I know I’m in the minority here but I’m gonna hafta go with the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat 1.
Garou Mark of the Wolves has my vote.
Character redesign of Terry was awesome. All the character designs were winners, full of personality and cool appearances. SF3’s designs were pretty weak in comparison.
every sf3 game, MOTW, LB, and martial masters… All pretty fluid. A2 for what it is looks real good too.
Lets hope XII is way ahead of GGXX and HnK sprite wise.
what about shaq-fu? nobody here thinks shaq-fu is pretty? dont front guys…
I would say animation wise 3rd Strike and Garou. Overall eye candy I would probably go with guilty gear.
7 pages of a topic about “prettiest 2d fighter”. Anyone arguing yet?
For me…I’m not the biggest fan of the way that game looks. The animations are very stiff and robotic. Watch when someone dies or gets knocked in the air. They fall like string puppets. The actual art of the characters and backgrounds is good (granted…like Battle Fantasia they are modeled in 3d…not 2d) but the animations are way too stiff. Battle Fantasia looks like it’ll correct the stiff animations of TRF.
Garou: MOTW, I love the art still to this day and man, that Buster Wolf is so damn well animated as all the supers. The special effects really blow. Also all the details in the stages, the small animation of the chars like Rock taking his hand through his hair etc. No wonder it is besides SSTenka my favorite SNK game and only one I played for a long period of time. The beauty of mad combos into these colorful supers was alone a thing, which had me addicted.
There, it sounds ever better now 
I’ve actually never seen Rumble Fish played
Holy hell would that shatter anything up to now and forever. Can you imagine the backgrounds on that thing?
I dunno why I got some huge neg rep for my first post in here, but beauty always lies in the eyes of the viewer. These things are never truly objective.
For example, I don’t like most of the special effects in any SFIII and can truly say Garou’s are far better. For example I could compare Terry’s Power Wave to a Hadoken. But someone else might like the SFIII style more and so prefers the other way around. Means considering 3rd or whatever as more pretty, beautyful etc. Well, guess you can’t state your opinion in an open manner, just as I thought I might contribute a bit more in terms of posts …
god who cares
x person negs y person because x person doesnt agree with y persons opinion AHHHHH CRAZY GONNA MAKE A POST ABOUT IT
Well, why not, I just wanted to state an opinion about an experience I never had before.
Maybe the user who repped really couldn’t see why I prefered Garou, so I tried to clear this up in the second post and mix a feeling in. I put it in the best way I can describe and write in the english language. In the end, I just wanted to explain my preference in more detail. The neg rep of a few hundreds was just a side mention bringing me to the point, that some people might not understud me. Well, sorry for the off topic now. 
Edit: Oh and thanks for your rep.
AFAIK only the DC version has it. Oh yeah and maybe the xbox version as well, but ps2 does not I am affraid!
The dc version has several options video, even 240p option I think!
Check gamefaqs
Prettiest fighter? hnk. Hnk cannot have more animation because the game needs to be fast. faster than ts. Same with guilty gear.
I did like the marvel superheroes entry though nice colours, big sprites, I loved the hell out of it way back on the ps.
Art of fighting 2 had for the time the biggest and baddest sprites ever and after a few blows, characters would bleed a little, more kicks an punches and their faces would become black and blue and their stance would become that of an old man, heavily breathing. AOF2 wins!!!
Yeah. This is why I play most all fighters, because when a game’s not competitive, it usually at least has the 1 player aspect covered.
Well, my picks for great graphics go to(judging from the artistic point and entirely leavng gameplay):
Galaxy Fight(Gfx is probably the only reason I play this shitty fighter), Kabuki Klash, Last Blade I, Sam Sho 3, KoF 96, SF2, Alpha 2, X-Men Children of atoms, SF3 2I, VF 4, Soul Cal I, RBS(best. pheonix. ever), FF3, SF EX+a. Capcom’s marvel vs whatever series especially took stage designing to another level, though now they just don’t give a damn any more.
Didn’t like Garou MOTW bgs too much, but damn that game’s supers looked fukken amazing on NeoGeo. Yall have to watch it with slowdown on screen, it makes them so much better looking. On DC and PS2 ports they kinda seem to have less impact.
For computer games, QoH: Party’s breaker LOOKed pretty damn good for a while until Melty Blood showed up. Now there are Big Bang Beat, Touhou IAMP, and Capoera fighter 3 etc to shit all over EFZ, QoH, VG etc. Advanced VG2 had its moments too.
My bone with computer fighters is that they treat bgs as a second thought, an extra. There is no interaction whatsoever to what’s going on the foreground. Shit we’re lucky if there is one or two persons even on the background now. IMO, this is also why 90s fighters, at least compared to the ones now, to me are so much more alive and funner to play.
Well King of Fighters XII will certainly take the top spot when it comes out, as of right now even though at times the animation is ridiculously choppy I’ll have to with Guilty Gear XX series.
Garou, Last Blade 2, and Third Strike!
Rise of the Robots
Absolutely shit game, but it did look nice.
Wait? So are we looking for pretty or smooth animations and high resolution sprites?
Got to agree w/ KoF12, even though it isn’t out yet. Maybe SFIV will look better once both games come out.