Have Street Fighter 2 style 2D fighters reached the end of thier run?

Cafe Society
1

I was looking at the up coming Capcom vs. SNK 2 for game cube and wasn’t blown away like I thought I would be. I grew up on SF2. I spent so much time in the arcade I couldnt even count the minutes. But in the last few incarnations of SF, Samuri Showdown, KoF etc… they all seem the same. The graphics seem to have peaked out about 2 years ago and I haven’t seen any inovative additions to 2d fighting since the Super Meter of SSF2T, best of the 2d fighters.

I cant stand most 3d fighters, but am growing bored of 2D fighters. Is the fighting genre dead? Are 2D fighters gonna continue to puke up the same of half-circle fireballs and dragon puches for eternity?

2

As long as people buy them.

3

During the mid-90’s, there were a fistful of companies making fighting games with every engine, button layout, and premis imaginable.

Almost universal condemnation, mainly because they were not like Street Fighter. Never continued. (I would’ve loved a sequel to Time Killers, dammit.)

Video game companies will produce what sells. As much as players grumble and groan about “shoto-clones” and “tired gameplay”, the sad fact is that that’s exactly what sells. Capcom test-marketed Street Fighter 3 without Ryu and Ken, and it went over like a quadraplegic pole vaulter. The flashy, “original” characters may draw all the attention (cf. Barraka, K, K9999, Ibuki etc.), but it’s the reliable old horses that actually sell the game.

I say they’re near the end of the run, but as long as Capcom can make money off of them, they won’t vanish completely for a while.

4

<nitpick>
It’s a quarter circle for most fireballs.
</nitpick>

IMHO, the clones killed the genre.

EVERYBODY had to have a dragon punch equivalent.

EVERYBODY had more or less the same generic movement/attack rate. (Except, of course, for the mandatory really big, really slow guys.)

EVERYBODY had more or less the same attack range, special moves notwithstanding.

Then, later, things got retarded.

EVERYBODY had 29 special moves.

EVERYBODY had a super-duper, pull a win out of your ass, super super move.

EVERYBODY, assuming the player studied the game more than his three r’s, could whip off a 37 hit juggling combo. (Yes, the number is conservative if you’re talking about the “vs” games.)

The only fighters that have struck me as being any good, lately, are the KOF series and Capcom vs. SNK 2, and even the latter isn’t as good as it should be (having been made by Capcom, the SNK guys have been way watered down, having damage, speed, and range of attacks nerfed and, occasionally, entire attacks removed).

Although, seeing as how SNK has, more or less, disappeared, I think it’s safe to say the end is near.

Unless, by some miracle, the Guilty Gear and KOF guys go off and make their own game company. That could prove to be interesting…

5

I still remember I was the first person in my local arcade to beat SF2 with Zangief. I was so happy to see Gorby and Zang doing that russian kick dance outside the helicopter. What an awsome ending :rolleyes:

The only other fighting game that really grabbed me after SF2 was Killer Instinct. That was a really fun game. It got old after a while, but I liked the accessible combo system. If you remember on the original SF2 combos were actually bugs that they didnt intend to have.

I thought Ryu’s FB was half-circle BTW?

6

Ryu had two fireballs in the last SF game that I played, which I believe was SF2 Alpha. That’s around the time that I turned away from the SF series and turned to Tekken. Haven’t looked back since…

7

PS 2 has DOA: Hardcore, Streetfighter EX, Virtua Fighter 4, and Tekken Tag team which have all had fairly decent sales. Coming out this year and next are Fighter Maker 2, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Soul Caliber 2, Tekken 4, and X-Men: Next Dimension.

I own DOA and Virtua Fighter 4. VF4 is way to complicated for me and I can’t figure out all the moves for the characters. That means I’m limited to simple strikes and throws. :mad: Very frustrating in a 50 dollar game.

Marc

8

MGibson, haev you had a chance to get into Soul Calibur? I truly believe this game (and its sequel…should be in the arcade already!) is the next evolution in fighting. Fair, flawless… logarithmic learning curve (sorta steep at first, but you never finish “learning” the game, even as a master). Decent character spread, even for ‘clone’ characters (they are subtly unique, though the beginner probably wouldn’t notice how).

I, for one, can’t go back to 2D. I’ve heard some great things about the Virtua Fighter games but found them too complicated to learn. The moves never felt…natural? In Soul Calibur when someone does a move that I don’t know, just seeing the move usually tells me how it was done (there are some exceptions, of course) (and no, I won’t shut up about Soul Calibur).

I actually never liked the street fighters, though. I was more of a Mortal Kombat fan, all they way until MK4 when I switched to KI2 (KI Gold on the N64) which I felt was the limit of 2D fighting: SF-style combat with combos added in, but the combos weren’t insanely unfair (the nth hit did far less damage, until after a while it seemed there was no damage done at all) except one glitch combo or so (which never affected my playing because it was pretty hard to set up).

But dead? No, some people still like them. But after having taken the time to get into Soul Calibur I can’t even go back to Tekken which I thought was a great game… and DOA2 feels so… so… stilted? I don’t know. But I loved it for about ten minutes, then I wanted to turn my Dreamcast back on and bust out a mean Taki.

9

Killer Instinct? Also known as the first of the 319 hit combo games? The same game that gave us combos which required the following (c&p’ed from GameFAQs) to pull off?

Now it was one of the first games to blatantly feature girls with really big tatas[sup]TM[/sup], but other than that, IMHO it was the beginning of the end for 2D fighters.

Personally, I agree with DKW and wouldn’t mind a sequel to Time Killers. Or a sequel to Samurai Shodown 2 (yes, I am ignoring SS 3, why do you ask?).

And as far as Ryu’s fireballs go, it was QCF, though the later games gave him the Fancy Red Fireball[sup]TM[/sup] which used the half-circle.

10

True, but it also had combo breakers which were a really cool concept. If you got caught in a fireball, whirlwind kind combo on SF2 and your opponent was very good, you could not break out of it till you dizzied. And then the routine started over again.

If you let youself get caught in Cinders flipkick/torch torpedo supercombo, you could pull off breakers to pull out of them.

Breakers got much easier to pull off in KI2, but I think both KI games required faster thinking on both offense AND defense than SF2 did. I am not saying that it was a better game, they both had great points, but KI required a fast mind as well as a fast hand to do well in.

11

BTW, both games could reach a point where the 2 people playing could be masters and the game would go on forever. It was never surprising to see 2 people playing Guile and even though both could kick all kinds of ass, if they were of the same skill the matches would almost always end in a draw. Thats the nice thing about throws. But if you EVER threw someone in SF2 more than one time in a match you were labeled a “cheap player”. The same if you used the whole fireball-dragonpunch crap or the sonicboom-throw/fierce backhand trap.

There were serval ways to trap your opponent, cheaply, on SF2 to where they had no way to hit you.

12

Ah, KKB, KI2 was the better of the two. Its combo system was much more natural and easy to explore without having to memorize anything. Only when you wanted to show off and squeeze those extra two hits in (which were useless as far as defeating your enemy went) did it take some serious effort to learn.

The game had the rock-paper-scissors aspect which I loved, as well as many ways to start combos (something Tekken could really use… that game is just so clunky), and hell yeah, Stinkpalm, the notion of the combo-breaker was great. No infinite combos (Ok, fulgore still had one, but it only worked after a guys was dead to begin with), no cheap moves, etc.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega.”

13

Couldnt beat Orchids gravity defying ta-ta’s either.

BTW, Why on gods green earth did they ditch Cinder and include Maya in KI2? Cinder was the second coolest character next to Jago. Actually, I think KI and KI2 had the coolest most diverse characters in any fighting game at that point.

14

First of all, Stinkpalm is correct that the greatest fighting game of all time is Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

Second, I have an arcade emulator and a HotRod Joystick, so if anyone lives anywhere near Redwood City, California, and wants to brawl, I say, BRING IT ON! My E. Honda is nigh unbeatable!

15

I am sorry to deflate your balloon here, but you would never get a hit in on me with your “E.Honda” if I was to play Guile.

You could probably take me if I used Dhalsim though, so feel good in that! :wink:

16

First of all, my E. Honda would crush your guile like the generic poser bug that he is.

Secondly, you want me to take you around the world (ie, each player picks a character at random, when you lose you move on to the next character in the selection box, last player with a character wins), you just name the time and place.

Thirdly, my E. Honda would crush all of your other characters like bugs as well. I have only two words for you: Uchio Throw.