Fighting Games
Fighting Games are a type of game where the player controls an onscreen character, or sometimes a group of characters, and battles against an onscreen enemy opponent. Each character has a health bar usually displayed on the top of the screen, and the goal of the game is to fight until either the players health bar or the opponents health bar reaches zero. Characters in Fighting Games are unique while still being equal in strength in order to maintain balance within the game. This gives the players choices as to which character to choose and what sort of play-style the player would like to use. One character may be aggressive and want to get close to a character to deal damage, while another character may focus on being long range and avoiding the enemy character on the screen to win. Players must be able to utilize their characters potential, as well as perform techniques such as Blocking, dashing, dodging, counter-attacking, and combos (linking basic attacks to execute a series of moves that consecutively hit the opponent). Most Fighting Games today allow the player to execute special attacks by inputting a sequence of buttons with precise timing, and each character caries his/her own special attacks unique to that character for the player to use. Fighting games are one of the first genres to be adopted as an E-Sport due to its competitive nature of placing one player against another.
Although related, it is important to note that Fighting Games are not Beat 'em up Games. Beat 'em up Games are usually played by one player facing multiple AI opponents on the screen at once. Fighting Games are usually played with two players fighting one another to win the game.
History
Fighting Games originated back in the coin-op era and because of this it is hard to pinpoint when Fighting Games became a genre. It is also hard to definitely know what was the first Fighting game to have existed.[1] It is simple to say that Street Fighter II was the first fighting game to define the genre to how it is viewed today, but what were the games that started the trend? There are two that were released in 1976 that can potentially be defined as the first Fighting Games of their time. The first game is Knights in Armor, where two players will control a black knight and a white knight and would battle each other by jousting a couple of times. In essence, it has two players that fight each other until one player remains victorious based on the number of joust made by each player. This game however does not have carry some of the attributes needed for what we define as a Fighting Game. It has no combos, no blocking, no dodging, and no health bars. Still, this can be attributed to the graphical limitations of the era, or even to the fact that fighting games had yet to be established with a particular set of rules.
The next game is known as Heavyweight Champ. This was a boxing game released in the same year as Knights in Armor, and had a very similar concept. Instead of jousting, a player would control the character by handling a boxing glove controller. This controller allowed the player to punch high or to punch low, and allow two players to fight against each other. Still the game did not have some of the fundamentals necessary to be called a fighting game at this point in time. Yet later in 1987, a remake was made for Heavyweight Champ which allowed players to perform more actions and started to base itself around the necessary attributes to be called a Fighting Game. The player was allowed to dodge from left to right while throwing punches and won when they knocked out the opponent [2]. Even though it is more defined as a sports game due to it being a boxing game, one can argue that by nature a boxing game is a Fighting Game.
It was not until the Street Fighter series that Fighting Games started to gain popularity within the coin op era. Street Fighter II was the game that revolutionized the genre spawned most of the Fighting Games seen today and because of its enormous success and huge fan-base eventually become the most popular genre in arcades[3]. It is often wondered why Street Fighter II was the game to achieve fame over its predecessor Street Fighter I. The main difference between the two were the limitations within Street Fighter I as opposed to Street Fighter II. Street Fighter I is clunky and the controls are very hard to manage. Most of the time, when entering a button sequence to perform a combo or a special move, the game would not register the input and the execution of a special move would seem more like luck rather than skill. compared to the fluid controls in Street Fighter II. Street Fighter II was also the first game to introduce characters that were all unique while maintaining the balance of the game. Players were now able to choose between multiple playable characters that allowed each player to develop different strategies. This was the beginning of the competitive nature that rose in arcades and in Fighting Games.
Significant Games
Street Fighter Series
As the history mentions, Street Fighter is the series that started to mold the Fighting Game genre to its modern form today. Street Fighter I was released and playable in arcades starting 1987 but is not well acclaimed or prized within the arcade or Fighting Game community. The Game mechanics are too clunky and it is hard to execute combo's and special moves, which in 1987 were unique to this particular game and a new concept for players to grasp. The special moves were also not displayed on the cabinet of the machine, so players who did execute these moves almost always did it by mistake. The game is not very user friendly to new players and not everyone can enjoy the game because of its rather difficult learning curve. Therefore it could not thrive in an arcade environment where every game is competing for each player's time and money. It was not until Street Fighter II, which improved on all of the qualities provided in Street Fighter I and provided more fluent game-play that the genre took off headed towards success.
Street Fighter II Provided more characters to choose from, more special moves, better combos, and many more interesting mechanics that have become a staple within the fighting game community today.
Marvel vs. Capcom Series
Marvel vs. Capcom provided characters that most people were familiar with and allowed players to use their favorite characters from movies and comic books to battle each other. This series combines the success of Street Fighter, created by Capcom, and Marvel's well known roster to make some of the best regarded Fighting Games in history.
Mortal Kombat Series
Mortal Kombat took the Fighting Game genre and made the violence within the game hyper realistic while still maintaining the foundation given by the Street Fighter series. Mortal Kombat is not only crucial to the development and innovation within Fighting Games, but it has also influenced the video game industry as a whole. Mortal Kombat is widely known for being one of the games that influenced the creation of the ESRB rating within video games.
Dead or Alive
Dead or Alive (DOA) series took Fighting Game genre to an entirely different level in terms of 3D character aesthetic and sex appeal. The creator, Tomonobu Itagaki, was challenged by the game company Tecmo to devise a game that would increase sales of the Fighting Game genre. His precedents included Fatal Fury, Mortal Kombat series, SNK.
Significance within the industry
As seen from the Mortal Kombat Series, the creation of Fighting Games led to the creation of an ESRB rating which is essential for all video games today. The Fighting game genre was also the very beginning of E-sports, and allowed multiple other genres to follow along. While many will consider First-Person Shooters to be the first to bring E-sports into the main stream, Fighting Games provided a good foundation with the creation of EVO, which is now known as the largest Fighting Game tournament and one of the largest Game tournaments in the world.
References
- ↑ Dargenio, Angelo. "The History of Fighting Games: PART 1" Arcade Sushi. Arcade Sushi 7 Jan. 2014. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.
- ↑ Heavyweight Champ (1987). International Arcade Museum. 7 Apr. 2014
- ↑ Plunkett, Luke. Let's Talk About The Very First Street Fighter. Kotaku. Kotaku 31 Mar. 2011. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.
