OK, so they did intentionally make, at the very least, “a” fighting game, and they intentionally improved what was a bad fighting game engine a significant number of times based on the input of players who wanted a good fighter, over the course of two more full games and an upgrade. This other point of “not all good fighters having a tournament scene” is new to the conversation.
Well, we know for a fact that by MK3, they turned the violence into a joke from pressure on the industry, so this was a difference from MKII, and they also added the Run button specifically to make the game more aggressive, which contains a very specific system all to itself that was done virtually perfectly on the first shot. That I would say on some level, was luck based on the track record of every game around U/MK3/T. There was more of a focus on the gameplay in MK3 than there was in MK or MKII, and UMK3 finished that out.
I can explain why UMK3’s scene didn’t last beyond the arcade or never attracted any of the die hard SF crowd. At the time, even SF players weren’t into an aggressive game for one, but also, MK and MKII were so bad gameplay wise that it was assumed by the general fighting game community that MK3 was more of the same. MK3 lost a lot of the MKII crowd as well for three reasons. The lack of characters returning from MK and MKII, the change in the tone of violence, and the aggressiveness. Anyone who stayed with MK3 moved onto to UMK3 and greeted it with open arms, MKII players were disappointed at the hack renditions of their favorite MKII characters, and waited for MK4 instead, where they were finally satiated.
The competitive scene in the arcade days for MK3 and UMK3 was in no short supply, it’s the home ports that didn’t allow it to expand or maintain the fanbase of competitive play after arcades started going away. SF ports, while not perfect themselves, saw much closer representations of the arcade gameplay than MK did. Even for MK4, there was a huge arcade scene for it, and it was really pushing it in a time where arcades started to meet their demise.
So no matter what their original goal was, they did work within the guidelines of a company that on top of wanting to cash in, wanted to improve their game’s potential and temporarily took a clear step in that direction with MK3 and UMK3, even if they didn’t supplement with robust tournament support, like Capcom, or Namco does. A better argument would be that Midway never really knew what they were doing making a fighting game in the first place, but it turned out good by UMK3 for a reason.
ShinjiGohan, we both appear to be the same age, did you experience the fighting game scenes growing up, or get into fighters later on? I’ve been a fighting game player for just about 20 years now.
So I’m interested in hearing it.