Fighting game

Fighting games are video games in which players fight each other or computer enemies with martial arts. Along with fixed shooters, they are traditionally at home in the arcades, and are considered separate from Sports games such as wrestling, boxing and "ultimate fighting" video games.

The genre is also often referred to as beat 'em up and contains two major sub-genres.

Table of contents

1 Scrolling fighter

2 Versus fighter

2.1 The 2D/3D difference

3 See also

Scrolling fighter

In this type, one or more players (most often two, but sometimes as high as six) each choose a unique character, and team up to punch, kick, throw and slash their way through a horde of computer-controlled enemies. The fighting happens in a series of side-scrolling stages, some with a powerful 'boss' enemy at the end. In the most common variation, players can move away and toward the screen as well as left and right, although earlier scrolling fighters such as Kung Fu were more likely to allow only one-dimensional movement plus jumping.

Typically these games are side-scrollers with players generally going right, but there have been some three-dimensional versions which allow relatively free movement throughout a level and the ability to face in all directions.

Two major milestones in this genre are Double Dragon and Final Fight. Some of the most popular games from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s followed suite. At its height, the side-scroller was one of the most popular kind of arcade game, but they have since fallen out of fashion.

Versus fighter

In this type of fighter two players (sometimes more, but quite infrequently) each choose a character, then fight against each other over several rounds, usually three. The winner of a round either knocks out his opponent, comes closest to knocking him out, or (in 3D fighters) sends him out of the ring. In contrast to side-scrolling fighters, versus fighters are competitive rather than cooperative.

One of the main attraction of this game type is the large number of characters each game has, all of whom have a distinct appearance and fighting style. Characters are usually unarmed or armed with close fighting weapons (swords, sticks, nunchaku, etc).

Due to the fall of popularity in scrolling fighters, the term fighter, when applied to a game, usually refers to versus fighters.

The 2D/3D difference

Fighters are either two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D).

Characters in 2D fighters (Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat) are hand-drawn/digitized and animated sprites, and can move left and right and duck and jump, but in many games they can't sidestep or move 'closer to the screen'. The player's viewpoint scrolls in various directions but stays at a fixed angle. The 2D fighter's characteristic gameplay mechanics are exaggerated jumps, projectile attacks, and an "air/ground/low" attack/block system.

In 3D fighters (Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, Tekken), the characters and stages are 3D polygon-based models. The player's viewpoint is not fixed and can rotate and move in any direction, and the characters can sidestep as well as ducking and jumping. In contrast with the gameplay of 2D fighters, jumping is a minor element, there are few if any projectile attacks, and a "high/mid/low" attack/block system is used. Thus, the gameplay in 3d fighters is generally 2 dimensional, although in different dimensions then 2d fighters.