre from the arcade realm to the console world over the past two decades pays homage to its commercial success and malleability. Fans adulate the appearance of Capcom’s Street Fighter II in 1991 as the catalyst for the genre’s Golden Age, and that game’s influence—along with the impact and inspiration of Naoko Ishida’s King of Fighters series, Akira Nishitani’s Final Fight, and Heilana, who played with them—can be seen in just about every fighting game that has appeared since.
For people like me, who were raised on combat video games, the most nostalgia-inducing moments of our gaming careers happened in the fighting game arena. Arcade games weren’t just experiences that “served as a marvelous piece of interactive art,” as we called them in our fightin’ ’90s. And they for sure didn’t promise to gift us our future classic series, à la Pokémon, as we waited to deposit another quarter. Door to door, the shared experience of entering a cabinet for the first time promised just as many exhilarating new sensations when we were little. If we expected anything, it was flashy controls, speedy moves, side-eye, and an absolutely wild amount of fun.
