Rantings: Genre Ranting #2

Today's genre discussion will revolve around another genre I don't really know huge amount about. It was a huge, though, back in ye olde days, or at least the ye olde days I experienced in junior high and early high school. As big in those days as the first person shooters are now (actually, first-person shooters were almost as big in those days too, but that's a coincidence,) the fighting game genre had just come to life at this point in history, which ranges from more or less 1990 to 1995 or so.

The first reason I'm focusing on this era, though, is that it was the only one I really followed the genre faithfully. It was the only time I really could. After this point, the genre continued, but it escaped its humble beginnings to enter sub-genres, become big on systems I didn't own, and like nearly any game with a strong multi-player component, attract a following that I clearly couldn't compete against.

But nonetheless, I should start not with my opinion on the genre but on what the genre really is. Started with primitive games like Street Fighter, the genre didn't get mainstream attention until Street Fighter 2. It also set up the systems fighting games used for years. In the usual fighting game, two fighters faced each other on (what started as) a two-dimensional battlefield, facing each other. Each character had a number of attacks ranging from weak but quick jabs to longer-ranged, more powerful strikes, and usually separated into high and low attacks like punches and kicks. These range of attacks shift by crouching or jumping, and they can block by moving the character in the opposite direction. But the characters really differentiate themselves by their special moves. Using esoteric combinations of button presses (which are usually not documented in the game themselves, more on that in a bit,) characters can leap into the air with uppercuts, perform spinning kicks, or even radiate electricity or shoot fireballs. These unusual moves helped define the game and attract them to new players.

After this game got big, many other games followed the trend with initially minor variations. Mortal Kombat simplified the number of attacks button, added a simple block button, and made normal attacks uniform in exchange for more outrageous special moves, better graphics using characters modeled on real life individuals, and lots more violence. Capcom, the makers of Street Fighter, started Dark Stalkers and other games that took the Street Fighter design but added even weirder characters. And as the next generation of consoles slowly rose to power, many series began as or moved into 3D gameplay and tried to avoid projectiles in favor of more physical special moves taking advantage of the polygon-based characters.

The unusual thing about fighting games is they have a continual conflict between two types of players; the casual gamer and the hard-core ones who seek to master the game. The series initially started favoring the latter types of gamer. In fact, special moves, which were so essential both for balancing the game and providing appeal, required the player to guess at them until they could stumble upon them or look for help elsewhere (and this was usually before obvious resources like Gamefaqs.) As the genre continued, though, especially in the 3rd edition era, the balance shifted slightly towards the beginning players as the "button-mashing" philosophy became more prevalent. In this system, a player, usually without any understanding of special moves, could simply walk up to the opponent and press buttons randomly, and yet still win. This isn't that surprising. Without projectile and other long-range movies, there's no way for someone with knowledge of special moves to catch a neophyte opponent before melee. After that, it gets trickier. Most of advanced combat is a matter of rock-paper-scissors style tactics. A strong move might be more effective but will leave a fighter open if the opponent dodges, while a fast attack is more likely to hit before the opponent can respond but could be stopped by a strong attack with better range. Against an opponent with NO strategy, tactics are reduced to guesswork.

Modern games have sought to compromise things, often by, well, making everyone unhappy. Special moves are provided more readily, and in fact more anarchic fighting games like Smash Brothers and Power Stone use a single button for special moves, making them easy to implement. For advanced players, the series expands a players abilities to dodge, evade, counter, and otherwise block attacks more efficiently. Beginning players are free to use the most interesting attacks and traits of a character. Advanced characters, however, can largely ignore the attacks in their totality and simply counter them. This is fine for beginning players and for advanced players who have earned their skill, but it makes random fights against players of each level of competence totally pre-ordained. This especially annoys those who play the above-mentioned chaotic games like Smash Brothers, which works around letting as many as four people play at once, randomly generated items that rain down on the battlefield, and battlefields themselves that are full of obstacles and shifting positions. The experienced players tend to ignore all these features, allowing only a handful of the total players, the flattest and least random landscape, two players fighting at any times, and little to no items.

As for me, I tend to hover around a mid-range level of experience. Even before the special moves were freely offered, I learned at least the basic abilities of each player and regularly used them while playing. At the most, I would learn about some of the super attacks or evasion abilities. However, I never could get into a game to point of mastering the complex counters or focusing on priority of all attacks, the exact collision boxes for attacks and frames of the attacks, and other master features. This is why my enjoyment of fighting games have petered off. I know the basic games of the series, but it's been almost a decade since I even looked at, for example, a Soul Calibur game. I nonetheless respect the genre and the difficulty of both balancing characters within a skill level and between skill levels. There's a reason my only major fighting game idea is ancient and barely a skeleton. Nonetheless, I do still play a mean game with Link!