90's fighting game top 5 list-Number One- Mortal Kombat 2

[I will make a lot of enemies for putting this game on the top of the 1990's fighting game pedastel. In which case I will advise all potential whiners and bitchers to create their own damn blog if you disagree. oh and by the way, blow me.]

Mortal Kombat 2 ( or II)

Arcade and also 'Throw a rock at any 1990's era gaming machine and anyone you hit most likely that system had a release of this top notch fighter except the Jaguar and 3DO consoles.'

1993

Midway

Sequels are almost always a let-down. From movies to video games to sex, it seems like lightning just won't strike twice. There is a magic in that first time experience, and you never get it like you had it before, its just not the same. I think the main problem is when it comes to any media (or sex) the second time around needs to be DIFFERENT- not just a repeat.

The world loved the first MK. Arcades had to get multiple cabinets just to cut down on the lines. 50 cents became a normal and acceptable price for a credit at a video game. Grown men- 20 somethings- and more crowded this machine. All for a game that was clunky, slow and had only ONE good selling point: Hardcore violence.

So in 1992 when MKII was on the table at Midway I'm almost positive that they held some kind of meeting. I don't know the story and frankly few people care about HOW this game was made. But my instinct tells me that Midway's suits read through piles of mail and page after page of reviews of MK just to see where they went wrong and what could be done better. Midway listened and Midway delievered.

The gaming world felt the heat of the original Mortal Kombat, and a mojority of those who felt it, liked it but they hated the slowness. Not being able to duck under projectiles, slow walking back and forth, only 1 fatality per person, way too easy bosses, a meaningless scoring system, 'Test your might', blurry looking digitized characters, the secret Reptile character being just a green speedy rip-off of Scorpion. The list goes on and fucking on. It was a great game but it was in no ways perfect and its predacessor needed to have more balls, more speed and a HELL of a different look. The first game was foundation to the series and its control system was good, albeit ADEQUTE. The characters for the second MK needed look more,.. cool (for lack of a better term), which ment no more fighting in outfits that look like halloween costumes. The characters needed to be better than just looking cool, we needed some that didn't even look human. Goro looked like a tall man with 2 extra arms (at least to me). Shang Tsung looked like an old fart fighting in a kimono.

The world of MK need a facelift too, Which meant things needed to be turned upside-down. The world and story of MKII had to take a completely different turn to the left. Why not places with floating monks or people on fire? Why not pit levels where the spikes are now on the ceiling or better yet no spikes at all just flat ground in which to splat someone.

Fans held thier collective breath. Not Midway though, they knew this was going to be a hit. No one spends over a year on a game unless its going to rock (unless your John Romero of Daikitana fame). This was 1993 and the video game making process wasn't into the 'Hollywood budget' phase yet. Making games then might have been tough then but compared to now its small potatoes.

I was a small boy when this game came out. I saw that all my friends had the EGM's and ANY magazine that remotely tried to report on this game. The first pictures I saw really blew me away, I was shocked by just how 'dark' the new MK was, and I'm not just talking about violence and content, it was just dark. The Outworld the MKII was set in was nightime almost 24-7. I ended up begging to get to the nearest bowling alley arcade just to see this game. Just to see it, thats all, and because of all the grown men and thier endless rolls of quarters, I NEVER played MKII until its console release.

This version of MK had speed and then some. Matches were heated and two experts can be done pounding each other for two rounds in as little as 30 seconds. MK was really born for arcades which means your going to be playing very quickly and the machine will rob as many quarters as it can get. The speed was a welcome change and a well handled one at that.The fighting style was the same but with the new speed-up, it was now time to see how fast you could 'juggle' your opponent. The block button will always be a MK staple, don't even try to run away. We'll never see an MK without that god damn, fucking BLOCK button.

The arcade version of this game featured a DCS sound system that nearly shook the damn cabinet. Characters screamed, blows sounded like explotions, splatters of blood made you think of raw meat hitting the kitchen floor, 'Get over here' finally meant GET THE FUCK OVER HERE, and the announcer's voice was deep and menacing enough to get you in the mood to kick some ass. Music was now full and engaging, painting the world of MK in a new 'fantasy' light. Its a shame that the arcade is dead, because this game was the loudest when arcades were in thier prime.

The look of the game was far out there. The world of MK wasn't the same after this because in the story all the fighters are now competing in a place called Outworld. This place was surrealistic and yet still easy to recognize. You fought in wastelands littered with dead bodies impaled on spikes, or in forests with trees that bellow and have faces. Outworld was like Hell but with an oriental theme. There were 3 pit levels ranging from spikes on the roof, to pools of acid, and even just a flat stone ground that broke your enemies. One level that cathes the story followers eye is the Arena level were we see that Kano and Sonya are chained up and imprisoned.

Along with the backgrounds this game had a much more 'painted' look. The first MK took realistic images and put them onto fake CGI backgrounds, which resulted in a tacky 'cardboard cutout' look. MKII was much better, all the characters look real but also have a 'painted' look, as if artists with millions of colors are illustrating a moving picture. It wasn't 'photo-real', it was stylized and artistically asthetic, not to mention easy to pass the most discriminating eye. I'm into art myself so I might be one of the few that noticed this about MKII. Point is, it looked way better than the blurry shit from before.

The fighters got a makeover as well. The ninja costumes on Subzero, Scorpion and the now playable Reptile look WAY better. They have these cool coverings over thier mouth that look more like guards made of plastic or metal instead of just cloth. The two female fighters fight in knee highs and carry weapons like razor sharp chinese fans or ninja sais. Baraka was a totally new look, he is a mutant from the out world with a large jaw and metal shards that come out of his arms ala Wolverine. Kung Lao fights with a hat that has razor blade around the brim. The only character that sucks is the returning Johnny Cage, fighing in jogging pants and blowing kisses after a victory (rolling eyes). Fuckin candy ass.

The story kicked ass and was good enough for a movie. After Liu Kang wins the first MK game (according to the written story of MKII, your winning character to beat MK doesn't matter), Shanf Tsung goes back to outworld with his 500 year old ass in his hand and Goro's corpse to explain to his boss, Shao Kahn. Shao Kahn is fair enough to allow Shang Tsung a second shot and restores him to his youthful 30ish year old prime. But theres a catch, the MK fighting team from the last game needs to be taught a lesson. So Shao and Shang kidnap Sonya and Kano and invite the gang, both evil and good to go to Outworld duke it out and pervoke them to try and stop Shao Kahn from either losing his mind and killing them first or even worse, invading the Earth world. Other fighters are just out for personal glory and a spot in Kahn's throne. Thats the story, hope it was clear cause I'm not writting more into it.

The two new bosses were tough. I mean it. Goro is now dead and his bigger, meaner and cheaper brother Kintaro is PISSED! He still had four arms but also tiger stripes on his back. He could jump out the screens' view and then stomp on you and drain half your life bar. The only way to defeat him was to stick to a pattern and don't stand still. But don't expect a victory on the first try (or even on the 5th). Shao Khan, the final boss was bad too but since he likes to point at you and gloat during a match, he was much easier. I guess if you spent enough time to defeat Kintaro than Shao Kahn is your chance to rest a little. Kahn had a penchant for cheap moves that take a lot off your health, some moves being very slow moving kicks that knock you to the other side of the screen. Totally cheap, but satisfying once beaten.

The AI was better and the improvement came from how the computer tended to 'mirror' your patterns, that is if you had a pattern. Don't expect to do the same moves more than twice. The cpu would just cut you down before you can keep it going. Jump and kick down the oppenent once and land a hit, no problem, try it again,... WHACK your hit. Since you can't block a projetile with a projectile than you can't count on the computer fireballing you, just at the moment you throw one. It was not however, impossible.

The drawbacks to this game are not enough to turn you off completely. The only this I thought was bad was the pit fatalities now had to be done with a special button code. In MK the one pit level was easy, just uppercut and its done (down and high punch). Another thing that truely screwed up this violent opus was the additions of "Friendship" finishing moves and the "Babality" moves. Why would anyone want to turn their opponent into a fucking baby? After a match of me pounding my oppenent into a paste, why give them flowers before they die? Stupid. This was all done as a source for humor which is fine but fuck that noise its still,... STUPID. But it comes down to choice, if you don't those moves; don't do it! This game also was made for those who really only like to master the fighting of 1 character, so if your like me and you like using them all, then you'll have to memorize a shitload of moves. I however was a Kitana fan and she was the only character I could successfully use to bring down Kintaro.

This experience was needed to be brought home to console users. It was almost a damn law. No game this good could have just sat in the arcade. But the first MK was poorly handled by the 16 bit giants of the gaming industry; Nintendo and Sega. If the SNES's censorship of MK's successful gore effects didn't piss you off enough than the Genesis's version with its shitty graphics and sound would. Fans of MK again got nervous and held their collective breaths, myself included. How would the console developers handle MKII, would there be blood, plus real fatalities and if yes, then what would we lose? MKII was a big and expansive experience and everyone was unsure how it would be handled. How could they jam all the greatness into a 5 inch, 24 meg cart? What would change?

If you were an SNES owner, nearly NOTHING. Nintendo learned thier lesson and released a version of MKII that was and is comparable to MAME. Sounds were there and the graphics were spot on. Only little things were moved around, like smaller characters on screen or a fewer frames of animation. The SNES version blew me and everyone else away and outsold the weaker Genesis version by millions. All the blood and fatalities were intact and arcade junkies were happy. Console owners got thier 50 bucks worth. The Genesis version again was,... lame. sorry Sega fans, it sucked. Nintendo shined because of this. Now we had the blood that was missing from the first game and graphics that only the SNES was capable of delivering.
One has to wonder, Why didn't they re-release the first game WITH blood? Im sure it would have sold like crack. In the world of emulation and hacks there are now 'bloody verions' availiable from file sharing networks all over the web. Even an NES rom is availiable of MKII (thats not a typo someone actually made and hacked Mortal Kombat II for the old NES).

Nearly EVERY port had an MKII release. It was big and profitable in every aspect including... fucking merchandising. T shirts, comic books, action figures, just naming a few of MANY. I never got THAT into this series and honestly I have yet to find anyone that owns the Mortal Kombat gaming gloves that had the padded thumb protectors. Anyone still wearing a Mortal Kombat T-shirt is most likely still a virgin that is so fat that he hasn't seen his penis in 4 years. OK ok ok ok I won't like I bought the action figures, they were made by the same company that made the small GI Joes. This might be an explaination why I don't get laid as much as I'd like.
But more than all else, MKII gave Hollywood a vision and a movie of MK was made, and it wasn't bad. Really it was good. I love the (first!) Mortal Kombat film, and after bombs like Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter, I am surprised that Hollywood would even think of green lighting a MK movie. The film took a lot of creative license from Mortal Kombat 2 and not so much from the first game, which is another reason that this game won a spot at #1. If a video game can become a king in all media aspects than its more than just a damn video game, its pop culture.

This was the turning point for the 16 bit market. Who won the fight? Nintendo. The SNES had the best fighting game translation made for that time, and the more powerful systems still couldn't beat it. The Sony Playstion was 2 years away, and that so called 64 bit hunk of shit the Atari Jaguar didn't have an MK release nor did the 3do, so MKII was a fight for 16 bitters. Sega tried, oh they tried so hard, but not even the 32x attachment version of this game could help them from going in the toilet. Thats another reason this game gets this spot, because its part of video gaming history. Nintendo owes a lot of gratitute to MKII.

Mortal Kombat 3 came out almost 2 years later, and would be the game that would sink MK into a downward position on its rollercoaster-like lifespan. Why? because it wasn't as good as the one before it. MK is still alive on the modern systems and is doing well, but now the series is done with Hi-res 3d graphics and not digitized photo real sprites.

In fact, I'll be blunt MK3 sucked. I guess the lesson here is quit while your ahead, or at least before you make crap like Mortal Kombat: Mythologies: Subzero.

90's fighting games top 5- Number 2- Nintendo steps up to the big boy plate

Dispite all of the SNES limitations, this game still rocked.

Could she stick those things up any higher?
Nothing quirky to say here. Just look.

Killer Instinct

1994 (95 for the Snes release)

Rare, Nintendo and Midway (arcade distributor)

Ever see a line at an arcade machine? Then you most likely didn't go to arcades in 1994 or your only 10 years old right now. The arcade is dead and gone but Nintendo along with Midway was a brutal force during its golden age. Now you walk into an arcade just to see 5 displays of Dance-Dance-what-the-fuck-EVER!

In 1994, Mortal Kombat was two-year-old news, MKII was turning into the same after some months and Street Fighter's inability to make a sequel and not just another damn remake kept plenty fighting game fans bored silly. MK3 was on the horizon and gamers needed something to hold them over, ANYTHING. Nintendo was listening and grouped up with MK distributor Midway and released a fast, furious, and arcade-friendly opus that speed hungry adrenaline junkies could not get from MK and Street Fighter 2.

Nintendo had -and still has- a knack for kiddy games (but still damn good games). Previously Nintendo had made Donkey Kong Country with Rare and with the help of well animated action and well polished graphics they produced a fun (but also overrated) side-scrolling platformer. DKC was fun but it was really for the little guys around the 10-13 age bracket. Nintendo's next game would aim for a more grown-up crowd, and why not? Nintendo was in its prime and was at the time working on a new game system that would need one HELL of a launch title.

KI was a total surprise; a fighting game with pre-rendered sprites and some beautiful 3d backgrounds that all screamed high art. The game looked as if it was all done in real time 3d graphics but that was merely an illusion of the Rare software genius within. This game also had sound and music that pounded on your ears as you played. The fighting style of KI was the best blend of MK's hard hitting brutality with SF2 combo driven skill. The characters looked either cool or in one case... damn sexy, each fighter having a uniqueness that set the group apart from SF2 and MK (with the exception of one ) The announcer's voice sounded like Darth Vader filled with steroids and the piece of spice made this game feel so... alive (for lack of a better word).

To fight and win in KI you needed fast hands and fingers. This game is very combo-based and relies on your ability to chain attacks together, so no more jumping around and kicking unless you plan to follow it with some specials and other hits. Doing this will set off chain reactions that will cause multiple knocks to your opponent. What made it fun was that your opponent- CPU AI or player 2- could do just the same and release a humiliating barrage on you. Not all hope is lost, you could perform a 'combo breaker' and escape with less damage and give your middle finger to what could have been a hollow defeat. At the final moment of a match the dead player would sway in pain and in MK tradition you could vanquish them with a 'Danger move' which was a KI fatality. Another good way to victory was dwindling the last sliver of the opponent's health with a 24 hit "Ultra Combo!" (hearing the announcer yell that out always gave me a chubby).

This all happens so quickly and its handled so well-no round 1 or 2-no stopping. If someones life bar is drained for the first time, they hit the ground and wake back up with a second and final red life bar, and the other player doesn't start from full. This gave the game its intensity that MK 1 and SF didn't have. What kind of fight STOPS when the player keels over for the first time? That's stupid, just get up and dust yourself off and kick his or her ass. This was a fighting game without the 'referee'.

The character line-up was a diverse and well designed lot. Each of them having their own background and story:

B. Orchid: (my personal fave) The bad-ass babe of the game, armed with 2 clubs that looked like mini Star Wars lightsabers. Also armed with a great rack and a killer ass. I have no shame and I'm a chronic pervert, oh well.

Spinal: A skeleton with a shield, sword, and an annoying laugh.

Fulgore: A robot built for hand to hand combat. Has wolverine-like wrist claws.

TJ Combo: The total rip off character of this game, and total racial stereotype of a Mike Tyson-esqe boxer. This guy manages to rip off SF2's Balrog and Mike all in one fell swoop.

Cinder: A man on fire, like the Human Torch from Fantastic 4. Cool idea, really.

Glacius: The yin to Cinder's yag. An alien/man made of ice and liquid. Not a pallete swap, however.

Chief Thunder: Native American armed with 2 tomahawks. Cool character beside being another damn stereotype. Hmm Maybe game makers in those days didn't know that Blacks and Indians aren't all boxers and rain dancers.

Jago: Ken and Ryu-esque karate man. Not much else to say.

Saberwolf: Werewolf that fights. Not done before so I'll give it a thumbs up.

Riptor: Human-dinosaur hybrid that fights. This was 1994 and the movie Jurassic Park helped us believe in using DNA to fuck with mother nature, so why not put dinosaur and human semen in a blender and see what pops up.

Eyedol (the boss): A two headed cyclops. One eye on each head. So he still has 2 eyes... but 2 heads with only one eye on each (am I clear?). He fights with a large club that looks like an antique lamp and has these odd looking goat legs (I guess you can't always have cool characters 'across the board').

The backgrounds each reflected the characters personality and tell us that these events take place in a dark and futuristic world. Orchid fights on top of a skyscraper and Cinder fights on top of a tower in the desert. Some levels presented us with 'pit' like finishes which enabled you to knock each other off of the tower at the end of a match, giving you a cool look at the soon to be dead fighter falling and hitting the pavement below. Riptor fights in a room littered with spikes and blood spilled all over, Glacius's world looks like Antarctica with an 'Asian temple' look. All in all, very imaginative.

The other plus brings us back to sound. Each level had a soundtrack of really good metal, techno, and hip hop music. The music and sound to KI was SO good that when it was released on the SNES the game came with a music CD in the box of all the songs. This game WON and conquered in the sound, graphics department.



But it wasn't all wine and roses.

KI's story was sooooooo... written after the game was complete.The plot to this game revolved around an evil company called 'Ultratech' that every year, holds a tournament to test out its products and even kill of few of its critics and traitors while at it. Riptor is a product of Ultratech as well as Fulgore. Orchid is a spy looking to dismatle the company by pretending she is a Secretary that just HAPPENS to carry two lightsticks that kill. Saberwolf is really just a man in a wolfs body looking to get a cure for his affliction of werewolf-ism. Eyedol is... fuck I guess something that Ultratech did for shits and giggles. The point, is the story wasn't the point.

Action was the point and it was there. This game took arcades hostage and created the aforementioned 'lines'. I played this game at arcades and eventually on its SNES release. I remember being beyond excited to get this game, and Nintendo broke a rule by putting the game into a black cartridge shell, so that made us ALL believe that KI was a hit not even Mortal Kombat got this much great marketing. In the pile of grey shells of games like Street Fighter 2 and MK 1 and 2, that black KI cart catches the eye.



However, this was also the game that showed the Super Nintendo it's age. The SNES version was still good, but it was SEVERELY cut back from its arcade counterpart. No full motion videos, tacked on endings, fewer frames of animation, and dumbed down sound. I expected all this and even at the age of 13 I was grateful that Nintendo TRIED to deliver a great translation. Even the Game Boy had a KI release, and boy did it suck, theres no need to cram 10 pounds of awesome in a 1 pound bag. At this point we now started to see what our precious Super Nintendo WASN'T capable of, and it was a revelation to Nintendo and the world that a new system needed to be made. The even bigger disappointment was that the N64 didn't have a KI release until later in that consoles life and was still lacking what the arcade had; No videos, weak sounds all because of the N64's cart media. We just couldn't win.

KI had a sequel and it came and went shortly after the success of the first game. It was nothing special. New characters that no one remembers and cool characters from the first game taken out for no reason. As of writing this article I read in my research that a third KI was in the works for the Xbox 360 but Rare has since cancelled it. That REALLY blows, a gaming system like the Xbox 360 could literally reinvent the KI series, full 3d real time graphics, surround sound in 5.1. I guess it just comes down to the fact that sometimes its best to leave well enough alone, or in this case just let it die. Wow... A great game started with a bang ends with a whimper. KI 2 was even beaten by the weak ass MK3 in terms of popularity. That makes this loss even more pathetic.

Killer Instinct was awesome and almost made it to #1 on this list. If this game wasn't so 'flash in the pan' it might have been higher. The industry can learn from this, if you make a sequel, you have to top yourself, not repeat. The success of KI was enough to get Nintendo to the front and really push the N64 system, but the surprise to me the writer is that this series never really blossmed to "Franchise" levels. No major merchandising, no cartoon on Saturday morning and no big budget movie (thank God Nintendo learned their lesson from the Mario Bros movie) .

Go to almost ANY emulator site and you'll find out that the arcade MAME version of KI is not so easy to find and even harder to put together and program, . I guess this was done on purpose , but it still sucks. I guess I need to win the lottery and buy the cabinet. For now I'll treasure the memory of how Orchid could kill off her enemy by opening her shirt and flashing her fun-bags at him.

90's Fighting Games Top 5 - Number 3 -SNK's most expensive experience

A samurai fears nothing, not even lamps and trees!

Trash talk BEFORE it was ok to swear in video games,... and now you know why they allow it these days.
The Snes version's 'zoomed out' look. Im afraid to make a Genesis screen shot. The fight nust be VERY intense just look at that excited (and symetrical) 'band' behind them.



Samurai Showdown

SNK 1993

Takara 1994 (for console releases)

Everyone seems to be fascinated with Japan. Not so much the technological metropolis that we all see today but the 18th century era that is lovingly translated and romanticized in films and books. The film 'The Seven Samurai" is a classic film and has made people believe that Japanese samurai culture is dangerous, attractive and yet still noble. Its the perfect background and concept for video games.

Samurai Showdown succeeded while other samurai games fell because Showdown simplified everything that we loved about Samurai's:

Their showdowns!

Now before I make things sound stupider let me explain. Ever see a kick ass samurai film? like say, Seven Samurai, or Duel to the Death? Name ANY Martial arts film and the most memorable thing is the fight scenes. When the gloves are off and the swords are unsheathed you forget things like the 'story'. SNK gave the action junkies what they had wanted, and threw everything else overboard. This game could have been a platformer 'beat em up' where you had to walk around and battle the SAME fucking guy OVER and OVER again and meet a cool unique boss at the end, but the most expensive game system maker in the world wasn't going to bore the masses.

The game still had a story and a decent one at that. I really thought that the story involved 1 man named Haohmaru on a quest to test his skills and see how mighty of a samurai he really is, but in fact SNK had written a story for this game and it involves the said samurai as well as a slew of other warriors around the world on a quest to stop the malice and plagues of an evil warlock named Shiro Tokisada Amakusa. OK whatever, it didn't say ANYTHING like that when I turned the game on and the main point of the game was the showdown. This game seemed to present itself with a main character that had a personal test to give himself by beating the asses of every big showoff in the world, not saving the world from some kind of danger. The thing that gave the world of SS its beef was the setting; 18Th century. The days before we would see fighting games with hovercrafts and robots in the background.

SNK loaded this game with great looks. Every character looks bad ass and animates as smooth as silk (at least on the arcade and NEO GEO systems), this game follows a lot of the hand drawn Street Fighter 2 styles but doesn't blatantly rip that style off. Each character looks unique. Every fighter has a weapon that reflects their personalities; swords of all kinds, blades, broadswords, samurai swords, giant hooks, gloves with blades on them, you name it. Each fighter had their own background that reflected their persona, like the character Earthquake who lived in a prospecting area of 18th century Texas, or Galford. a Frenchman that lives a life of luxury which means he has to fight in a castle. We see plenty of Asia; most especially, feudal Japan, which always is romantically charged and beautiful to see in games.

The style of fighting in SS is very fast paced, kinda like what Street Fighter 2 games tried so hard to do but with little success. The actual fighting consists of you trying to unleash ultra-hard special attacks that maim your opponent, which was satisfying when finally pulled off. Sometimes you could link some moves together and form combos but there was no credit for that. The motive in SS is to kill and if you had to roll the d-pad or -joystick up your ass to do it, then do it, because seeing that power move executed and your opponent taken down because of it is just too damn sweet. These powerful attacks were not like ordinary special moves they were 'fatality'-styled, they were used after a long battle ensued and your character or the other finally got too pissed off to take any more crap. This is the reason some people call these 'desperation attacks'.

Samurai Showdown was fun. Arcades had a good run with this game and if any arcades still exist there is a SS game still there from when they got that cabinet in '93. SNK's Neo Geo released this gaming experience home on a 118 meg monster sized cart and later other ports were released. The SNES had a decent version, and Sega had... an adequate version. This game also helped the 3do stand a little longer when SS was made for it, but even a 32 bitter like the 3do couldn't hold much of a fight to the arcade version. SNK makes BIG games even if the game itself is small and short, because of the details and action that SNK bleeds over into making a game. This attitude gave SNK the drive it needed to make the NEO GEO but that console would cost gamers $699. But hope was in the air for Genesis and SNES owners, but it was a hollow hope.

On a NEO GEO, a system with top-of-the-line arcade guts inside it, SS played with great quality and 60 frames per second of action, with no hitches. SNK's system was a powerhouse for its day (even today too), and all those bells and whistles came with a huge price tag. So when normal people on a budget want a big shot game then companies work to try and put hundreds of megs from Neo Geo cart games into a small SNES or Genesis cart that might only be able to handle 24 megs at the most. The result in regards to SS was not as good as people wanted. The great 16 bit giants had very 'chopped down' versions of the Showdown that really weren't up to the standard that people saw in arcades. SNES didn't have that cool 'camera zoom' effect so the characters were small, had fewer frames of animation and the games sound was... sub-par, The Sega Genesis version had the Earthquake fighter missing and horrid sound and graphics. Another big gripe was due to Mortal Kombat making bloody waves of controversy, Samurai Showdown had none of the blood that was in the arcade versions which is ridiculous because SS kept the blood amounts low, you very rarely saw it! One of the tamer fighting games out had gotten censored all because of 1 game that went too far. The 16 bit home releases of this game were good tries anyway, I guess you can't have it all.

But this embarrassment keeps this series down and also puts Samurai Showdown in the middle of the list and not any higher like it should have been.

Showdown wasn't a phenomena, though MANY sequels exist that blow this game away. This game was HUGE in Japan and was a great SF and MK alternative for people in the US. There wasn't a big movie, and not much merchandising behind the series (none that I've seen, anyway). Maybe you can find a t-shirt here and there, but that might also be just unofficial crap that SNK would sue over if given a chance. It's nice to see that SNK didn't try so damn hard. If you had the money back then, you could buy a NEO GEO and enjoy the games that kept arcades in business for years. But the people at SNK were not going to shove games down your throat, because they only wanted the gamers that were truly serious about the hobby. There are probably better fighting games that SNK made back in the 90's but this was truly great and set the standard that even Capcom would have to adapt to with later fighting games, like X-men: Children of the Atom. Which is why before writing THIS review I was also considering SNK's Art of Fighting, but who really remembers that one?

90's Fighting Games Top 5- Number 4

Capcom policy in the 90's: No Sequels past #2
Better portraits of the characters

Good sex appeal (though quite cheap) Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers
Capcom

1993
Released for Snes, Arcade, Genesis and plenty other systems

Sometime the lighting strikes twice and sometimes its better than when it struck before. This game really should be called 'Street Fighter 3: The Last Time We At Capcom Do This'. I'm not at all ragging on or bringing down the first Street Fighter 2, that game really set the standard and gave us a good foundation for what a fighting game should be. The problem was that Capcom repeated themselves. This game rocked in my opinion and rarely left my Super Nintendo when I had rented it from Blockbuster, it was the best '3 Night' rental ever.

This game doesn't deviate from the style of fighting that the first game offered, there is still the 'rolling the joystick' special moves and the fluid movement remains as well. This game offers us a speed-up boost that was sorely lacking from the original SF2. This update was fun and versitale but still kinda lame in one regard: we had seen it already and all that was different was 4 new characters. The beauty part is that these characters were cool and none of the others were taken out.

With the same 6 buttons and 4 new faces there was a lot of fun to be had. The 4 new faces were:

Fei Long: A total rip-off of Bruce Lee, but still fun as hell. Bruce Lee really has been ripped off plenty of times in other fighting games (IE: Mortal Kombat).

Cammy: A blond cutie with twin braids of hair who loves to fight in a uniform that looks more like a swimsuit. This was a blantant attempt for cheap sex appeal but dammit who cares? It was fun watching her bounce around.

Dee Jay: A Jamaican kick boxer in baggy pants and a cool Bob Marley-Esq persona. At least He isn't a derivative character like Balrog (the Mike Tyson stereotype of the SF games).

T.Hawk: The native American Indian stereotype that would be repeated in plenty of more fighting games later on in the form of Mortal Kombat 3's Nightwolf, and Killer Instinct's Chief Thunder.

Cool new fighters but all in all the same action. Your still just jumping and doing as many special tricks to boost your score and also drian the other man or woman's life bar. Same bonus rounds where you attack barrels, bricks and parked cars. Same bullshit with M.Bison being the cheap douchebag that he is. A new boss and updated story would have done more to make this game a legit sequel and not just another 'update' of what was already done.

The the story of SF is about the tyrannous leader M.Bison getting the worlds attention and daring the world to take him down if they are so tough in an effort to stop him from taking over. No matter what the game though, that story never really changed. We had 4 new fighters added to the mix but with very little else like a reason that suddenly this fighting tournament has started all over again and why these 4 added challengers are so damn necessary.

Regardless, it was fast, fun and furious as we had liked. The fighting action is impressive even if it is repetitive. Matches can get very heated especially in a 2 player match between 2 experts. Combos are the added challenge, and players can easily link moves together but the beauty part is that the other can escape at the right time, thus avoiding a humiliating ass whooping. This version wasn't mind blowing my any means but it sold and was the best update of SF 2 ever.

This game wasn't Capcom's best nor is it the SF series's best, but honestly I never played the SF series after this. In my research prior to writing this, I found that Street Fighter 3 didn't come out until 1997. It wasn't until the near turn of the new millennium that Capcom got the hint that a new SF game needs new number and updating wasn't going to cut it. Yet, I also can defend Capcom's decision however to NOT title this SF 3 because its not much of a change, which is why this game doesn't make it to the top of this list. What puts this game on the list is that its best SF2 version ever made, hands down, which is why this version of this legendary fighting series is number 4 on this list.

The SF series has been called 'the other Mortal Kombat' . This could be due to all the hype of SF2 and MK being alike in so many ways. You can find Action Figures, Shirts, and even the second worst movie based on a video game, Street Fighter: the movie (man it sucked, made Mario the movie look like Shawshank Redemption) and then a game based off that crappy movie (which I will review). The animated SF movies rocked, and is one of the few animes that don't make my eyes roll. Capcom profited from this series and it sold well enough no matter HOW many versions of each game it made.

Well maybe... at least not for long. Street Fighter began dying when the millennium changed and now its all but over for the franchise. There is a loyal fan base that is begging for a revival of the series but those cries are falling on Capcom busy ears.

'Busy doing what', you might ask? Hey, Resident Evil 7: Terror in Antarctica might be a better project for 'Cap. (sarcasm)

What of our favorite characters? Where are they now since they're fighting days are behind them? Is E.Honda SELLING Hondas? Does Daulsim work tech support for a cable company? Are Ken and Ryu finally 'domestic partners'? Has Chun Li found a career as a porn star? Is Cammy coke-whoring out Paris Hilton? What about Guile, I've heard something about his court martial and the Abu Girab incident. Shit, I don't care.

I just wanna know one thing: what the fuck does 'HADUOKEN!!' mean?

90's Fighting Games Top 5 List- Number 5

Mortal Kombat (1992 Midway)

Why is this game at the bottom of the list instead of like, 3 or 2? Because without its additions of controversial blood and gore, this game would have surely died. This isn't saying that the original MK sucks, its... OK, but play it now if you still have your copy and tell me if it still is as fun or legendary as you remember. The first Mortal Kombat might be the most overrated game ever made, and when compared to its later sequels you'll find that the first game has some flaws, but before I cluck on about that lets look at why it rocked the gaming world.

Digitized Graphics- This wasn't the first fighting game to use digitized footage or actors in order to create its sprites. Pitfighter, one of Atari's many failures, was the first fighting game to do this. But rather than give us muddy movement and choppy animation like Pitfighter, Mortal Kombat gave us characters with some great personalities. Each character was believable and cool for the most part. MK even gave us a stop motion animated four armed monster to fight against: Goro. For the first time in gaming history we really began to feel and believe that REAL people were beating each other into a paste on screen.

Blood- The sight of bodily fluids when I first played MK was enough to scar my mind. This was 92, a time before it became the norm to have blood in a game.It was enough to also spark congressional hearings and even made it a game believed to be responsible for the rating system that now graces the cover of every game that gets released. The gore of MK is now so tame to today's standards that you almost can't believe that it caused such a problem. The added fun was being able to maim your opponents or be maimed by executing 'Fatalities' in order to finish someone off. These moves included:

Punching off someones head

Pulling off someones head

Burning your opponent into a crisp

Ripping out someones heart

Blowing up someones head

or doing whatever satisfies the Ed Gein in you.

This was another reason for controversy. It wasn't enough that your characters bled (too much sometimes) they also could murder each other. Street Fighter 2 didn't really involve KILLING anyone, which is why that game never got the attention and censorship that MK eventually received. The oppression of censorship wasn't fully realized to me until its console release.

MK on the SNES was released and was widely disappointing to many. WHY? Because the SNES might have had a near perfect arcade translation but they made a bad move, they cut out all the blood and modified some of the Fatalities to make the game more vanilla. The Genesis version gave us all the blood and was accessable via the famous 'Blood Code'. The assholes of Nintendo's marketing department may have made the biggest mistake in allowing this, and it may have been done because of the demographic of younger kids owning and SNES system and older kids owning a Genesis. The drawbacks may also have come from the 'Lets test the market' strategy of what will win: Better graphics or better action? Whatever these bozos did to ruin MK for Nintendo owners, it was short lived, because Sega and its shittier Genesis version of MK blew away Super Nintendo version in terms of sales. This move caused Nintendo to rethink things and when Mortal Kombat II arrived it pulled out all the stops and gave us all what we wanted: Blood and gore.

OOOOK... there you have it. The secret to success. Digitized graphics and Blood. This game also had other things that made it great, like its story. The games plot seemed to be a mix of Enter the Dragon with a slight fantasy film (name whatever one comes to mind) angle to it. 7 people have entered a tournament to take down the 2 corrupted leaders of that tournament: Shang Tsung, a shapeshifting sorcerror, and Goro, a 10 foot cheap sonofabitch with four arms. Whatever, did anyone really pay attention to that or were we all just too busy learning how to pull off Rayden's fatality?

These 7 fighters were a colorful lot of criminals (Kano), agents (Sonya), ninjas (Sub Zero and Scorpion) , noble warriors (Liu Kang), an egotistical actor (Johnny Cage) and even the God of thunder (Rayden). All of these fighters worked and looked great in full realistic glory (for its time), each of them with their own story and persona that made them into icons of many fighting games after. Sub-zero and Scorpion were both palette color swaps of the same ninja (along with the secret and unplayable character Reptile), this following the Ken and Ryu of SF2 idea of getting the most out of 1 design, I'm surprised they don't do something similar to that or, at least more often, in Hollywood movies. Sonya was kind of the 'token woman' that you see in a lot of fighting games, even being able to shoot pink girly rings off of her wrist, to this day I always wished they would have tried harder in developing her, it feels like they didn't try. Johnny Cage pissed me off to no end. He fought with his shirt off in a pair of spandex shorts, and he's a candy assed, Hollywood actor that loves to gloat at the end of a match by putting on his sunglasses and stare at you with a crooked smile, he just BEGS to be 'Finished' at the end of a match. As annoying as Cage was, he was so fun to hate. Sub Zero is a ninja with the ability to freeze, and Scorpion is a ninja from hell that can breathe fire in order to kill you off. Kano is a thug criminal that throws knives and rips off Blanka's Barrel roll from SF 2. He's the token badass of this game and I loved his Fatality of ripping out someones heart, too sweeeet. Liu Kang is a kind of bland kung foo master inspired by Bruce Lee, not much else to note other than the games epilogue thats explained later in MK2 suggest that he won the tournament. Then you have the God of thunder Rayden who can fly at you, pasting you to a wall while screaming something in a lauguage that I'm not even sure exists, damn that was a fun move!

But it wasn't all so sweet. The SNES version proved that this game was quite bland without all the carnage. The controls were my big gripe. I was used to holding the joystick away from my opponent in order to block attacks, but here they added a button for it. I never used it much unless I was blocking an incoming projectile. There was 4 other buttons for high-low punches and high-low kicks, but there was really no difference between a high or low attack.

The action was slow moving and felt very stiff, like the characters and their controls were 'stuck'. The fighting method of winning this game was dependant on using 'juggle' combos that consisted of hitting your opponent into the air and using whatever hits you could dish out to keep them from hitting the ground. Some arcade junkies made a lot of enemies by memorizing tricks and combos that literally gave them a 24 hit hollow victory. This is a style of fighting in a game I've never preferred because it offers you no opportunity to counter attack, you just have to sit there and wait till your plastered to the floor. Thankfully this was only something that experts you played against could do, if you played against the computer you fought someone that was either too easy or too cheap.

MK 'you vs the computer' tip: Stay away from the corner, you'll get a barrage of punches or other hits you'll NEVER escape from.

It just goes to show you, looks aren't everything. MK had flaws but the beauty part is that Midway listened to the cries and bitching of its players and delivered a sequel that gave us all that was missing from the original. This is the difference between Midway and other companies that made fighting games (like Strata), while their first show was a success, they didn't get lost in it when it came down to repeating it. In fact, MK 2 wasn't even close to a repeat of the original, it was a totally different game (more on that as this list progresses).

Regardless of slow fighting, funky controls and cheap or unimaginative AI, MK is now a classic. Right up there with Pac-man and Galaga. This game might have made MILLIONS of dollars on its arcade release alone. Rarely does a video game inspire such widespread controversy and at the same time, get so much merchandising behind it. I can remember MK action figures, trading cards, T shirts, books, a cool movie (and a shitty sequel to that movie), and apparently even a live martial arts stage show (this game even had an off Broadway spin off, amazing). Mk also has laid foundation for many fighting games after in that it told developers to not be afraid of anything. Without MK giving the mainstream the violence that sells, then even games like Grand Theft Auto (not even a fighting game) would ever be made.

All this hype over red sprites of blood that didn't even look very real in retrospect. I'm sure Midway secretly thanks the US congress for making a big deal of MK's violence, after all that was and still is the best free advertising any medium can get.