Man, take out the 3D movement and MK:A looks and moves just like the modern ones.
Also, MK’s combo system hasn’t changed since those days. Things combo as long as the attacking character does’t return to neutral, or they get the opponent either in a juggle, or in one of multiple capture states (freeze, spear, mind control, float, etc.).
I could appreciate nostalgia, but it’s dated at the same time in mechanics. It would be fresh air if games were a little unconventional, instead of desiring a new game to be based off old work. That’s the sort of convenience why the genre has been stale long-term to me and nothing interesting at the moment to come.
3D fighters are basically dead (except for Tekken).
2.5D fighters are where it’s at now.
Oh boy, now we have fools talking about the dark ages of fighting games again, smfh.
I play both games, but i tend to think 2d fighters are better.
did some one say dark age?
THE DARK AGE OF FIGHTING GAMES?!
Never heard of it.
It is common to talk about modern times.
We might get a new SC soon. Maybe at E3.
The “3D” in 3D fighters is kind of inaccurate in most of the popular 3D fighters (Tekken, Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter), as they rarely take advantage of the 3-dimensional space. Sure, you can sidestep, but they tend to make minimal use of the Z-axis (jumping). This can lead to the feeling of being much more stuck in place, as the ability to explore both the vertical axis and the added dimension of sidestepping is fairly limited compared to the distance you can cover by dashing or jumping even in a more limited 2D game like street fighter. I can’t say too much about the DBZ games, Naruto games, UFC/wrestling and the like as I have limited experience, but it seems that they all have to sacrifice something important from the 2D fighting game experience (or even the Tekken-style “sort of 3D” fighting game experience) without necessarily gaining enough in return to make up for it.
Ultimately, I think it has already been said but there hasn’t been that much evolution in the 3D fighter genre over the years, or perhaps the games that have evolved from it are not necessarily designed with competitive play in mind. There is also the topic of games like Dungeon Fighter Online, Blade and Soul, and even the Souls/Bloodborne games where pvp shares a lot of base mechanics with traditional fighting games.
I could also type up a long post about the time a large chunk of my local 2D fighter community gave Soul Calibur 5 a fair shot for a while and go into detail on the various reasons it didn’t work out, but I’ll spare you the wall of text.
note: it’s not my intention to crap on 3D fighters. I don’t love them, but that’s just personal preference. My first significant fighting game experience was on Soul Calibur 2, although I never really got into fighting games seriously until Guilty Gear XX #Reload in 2006/2007.
Tekken is pretty much 2.5 D. Virtua Fighter has more fluid 3d movement, so does Dead Or Alive which is heavily influenced by it.
Pokken Tournament is fully 3d but the result is that it only feels like a fighting game for half the game, if you’re fighting at a distance it’s like a totally different sort of game. Up close it transitions into more of a normal fighter though it’s probably closer to Smash than Street Fighter.
Yeah, I would take that in bold, because I think it’s kind of unfair to pin it on just 3d fighters. I hate to accept it, but you can’t do much with the genre, because it hasn’t changed much since the 90s. You’ve gotten templates of fighting games in the mid 80s like Galactic Warriors for having many known concept mechanics found in modern games, especially basic to special moves, combos from Shanghai Kid, and the controller motion scheme from Brian Jacks Uchi Mata (which Capcom was thought to have first from most of these games). You’ve gotten more of the same in the “most straight forward way”, but was evolved over time, but to more of a dead end.
The only different mechanic system I’ve seen in the last 8 years was from Dissidia, where the number of brave attacks are critical to actually empty your opponents health bar from doing an HP attack.
Soul calibur 5 was not really a good game though
Soul Calibur 5 was a great game. It had some issues early on with balance (and never quite got some characters out of the doghouse), but the big problem was that the cast just sucked compared to previous versions.
I personally think we’d have more 3D fighters if companies would have iterated more on the concepts set by Powerstone 1 and 2, or Bushido Blade.
The “3D” of modern fighters means so little, and they never reach the kind of scale that fits modern consoles. DOA is easily the closest, but it’s basically the only one that tries at all. The Naruto UNS games surely try at it, but mostly within cinematics, and they’re still basically open-air-arena fighters, with very little arena interaction.
If something like Anarchy Reigns could get more consistent updates, and stick local competitive / LAN play into it’s base package, it’d probably have a better chance at being a legitimate new style of 3D competitive combat game.
Well, I can only give my opinion as best as I can and it’s simply thus: People are just more open to 2D fighters.
I think the main misconception is that people believe 3D is harder because you have to work around more things than you have to in a 2D plane. I would say that’s not really it at all because most 3D fighters, as others stated, doesn’t actually go completely 3D.
It doesn’t help that each 3D fighter in and of itself has it’s own differences on top of their own reputation which can also hurt them even more:
Soul Calibur is honestly one of the more safer 3D games…except when it comes to everything about it post SC5. Now you have Lost Swords which in terms of ridiculousness overall is basically a single player P2W game with fanservice that would make Dead or Alive blush and the game itself literally lasted for about a year or two, giving off the impression that it was nothing more than a massive cashgrab and that’s it. Combined with people not really being all that happy about the new vanguard completely replacing almost all the characters and…
Virtua Fighter is just plain up marred by the “Hard to play, insanely hard to master” mentality that ultimately killed it in the West. It’s not helped by the fact otherwise, the game looks pretty bland and looks too “realistic” from the outside in.
Dead or Alive’s problem is twofold: One the fact that people continue to see it as “Fanservice: The Game” and refuse to see it as anything else and the second is the fact that people believe the counter system can be horrifically abused(especially in the earlier games, DOA 4 did not help any whatsoever) and thus makes it a counterfest.
Tekken is definitely the more successful Fighting game but the issue is well…even at it’s best it’s pretty janky looking from the overall attacks and movement and plays in a way that makes it look like Street Fighter 3D without the projectiles(It’s hard to explain this but due to how harrowing it looks in high level, the game looks way too defensive with more pokes at times than actual fighting at times).
Most of these is mainly from my opinionated side of the tree and I know I got 1-2 wrong at the very least.
But honestly…most of the 3D fighters issue is kinda of the same why “Anime Fighters” have a hard time selling and being taken as seriously as “Non-Anime Fighters” on the 2D plane.
I dream of a Virtua Fighter 6, but Sega seems to hate money. Not like VF made the crazy bank it did back in the coin-op days, but I still love the series damn it!
I don’t know about difficult to master - Tekken was always more difficult to me thanks to foot positioning and holding back to block. Sorry, in a three dimensional space, back is a direction. They’ve improved that with more recent installments, but I’d still take VF over TK. It’s almost the difference between pre-SF4 Street Fighter and Mehvel games for me.
the thing is these aren’t really new fighters, they’re the ones that have survived. MK, SF, GG, they’ve all been around for years or have revived, but the only time i can really recall a new company actually making a new fighter is Skullgirls. its the same with 3D fighters, DOA, TEKKEN,VF, and Soul Calibur are the only survivors. sadly no new fighters are being made from anyone who wasn’t already in the business.
Well, there’s Skullgirls, Arcana Heart(though it’s published by Arc-Sys here) and UNIEL but those games aren’t as huge as even the 3D games you put up yourself so…
I have to wonder if the moment has passed?
The mid through late 90’s was a hot period for fighting game development, growth, and competition.
That market doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and like most major companies - everybody wants to play it safe with existing IP’s.
Look at the sad state of Street Fighter. Beholden to the SF2 cast, right down to rehashing the character themes. I know nostalgia goggles makes folks look back and go, “Oh those iconic characters!” But in 1992 all that stuff was new. I recall seeing two tiny postage stamp sized images of SF2 in the back of EGM in class in high school, and a few months later on summer vacation it was in the arcade and blowing minds. But it was all new, and everything was so weird.
Sorry, lapsed into nostalgic old fart mode there.
I wish it were 1997 again and everybody wasn’t playing it safe.
So yeah, it’s not like we are getting like 2 or more fighters a year recently that aren’t SF, KoF GG or BB, it’s just not happening guys.
Arcana Heart, Aquapazza, Under Night in Birth, Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax, Nitroplus Blasterz, Jojo’s All Star Battle, Chaos Code, Phantom Breaker, Blade Arcus.
None of these ever happened and none of them got multiple revisions, dark age of fighting games right here and now people.
Damn were us 09’ers really this bad back when SFIV came out?