What happened to fighting games???

OK, now I think we can all agree that this decade has been all about shooters. Sure, early on it was massive online multiplayers, but the last 5 years has been owned by the likes of games like Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty, and much more. Not has buzz been so big with COD4 as it has been for shooters since Goldeneye for the N64(but I'm sure most of you younglings were still learning to read when that came out).

When I was in Middle School and High School, my games of choice were fighting games. Why? Because in that decade, that's what was booming and that's what if you were good at, you were king.

Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Virtual Fighter, Samurai Showdown, Fatal Fury, World Heroes, Art of Fighting, Soul Blade......the list goes on.

Among these, I had a little click of friends and we would go to the local arcade and beat the hell out of everyone. We were all masters at Super Street Fighter 2 so we would take turns taking peoples money. My buddy Dan was a specialist at Tekken 3, my friend Chris was the master at Samurai Showdown 2, and I was dangerous at Mortal Kombat 2, so we kind of had our own little 'fighting clan' and enjoyed beating the pulp out of all of the older kids(kind of like what most of you guys are doing to me on COD4 right now, ha). It was a shame that the whole fighting era went downhill due to the likes of the crossover marvel vs capcom vs snk etc etc....
The combo systems they started adding really started heading in another direction from what made the classics great. But as with everything else, things evolve.

The reason I'm bringing this whole subject up is for two reasons.

Reason number 1:

That era of games had many memories for me and was sort of a golden age at the arcade for games and did a lot for the business and should be recognized. It's a shame most of you were too young to experience it while games were, while more simple, had more of a fun factor as well.

Reason number 2:

Street Fighter 2 is on XBOX LIVE ARCADE, so if any of you enjoy the old school classic, I'd love to brush up on my skills from 10 plus years ago and have some fun versus action.





Oh, the memories.........

Yes,,,,, where have you gone pit fighter and bad dudes???

Aszz Juice wrote:Yes,,,,, where have you gone pit fighter and bad dudes???

Bad Dudes. I remember when that came out on the NES and it was ONLY ONE PLAYER!!!

I felt screwed! The best part of bad dudes was playing co-op.
Bad Dudes isn't a fighter though, it's a side scroller. Still was fun though. A friend of mine and I lived near a 7-11 that had the Bad Dudes arcade game. He had a collection of silver dollars. We took them all to the store and exchanged them for quarters and spent it all on bad dudes.

His mom was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO mad. HA!

Pit Fighter was a little TOO simple. Only punch, kick, block and 1 special move. The main thing it had going for it was 'NEW' digitized graphics. Mortal Kombat owned that area though. Although Primal Rage held my interest for a few months.

Oh God, I Miss The Old Fighting Games Too, The Original Mortal Kombats, Street Fighters, And Primal Rage Ruled.

Damn You FPS Decade. lol