Evolution of Fighting Games

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From Karate Champ to Street Fighter II, Virtua Fighter to Tekken, Dead or Alive, Soulcalibur and beyond fighting games have come a long way since their arcade debut. Starting from just a two button karate game and working up to six buttons, special moves, super meters, and even a third dimension; fighting games have evolved a lot over the years, but have since become quite stagnant in terms of innovation.


Many fighters create unique characters and stages and some even have complex storylines. The meat of a fighter is its characters and while many can be considered diverse they all still fall into categories that fighting game fans alike are quite familiar with. You have grapples, rush down, glass jaw, mix up, zoning, etc. You can mix and match them, tweak them, do them in fun and interesting ways, but when it comes down to it they always have the same weakness, which quickly becomes clear to their opponent as soon as that person picks a character. This leads to what many know as counter-picking -- picking a character that will do well against their opponents character by exploiting their weakness. This leads to tournaments that end up most of the time being characters with the fewest weaknesses, as well as the best exploitation tools. Now this only applies if the person who is playing the counter-character actually knows the match-up and how to counter their opponents character. A well trained opponent versus a novice player who picks a counter-character will more than likely still lose. At higher level play the strengths and weaknesses of characters become more apparent. This strategy in itself is not a bad thing as it was a natural evolution of competitive play, providing incentive for competitors to learn multiple characters to increase their chances of winning. However, I feel this is something that needs to change if fighting games are to progress further.

DM.MCZ|Xian wins SSF4AE at EVO 2013 with Gen
  Image from Shoryuken.com

It's been debated heavily whether making characters all have even match ups or purposefully making them a rock, paper, scissors variant is considered balanced. Regardless which is wrong or right, there is an assumption that if characters were truly balanced they would be unoriginal and all play the same. While I disagree with this statement I do believe simply trying to balance every character is not only near impossible, but also completely unnecessary for fighting games to evolve. Most players at tournament level will pick a main character that has a lot of good matchups and is comfortable with that characters play style, some pick characters purely for their play style and because they want to express themselves through that character. A perfect example of this is Daigo Umehara who has been quoted saying this very thing. I think it's not unrealistic to believe a fighting game can allow a person to pick a character they feel comfortable with and still be tournament viable. The key is being able to give the player a way to make that character their own, or perhaps make their own character the latter being a much more difficult game mechanic to implement smoothly.

Image from Shoryuken.com

This concept is actually not entirely new having recently been attempted by Capcom through Street Fighter x Tekken using what they called a gem system. These gems let you tweak certain elements of your character such as damage, stamina, meter gain, and had trade offs to balance them out. While the idea, in theory, is sound the execution left a lot to be desired. The first misstep was making these gems unlockable. Any tournament held would now need to play through the game, in its entirety, to make every gem available for players. On top of that the developers also had not put a system for quickly selecting these gems, making tournament matches a chore to set up. With these mistakes, Capcom all but guaranteed the game would have a hard time finding its audience. That said, the core idea behind the gem system was refreshing and something I hope other game developers look into for inspiration when designing future titles.


The more control a player has over their character, the more the player is able to express themselves through that character. This is true of all games, but perhaps especially so for fighters. Players want to fight with their own style, the more tools you give them to do this the more interesting and dynamic these games will get. Fighting games are becoming more and more a spectator sport and making it so each fight is a unique as possible from the last will greatly increase the interest for players and fans alike to watch these matches wonder how someone else will play. Ultimately its up to the designers to make these kind of changes and hopefully they do. Its not just moves, or mechanics, or controls that need to change its all three together to work as cohesive system to let the player do what they want for the reason they want creating more of a game of chess then just a game of reflexes.