Top: XNUMX classic fighting games you should have tried

The fighting genre has always been one of the most popular in the world of video games: from those primal origins where the fighters were made up of a simple handful of pixels, to the most modern titles, where each fighter can be recreated by thousands of polygons.

Some of the most legendary franchises are returning to their 2D origins and it is becoming a genre on the rise thanks to the online confrontations and various tournaments that are held, where the best players in the world have their faces, virtually, of course. Today we are going to go back to the 90s and we bring you a top five classics in 2D that, if you haven't tried, you should at least give them a try.

Street Fighter II Turbo

We couldn't tear our top off fight games otherwise. Capcom was one of the most influential in the genre thanks to the impact of its Street Fighter II: The World Warriors in arcades. There were many companies that tried to follow in the footsteps of the success of Ryu and company and some even traced certain playable mechanics or even special movements. The Serie Street Fighter II had several revisions -Capcom has always been very given to recycle this saga, even today, we have a fourth version of Street Fighter IV planned for this summer-, but the one most remembered by all for being a program with a very balanced gameplay is Street Fighter II Turbo. New moves were included, the ability to speed up the game - with ten turbo stars was insane - and finally the Four Grand Masters they were available as selectable characters. This title is one of the best-selling games in the history of Capcom, with 4.1 million cartridges placed in Super Nintendo. Meanwhile, your most direct competition, Mega Drive, had the same title but with a different name: Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition -although it did not even reach half of those sales figures harvested in the Brain of the Beast: 1.65 million-.

Mortal Kombat II

Mortal Kombat was created to be the direct competition of Street Fighter II and try to unseat him in the arcades: the Americans of the now-defunct Midway they wanted to take their piece of a cake that Capcom it was devouring with pure bites. Although in its origins it was going to have a somewhat different tonic, with the actor Jean Claude Van Damme as a star of the roster of characters - remember that in the 90s he was much more popular than today and he came to play the colonel guile in the dire, but comical, adaptation of Street Fighter II to the big screen-, Mortal Kombat managed to become a phenomenon that lasts to this day. Its most characteristic features were its cast of characters, digitized graphics -impressive at the time- and levels of violence that opened bitter debates about this type of content in video games. Curiously, and just the opposite of what happened with Street Fighter de Capcom, Mortal Kombat It was reinvented with each delivery, notably differing the playability between the first three parts. Of those, the most missed is, without a doubt, Mortal Kombat II: more characters, more fatalities - the Friendship and Babalities were introduced to add a comic touch -, higher quality scans, an atypical art design at the time and easy-access gameplay. Of the 16-bit conversions, the most prominent is that of Super Nintendo, although Mortal Kombat II It also came to several formats: PlayStation, Sega Saturn, PC, 32X… If you want to relive the true arcade experience -although this implies more demanding levels of difficulty than in domestic conversions- you have available Mortal kombat arcade kollection digital way for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 y PC.

Samurai Shodown

Our top of fight games of the 90s could not do without SNK, one of the greats of the genre in that decade, which delighted us with several games that over time have become authentic classics. Samurai Shodown was one of them, although it did not have as much impact among the public as Street Fighter o Mortal Kombat: to play it properly, either we left our rooms at the arcades, or we could already have a very generous pay to buy a very expensive one Neo Geo. The 16-bit conversions had very different results: that of SNES had a staging that left a lot to be desired compared to that of Mega Drive, despite the fact that the Sega It was an inferior console on a technical level, but there we had a zoom effect, large characters - although it was lost to Earthquake- and more polished gameplay. As for the game itself, it was a 1 vs 1 where knives took center stage and the fighting took place at a slower pace than in other games of the genre, rewarding thinking in advance of our strategy to defeat the rival. It has had successive deliveries, including an exclusive 3D one from Xbox 360 -Avoid her like the plague-, but the most classic could be the first with the debut of iconic characters from the franchise, such as Haohmaru. You can play Samurai Shodown on emulators, classic consoles, the compilation Anthology for PS2 (PS2 emulator), PSP y Wii or in the digital version released for PlayStation 3.

Killer Instinct

In the last ten years, being Killer Instinct It was the result of the collaboration of nintendo rare y Midway and he was to be one of the flag bearers at the launch of Nintendo 64. We already know all the 64-bit soap opera, something that took its toll on some titles planned for the console and that in the end saw the light in the Brain of the Beast: Doom o Killer Instinct are just a couple of examples. Killer Instinct it had a unique aesthetic, spiced up with an incredible sound and a graphic level achieved by popular technology ACM de Rare, which we already saw in games like the trilogy Donkey Kong Country. The most impressive thing about the game was the gameplay based on the combo theory that no other program had exploited in a similar way: chaining up to 20, 30 or even 90 hits was possible in Killer Instinct, a title that, to be thoroughly mastered, required a long time of dedication. He borrowed elements from some titles, such as the three types of punches and kicks from Street Fighter or the blood of Mortal Kombat -although his final movements were not at all comparable in terms of violence, and curiously, the Ultra Combos had their particular tribute in the saga of Ed Boon by means of brutalities-, but its mechanics were unique, to such an extent that only the reboot that was released in Xbox One has brought her back. The 16-bit conversion, clearly, is far from the arcade level, but maintains the playable spirit, although if you want to savor the genuine experience, try emulating it in MAME or download it digitally to Xbox One buying one of the premium packs of Killer Instinct that includes this extra.

The King of Fighters '98

Some will wonder why it is missing Fatal Fury in this top, and truth be told, I would have liked to include it, but I preferred to place the saga King of Fighters, as a fusion of universes SNK and as an evolution of that title. Specifically, I have chosen the 98 edition, because it is the one most remembered by many in the long history of this saga that, sadly, said goodbye to us with a magnificent King of Fighter XIII that, despite the excellent quality that it treasured, it did not manage to reap enough sales to make SNK A new delivery will be considered, even less with the current situation of the company, focused on the manufacture of pachinko machines in Japan. East The King of Fighters '98 was conceived as a dream match where characters such as Rugal, Robert, Ryo, Takuma, Terry o Billy, known fighters for the followers of SNK, and some with origins in programs like Art of fighting or the already mentioned Fatal Fury. This delivery of Kof was characterized by a very complete and balanced roster, which has hardly been achieved again in another episode of the saga. If you want to play it, you have multiple options: MAME, Neo Geo, PlayStation, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Virtual Console, PlayStation 3 o Xbox 360.