History of Fighting Games

This part of the guide is here to introduce you to the history of the different communities and games under the broad name of FGC(Fighting Game Community). The fighting game community comes from a wide variety of demographics and backgrounds. Even if all of the games fall under the one category of fighting games there are huge stylistic and gameplay differences between all of them. This wide variety of games creates a community with a lot of variety in the experiences of the community.

Much of the main person to person experience in the FGC can be found at tournaments. Tournaments are the main gathering ground for people who want to play fighting games competitively. The competitive aspect of fighting games is very central to understanding the fighting game community. This want to play competitively originates from one of the main sources of the fighting game community which is the arcade scenes of the 1990s and early 2000s.

The competitive scene dates all the back to around the time when Street Fighter 2 by Capcom was released in 1991.  Street Fighter 2 was one of the biggest fighting games ever as, it had multiple re releases all improving on the formula. The arcade scene in the United States was exploding at the time and because of this Street Fighter 2 attracted a lot of attention because of its aspect of player vs. player competitiveness. The fighting game scene grew and grew with the multiple iterations of Street Fighter 2 which introduced new characters and sometimes new mechanics. Then came the spinoffs of Street Fighter as Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2, and Street Fighter Alpha 3 came out each adding and removing characters and mechanics. X-Men v. Street Fighter and the ensuing Marvel vs Capcom games also came out marking Capcom as one of the biggest fighting game companies.

This may seem like a really Street Fighter focused history but I think that it is important to focus on those games for a little bit to understand how fighting games have evolved over the years. The Street Fighter series has been the template for all other fighting games it almost always had new things add in that would shape future games. Combos being one of the most important. This ideas was revolutionary and it added more depth to the game. Combos are now one of the most important parts of fighting games as they are a sign of strength and aptitude when using any character. It is important to think about how Street Fighter has affected all other games.

Next comes another of the most popular game series which is the Marvel vs. Capcom series. It took the innovation of the King of Fighters series which allowed you to play different three characters in a single match but only when one character died. Marvel vs. Capcom decided to take it a step further and allow for characters to switch during rounds and allow for characters to have special assist while not on the screen. This made the battles much more fast paced and hetitic. Marvel vs. Capcom was popular not only because of its fun new mechanics but also because it incorporated many popular marvel superheroes.

Another game that introduced technical innovations to the fighting game genre was the 3d aspect in Fatal Fury which came out a few months before Street Fighter 2. This made it so that there were more ways to move your character than just forward, back and down. Fatal Fury created a whole new way of playing and experiencing fighting games. This created a whole new side section of fighting games with the Tekken series being the most popular of all the 3d fig. With the newly added movement options in Tekken it created a whole new layer of how to play the game, it made it so that you could side-step attacks which would allow you to counterattack almost right away.

The Super Smash Bros series is probably one of most popular of fighting games ever. It manages to draw in a very big audience because it was so simple and so fun. It offered more than just player one vs player two gameplay offered in more conventional fighting games. While yes, Marvel vs. Capcom and King of Fighters did allow the players to play with more than one in game character, Super Smash Bros allowed you to play with four friends in one single match. This offers a far more party aspect to the Super Smash Bros series which allowed it to become a very popular fighting game series. This huge innovation has not really been adopted by any other fighting game series with only Playstation Heroes trying to use the formula that was created by Super Smash Bros.  

All of these innovations allowed for wider more broad genre of fighting games. Companies used the base of Street Fighter 2 to make updates and improvements on the core concept of fighting games. All of these innovations added to the depth and diversity of experience when playing fighting games. The fighting game community is a place where all sorts of different minds meet and talk about fighting games that they love.