Should I assume that the “media” place is the best place to talk about the storyline in a fighting video game? If it is it please move it to where it should go, otherwise thank you.
most people assume when you play a two-player fighting game that you just want to be who you want to be and beat whoever comes out that other side of the door. In Street Fighter 2, there’s very little plot other than you want to win fights and your opponent is across from you and you better win.
If you do bother caring about the story most of the early fighting games just had a ending for that character winning the tournament and that’s how we got most of the early information non-fighting information of the characters.
Most fighting games do not use a mirror match in their canonical one-player mode. however Mortal Kombat did have an explicit match call the mirror match where you faced yourself, hence where we got the term.
However as Netherrealm got deeper in the story when the games got bigger, found a way to incorporate more matches as part of the story and have it be canonically believable.
Injustice was the perfect set up there are two alternate universes and two of every hero and villain and sometimes they swap sides depending on what circumstances happened in one world versus the other. since you could travel to the other world there’s a chance you can meet your other self. And usually they are not your best buddy but a dark mirror of your character, assuming you’re playing the light side in the story mode.
One of the best, earliest, arcade-friendly, non-verbal cutscenes demonstrating how a mirror match has occurred happens on Sonic: the Fighters. Doctor Robotnik makes a clone of whatever fighter you are and then voila, you’re in a mirror match.
I want to other canonically reasonable explanations for mirror match. And please try to keep it within the context of only the interactive media, (don’t include movies, TV shows, Comics, etc based on video games) and explicit mentions and explanations.