Big deal, Persona. So you're ditching your RPG roots for a little one on one 2d fighter Combat. Pfft. I'm tired of you lording over everyone how cool and new you are because of it. You know what? You're not even the first. This here franchises entered the cage with triumphant smiles, and left the genre with their tails between their legs, never knowing what happened.
Of note: I'm not including fan-made games in this list. I like M.U.G.E.N too, but no.
Dynasty Warriors
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| But where is my Dynasty fighitng game? |
As far as "historical games", I've never understood the Dynasty Warriors series. Crazy dance numbers and supersoldiers bursting through 1000s of troops aside, shouldn't one warlord just win the war and get it over with? How long WAS this unification war? Either way, the series carries on, even spinning off into Samurai and Weird Anime Pirate spinoffs.
What you may not know, is that really early on the series, they tried branching off into fighting with...Dynasty Warriors, the first in the long list of DW games. Because the only thing more realistic than one guy killing hordes to decide which family will rule the crown is solving it in round based one on one deathmatches with spears and swords. However, after just one entry, Koei went back to slashemup action with the series.
Now, I'm not saying the franchise doesn't have enough characters for a fighting game. They're on, what, the 16th game? But even with that, the Dynasty crew seems a bit bare compared to what I'm guessing is the closest peer on that age: Soul Edge. Sure, Koei spiced up some guy from Chinese history. He's still not as cool as mostly made up characters like Mitsurugi or Sophitia.
Final Fight
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| Serve it cold. To the dogs. |
Final Fight was supposed to be a sequel to Street Fighter, but things turned out differently and the game became a beatemup. However, the series has become inexorably linked to Capcom's main fighting franchise through numerous cameos and even a cancelled crossover game.
That said, Final Fight had it's own attempt at the genre with Final Fight Revenge, a game that brought most of the crew back for sort of a fighting game, only you could use weapon pickups. It would probably be considered the worst in the series, if Streetwise didn't have it's back.
Star Wars
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| I like how the name of the obscure martial arts is subdued. Star Wars: Masters is a good name, anyway. |
Before Episode 1, there weren't a gazillion known Jedi in Star Wars movies. There was Luke and Darth Vader. Even the Emperor wasn't a Jedi yet. Which is why, when Star Wars: Masters of Terras Kasi rolled around, it just did what any one of us would have done: put most of the main characters in the franchise in there to fight you know, Han Solo, Princess Leia, one of those pig guys...
Awkwardness of the concept aside, it's the execution that has earned this game it's infamy. What's sadder is that apparently Capcom had been commissioned to make a Star Wars fighting game, but when the license was taken away, Capcom went on to make Star Gladiator, a game that you don't have to squint too hard to see the Star Wars influence. Also, people don't vomit expletives furiously when they remember it.
Sonic the Hedgehog
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| The gloves are off. Except they're not. |
Sonic has always, be it on purpose or accidentally, followed on whatever the Mario franchise is doing, but usually with less success. Mario had a successful racing series, Sonic had 3 serieses. Mario had Tennis, Sonic got on that a couple years later. Mario had a party series, and Sonic had a ... a thing. It's the nature of a company mascot to be in this kinds of games.
On the other hand, on one thing Sonic had the jump on over the mustachioed menace is having a fighting game. It wasn't even a party fighter, you fucking purists. It was straight one on one fighting title called Sonic The Fighters.
However, since Virtua Fighter had just met great success, Sega decided a 3D game that benefited from the finest polygons the mid 90s could offer was in order. By my estimation it should have been some kind of fast paced 2D fighter. But I guess that's why I am not a big shot Sega executive.
The results are unseemly, as Sonic's familiar crew(who back then could fit in a living room) and some fresh new faces(now buried forever) sidestepped, punched and bored each other.
That said, because Sonic gets to try everything twice, there was a 2d party style fighter for the Game Boy Advance called Sonic Battle. Kind of not the right console for a party fighter, eh?
Jurassic Park
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| Try a sick combo! |
Look, I'm a fan of dinosaurs fighting. When I rented Turok, I spent most of it trying to get dinosaurs to fight each other. I watch Jurassic Fight Club more than regular Fight Club. I popped some quarters in that shitty Primal Rage game. But there's no way I can pretend that a Jurassic Park fighting game makes sense. Just...no.
However, rather than settling the feud between Dennis Nedry and Samuel L Jackson via dragon punching, Jurassic Park: Warpath follows several dinosaurs with a grudge to bear in a fight...to the deth! Fans of actual dinosaurs need not apply, as even the Raptors are roided up to huge size so their fights with the Rexes make more sense. Even plant eaters become killing machines!
However, since this IS using the Jurassic Park license, you should know that even thought dinosaur accuracy is gone fishing , the game has several nice depictions(PS1 standard) of Jurassic Park places, including Islas Nublar and Sorna, and even San Diego! If you're wondering how this is canon to the movies, you should go out and get some fresh air.
Lobo
Lobo is the Deadpool of the 90s(I know: wait until I make my point!): An attempt at satirizing dynamics of the comics market that got out of control in a very good way for the company that made him. Also, he was an insane gun for hire who got into crazy adventures and got under everyone's skin, just like Deadpool.
However, one must wonder what element of the murderous, gun toting, space Hawg riding, cigar chomping crazy exploits of a space bounty hunter lent themselves to a fighting game. But Ubisoft certainly must have felt they had the answers, as they developed the game for the SNES near the end of it's run.
How was it? It wasn't. Then game was cancelled, even though it was basically done. The system works!
Castlevania
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| Oh, my go! This series is so fat... |
Konami, whose biggest success in the genre is a non-series of multi-console licensed titles about the Ninja Turtles, must have been having some kind of mid-life crisis when they decided to take Vampire whipping simulator Castlevania through that crossover bridge that leads to the arena, where I'd like to imagine they met with Soul Calibur and Guilty gear going the other way, but headed for the same place: failure.
Castlevania's Fighting game has been called many things, but good isn't one of them. Boasting undead demons, breast obsessed little girls, succubi and those lovable vampire slayer Belmonts, the Wii fighter is looked back at with disgust and regret by fans of the series. Everyone else just didn't look.
Batman Forever:
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| Harveeey! |
No, Batman Forever wasn't really a Fighting game. It was just a shitty Beat Em Up that tried to apply the old Mortal Kombat controls to an adventure game.
That said, the training mode had Batman/Robin face up against holographic goons in a mat in the Batcave. Or you could actually use most of the bad guys from the game as holograms beating each other up as well, in what I'm guessing is some sort of Batman masturbation aid. You could even play 2 player vs! I think that covers most of the requirements, right?
In my mind, what happened was, they planned to make a fighting game from the get go, until someone told them making a fighting game based on the Batman Forever license was a terrible idea. Unwilling to scrap all that awesome mocap work, and with a deadline to meet, they quickly built a retarded, badly controlled adventure beatemup around what they had. See? The system fails!
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