Banned Fighters, please exlain this to me

[dizzynecro]

It’s assuming equal skill between the players or sometimes it’s because the character does something really different from what the rest can do or even if a character is console exclusive in a multi format game. (see Agol in SCIV who got banned for his bubbles and Yoda/Vader (although they may be unbanned now exclusivity is gone, but I reckon that if yoda isn’t banned for being so damn short algol shouldn’t be banned for his bubbles imo))

Algol is not banned anymore.

[System_1]

Go ahead. Both of them are gonna fall to Eddie.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the both Justice and Kliff have 5:5 matchups against Eddie.

[Stuart_Hayden]

Blame Smash.

[Ultima]

Traditionally, the only stuff that gets banned are:

1. Stuff that breaks/locks up the game
2. Stuff that grants one character or one side too big an advantage
3. Stuff that’s in the console but not in the arcade*
4. Grossly overpowered characters whose only counters are themselves**

*The standard of using “arcade only” rules is slowly starting to fade away, with many modern fighters either having no arcade version or having an arcade version that only a minute minority have played. From now on it will probably be on a case by case basis, but expect this rule to be informally abolished at some point.

**The actual number of officially banned characters is very small. It’s usually reserved for noticeably overpowered characters, normally [hidden] bosses (ST Akuma, Omega Rugal/most KoF bosses, etc). There are numerous gray areas, such as in 2I where Akuma is almost as bad as his ST self, but Ibuki is also just as bad when facing the rest of the cast, and neither are banned. Anyway, suffice to say that banning a character completely in a “proper” tournament (i.e. as opposed to some podunk tournament in some guy’s basement) is usually a very rare event and is seldom done without justification.