The Best of 2D Fighting Games

After spending hours bashing my controller to the rhythm of Street Fighter IV, a gush of nostalgia surged through my veins. It’s a little unsettling how comfortable we’ve become in leaving behind the 2D Ryu sprite, to adopt the 3D mountain of muscle they’ve replaced him with.

Blame it on the rigid old-school gamer within if you like, but there’s just something about 2D fighting games that you can’t help but miss. With that in mind, here’s a tribute to the best 2D fighting franchises that have blessed gamerkind over the years:

Street Fighter

The first game to let two players fight it out - Street Fighter II was the holy grail of versus fighters. The early 90s were taken by storm as this game invaded arcades all over the world, pushing aside all the racing and beat-em-up games, and completely revolutionizing arcades by making them more about active competition, rather than the passive kind (where people played single player games to get a high-score). This was the game responsible for introducing the concept of eight-way directional joysticks too, and its six button setup has become a norm for versus games to this day. After being ported to almost every platform around that era, Street Fighter II found its way to the hall of fame by becoming one of the most sold games ever.

Years later, the Street Fighter Alpha series was introduced which pushed the limit of two player versus games, with insanely fast speeds and various small introductions that changed the gameplay tremendously. The super system was revamped to support a three tier super system, that allowed players to unleash three levels of super combos. Besides this, additional combo systems and a counter system was added, which evolved and formed the basis of Street Fighter IV’s “focus attack” system.

Then Street Fighter IV was released, and although it stayed as close to its roots as possible, it shed its 2D visuals for cel-shaded 3D, ending the era of 2D Street Fighter games.

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The King of Fighters

While Capcom’s Street Fighter franchise always stood at the forefront of fighting games, SNK’s King of Fighters franchise garnered a massive fan following of its own. While its fighting style and special move system was inspired by Street Fighter’s, it’s massive roster of playable characters and tag team system offered something new to the millions of versus game fans that had cropped up the world over. The first King of Fighters game was released in 1994, and it borrowed heavily from SNK’s own previous fighting games - Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury - both of which were never as successful as The King of Fighters by themselves. The King of Fighters ‘94 picked up characters from each of them, and polished everything from the combat system to the 2D-sprite based visuals to spawn a franchise that would release a new, successful iteration every year.

While fans loved the team based combat, many found it a little too complex and bothersome to switch between fighters in the middle of the match. Also, the visual style of the King of Fighters was gritty compared to the Street Fighter series (SNK used earthy and dark shades liberally), which appealed to some while others missed Street Fighter’s use of bright colors.

While Capcom experimented with the Street Fighter series quite a bit [with an early 3D attempt (EX) and a movie based game (Street Fighter: The Movie), for instance], SNK stuck to what worked for them with The King of Fighters. In fact they’re still inclined to stick to the traditional sprite based 2D style, with their upcoming ‘The King of Fighters XII’ that’s due for a second quarter 2009 release on the Xbox360, PS3 and arcade machines.

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Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat was the ‘bad boy’ amongst fighters of its generation, with enough blood and gut to make even the peaceful amongst us crave gore. The series was popularized with the help of ‘Fatalities’ that allowed you to slay your opponents brutally by ripping their head out along with their spine, slicing up their bodies, or many other sadistically creative ways; it was this display of over-the-top brutality that urged (in part) the creation of the ESRB. To take its grittiness to the next level, the game adopted digitalized sprites created from real-life actors, rather than the industry norm of using animated characters.

A year later Mortal Kombat II was released with multiple Fatalities per character, far better character sprites and breathtaking backdrops. If you’d played it back then, you can probably relate to how hours would go by as you’d perform Fatalities, Babalities and Friendships on both, your friends as well as the AI. Mortal Kombat II was undoubtedly the most polished game the franchise has seen to date. In fact, it was such a huge success that it spawned ports across almost every platform around that era, including the Sega Genesis (or Sega Mega Drive) and PC, both of which became incredibly popular in the country.

Two years later, Midway went all-out with Mortal Kombat III and introduced many more new features, including the ability to run across the map, and pre-defined combos (which was more of an annoyance rather than anything else). New types of finishers called Animalities were introduced, which lets the player turn into an animal and kill the opponent. The game saw many different edition released too, including Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy, both of which bolstered the roster of characters and bought something new to the mix.

Just like Street Fighter, the series shed its 2D visuals for 3D with Mortal Kombat IV; I couldn’t stand the game one bit, so the franchise pretty much died for me right there. Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe was released this year, which felt more like a half-assed cross over rather than a ‘Mortal Kombat’ game.

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Samurai Shodown

Samurai Shodown is another successful fighting franchise spawned by SNK, that started off in 1993 with ‘Samurai Shodown’. Other fighting games of its time were based in modern times, but Samurai Shodown picked feudal-era Japan as a setting for itself. Apart from the horrendous Japanese-to-English translations, the most prominent thing about the series was its use of weapons over hand-to-hand combat. This innovation, along with many other tweaks to the combat system, attributed Samurai Shodown as one of the most innovative fighting game of its time.

For one, the camera was never fixed like in Street Fighter. Instead, depending on how close or far the two fighters were, the camera would zoom in or zoom out. Secondly, a rage meter was introduced that filled up only when the character got hit. Different iterations used this stored rage in different ways - the most common way was it allowed you to empower your special moves to either be unblockable, or do a massive amount of damage. Also, the game introduced a parry system which - depending on how late you’d block incoming attacks - would stun your opponent and allow you to follow through with a free hit.

With a constant flow on innovative new combat elements, Samurai Shodown managed to woo fans with new iterations that cropped up every few years. Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny is expected later this year, but sadly it will be released only for arcades.

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Guilty Gear

Guilty Gear is a decade old franchise that was born with ‘Guilty Gear’ on the PlayStation in 1998. The game didn’t do phenomenally well, but became a cult-classic and received critical acclaim for its slick style and over-the-top combat system. Unlike other fighting franchises, Guilty Gear was based in the future - 2180 to be precise - where mankind’s discovered magic, and countless humans have fused themselves with it to form powerful weapons called ‘Gears’. This leads to the clash of these Gears, as they use their individual powers the kick the crap out of one another.

The game featured a heavy-metal/rock theme, that overflowed into the music as well as the art-style. The metal anthems that played in the background set the mood for a fast paced, over-the-top combat system that featured some really bad ass moves. The game’s art-style used a contrasting palette of pastel as well vivid colors, that was sprayed all over the massive attack-trail and special effect sprites. This, along with the gorgeous detailed 2D backdrops, made Guilty Gear the best looking 2D versus fighter out there.

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Cross Overs**

You cannot possibly talk about 2D versus games fairly, without praising Marvel vs. Capcom. While Capcom has done quite a few cross-overs, the only one that outshone many fighting franchises was this series, since it picked from the best elements of Street Fighter, and added to the mix enough new stuff to form a fan base of its own. To begin with, the game did aerial combat brilliantly - you could block, parry, throw, and perform ‘Super’ moves in mid air, adding a lot more depth and intensity to the gameplay.

The Marvel super-heroes featured in the game had some really awesome special moves too, making them fit into the game comfortably. From the insanely powerful eye-beam Cyclops unleashed that covered nearly half the screen, to the rage filled pounce of Wolverine as he ripped through the enemy with his claws, the game was lined with moments when you’d clench your fist with excitement and shout out ‘SWEET!’.

While some 2D fighting games have evolved or devolved out of their former selves, many have died out and got lost. If you think I’ve missed out on paying tribute to any other franchises/games in this list, please feel free to let us know via our comment system.