Making a good fighting game is really, really hard, arguably moreso than any other genre of game. Fighting games cannot be carried by things like story and setpieces (though those certainly help); they are wholly reliant on the quality of their gameplay, the balance of their systems, and the appeal of their characters. It is an extremely delicate dance, one that even larger developers can’t always get right. This is why I’m generally inclined to extend some leeway to fighting games on the quality scale, but unfortunately, that leeway can only go so far.
10 Best Fighting Games Forgotten by Time
They live on in the arcades of our hearts.
There have been some fighting games over the years that are just… so, so terrible. Like, so terrible that it’s almost not funny how terrible they are. Maybe they’re lacking in interesting mechanics, maybe they have little-to-no effort at proper balancing, or maybe there’s something about their presentation that’s just offensive to your senses. Usually, it’s a combination of one or more of these factors! Whatever the reason, if you ever have a chance to play one of these games, maybe just ignore your morbid curiosity and let someone on YouTube do it instead.
Can’t Transform Your Way Outta this One
As you’ll quickly learn here, a frequent red flag for fighting games is those that rely on licensed properties. Obviously, not all licensed fighting games are bad; there have been some really good ones over the years! Unfortunately, Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals is not one of them.
Transmetals, based on the cartoon and toy line of the same name, was originally released for the N64 and PS1 in 1999 and offered as an exclusive at Blockbuster Video. Technically, they’re two different games that play slightly differently, but I’m specifically talking about the N64 version. It’s a one-on-one fighter in which you choose as one of several Maximals or Predacons and just sorta… pelt each other with lasers for a while.
Every character has more or less the exact same moveset: a big, flashy charging attack, a big explosive attack, and a little pew-pew shooter attack. You can transform into vehicle and beast modes, but barring a few exceptions, those forms’ movesets are the same as well, alternating between charging attacks and biting attacks. The definitive way to win any fight is to just knock your opponent down and charge your big move before they get up. It’s an absolute waste of an N64 cartridge, which is ironic, because it’s one of the rarest, most valuable N64 games you can own.
9 Ballz 3D
Make Your Own Puns
The SNES wasn’t really a 3D console, but it did have some early 3D games like the original Star Fox, as well as games that mimicked 3D with the help of Mode 7 like Super Mario Kart. Could those same technologies be used to create a pseudo-3D fighting game? Maybe! But we got Ballz 3D instead.
This game consists entirely of characters made up of interlinking spheres, creating an illusion of 3D. The characters are largely indistinguishable from each other aside from their respective balls’ coloration, so that’s a big strike in the style department. The stages are mostly flat with the barest minimum of backgrounds, though there’s always a billboard in the background with weird phrases like “taunt the ostrich” on it, which is admittedly kind of funny.
As for how these balls fight, well, they fight pretty much exactly how you’d expect a bunch of balls to fight: randomly smacking up against each other until one of them falls over. Every character does have special moves with unique inputs, and there are even finisher moves a la Fatalities, though again, it’s all just balls. It never gets any flashier than just balls.
8 Shaq Fu
I Wonder if Shaq Remembers This
If I had a nickel for every time famous basketballer Shaquille O’Neal was playable in a fighting game, I’d have two nickels. One of those nickels comes from his cameo in Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2, which was a pretty good game, and the other comes from Shaq Fu, which was a pretty not-good game!
Shaq Fu has a bizarre story, in which the titular basketballer gets isekai’d to a Mortal Kombat knock-off fantasy world and ends up throwing hands with an assortment of monsters and warrior-types. Despite the dumb premise, the game didn’t actually look terrible, with some pretty fluid sprite animation and flashy specials. However, this is a double-edged sword; the elaborate animations mean that every single attack has way too many frames, which makes combat sluggish and confusing.
Because all the moves are so over-designed, it’s hard to get a proper combo going. Rather, the best way to win in this game is to find the move with the shortest wind-up and just spam it endlessly. That, or spamming throws, and frankly, any fighting game where spamming throws is a viable option gets a big red mark on it from the jump.
7 Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22
Banking on Brand Recognition
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Developer |
Tose |
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Platforms |
PS1 |
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Release Date |
March 2003 |
As a franchise based primarily on hand-to-hand combat, Dragon Ball Z has had a lot of licensed games over the years, ranging from the mostly-okay Budokai series to the excellent Dragon Ball FighterZ. However, when the franchise was in its earlier years, there was less of a concentrated effort to make anything good, as publishers just wanted to capitalize on the IP’s success. Thus, we have Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 for the PS1.
This game was originally released in Japan in 1995, not making it westward until nearly a decade later in 2003. The title comes from the 22 playable characters, including the majority of familiar faces up through the Majin Buu saga. From the very moment you boot this game up, though, it positively radiates cheapness, like a knock-off in a dollar store. The character sprites are fuzzy and off-model, the stages are flat 3D surfaces, and there’s no English voice acting. Also, all the characters’ names have trademark symbols next to them, which feels like bad taste.
The game tries to make an effort to include all the hallmarks of Dragon Ball, like flying and shooting ki blasts, but the actual controls and system are difficult to wrap your head around and don’t feel particularly fun or exciting to control. Also, Goten cheats.
6 Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi
Should’ve Been Like SoulCalibur
If any franchise were able to get an easy slam dunk in the fighting game department, you would think it’d be Star Wars. Everyone loves lightsaber combat, after all, so how hard could it be to make a lightsaber-fighting game like SoulCalibur? Well, I guess the only frame of reference we have for that is the Star Wars cameo characters in SoulCalibur IV, because Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi is definitely not like SoulCalibur.
Masters of Teräs Käsi is kind of like a weird, half-baked midpoint between SoulCalibur and Tekken. Nearly every character can alternate between hand-to-hand combat and armed combat, though you always start unarmed and, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to pull my lightsaber out. We’ve got some familiar faces like Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, and Boba Fett, with Darth Vader being unlockable, but half the roster is taken up by random alien dudes with no particular recognizability.
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In addition to the lightsaber conundrum, the combat just doesn’t feel very good. It’s stiff, slow, and floaty, and despite how flashy and acrobatic fights were in the films, they are remarkably lumbering and uninteresting here. There are special moves, but most of them are just regular attacks with a rather obnoxious strobe light effect added on.
5 The Simpsons Wrestling
Not Really Wrestling
You wanna talk about hit-or-miss franchising, The Simpsons have more than a few stories to tell, especially in the gaming sphere. There have been far more bad Simpsons games than good ones, and when the subject comes out, a game that frequently gets name-dropped is The Simpsons Wrestling on the PS1.
Despite the name, this game is only “wrestling” in the sense that fights are set in a ring, you have to win by pinning your opponent for a three-count. Beyond that, it’s complete and utter chaos. You get a small spattering of Simpsons characters to play as, each with a handful of moves based on some of the show’s throwaway jokes; Homer throws bowling balls, Moe has a board with a nail in it, Smithers throws Blinky the three-eyed fish, so on and so forth.
The game uses a weird energy system where you can only use whatever moves you have the power for, and spamming moves prevents you from doing anything interesting. It makes sense on paper, but it’s not particularly fun or interesting to play.
4 Rise of the Robots
Hope You Like the Dude on the Cover
One of the most vital elements that makes up a good fighting game is a large, diverse roster full of characters with distinct playstyles. It’s what allows different players to find their grooves and match with a character that works for them. If you were expecting that out of Rise of the Robots, I’ve got some bad news for you.
This 1994 MS-DOS fighting game tells a weirdly elaborate story of a cyborg battling against other robots that have gone haywire. That cyborg, incidentally, is the only character you’re allowed to play as in the single-player tournament mode. Well, technically that’s not true. The game does have a two-player versus mode, but here’s the wrinkle: only player two gets to choose from amongst the five other playable robots. Player one is stuck with the cyborg guy again, no wiggle room offered.
It doesn’t really matter how the game plays, because you will never experience more than that single slice of it. For the record, though, it also plays badly, with effectively identical punches and kicks across all six buttons and annoyingly strict special inputs.
3 Expect No Mercy
Oh, the Pain
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Developer |
Microforum International |
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Platforms |
PC |
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Release Date |
1995 |
You know what’s worse than a bad fighting game based on a good franchise? A bad fighting game based on a bad franchise. Or a bad movie, in the specific case of 1995’s Expect No Mercy. I’m sure whoever made this film and its game wishes it had managed to become a franchise.
Expect No Mercy is a tie-in to the film of the same name originally released for Windows PCs. The game attempts to cheat off of Mortal Kombat’s homework by using digitized actors in lieu of character sprites, though said actors look extremely out of place amongst their jagged, polygonal backdrops and sound like they’re recording on a cheap, rented soundstage.
The major problem with Expect No Mercy is the distinct lack of any notable gameplay mechanics, or indeed, mechanics, period. All you have to fight are your basic attack inputs. There are no specials, no supers, not even any throws. It is the most stripped-down example of what a fighting game could possibly be while still technically being a fighting game. You could only get more primitive if you played something like Kung Fu on the NES.
2 Criticom
Critical Hit to my Sanity
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Developer |
Kronos Digital Entertainment |
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Platforms |
PS1, Sega Saturn |
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Release Date |
November 1995 |
Because it’s so hard to make a good fighting game, it can be difficult to glean what makes a bad fighting game from a casual glance. Observed at a distance, a game like Criticom, for example, might look just fine. But the moment you take the controller in hand and start playing it for yourself, your immediate reaction will almost definitely be, “Oh no. Oh, that doesn’t feel good at all.”
Criticom was originally released in 1995 for the PS1, and for its time, its 3D graphics actually looked pretty okay! It even had a pretty big roster of mostly-distinct characters, and a nifty sci-fi setting. Like I said, if you just saw it running in attract mode, it might even look fun.
So, what’s the problem? The problem is that the pace of the game is all over the place. Some character moves launch like they’re in slow motion, others come out like a speeding bullet. Said moves seem to fall out with seemingly no rhyme or reason, with specials popping almost of their own volition. Some games just feel bad to play. Criticom is one of them. It is almost worth trying just to see how bad it feels. Almost.
1 Dangerous Streets
Dangerously Incompetent
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Developer |
Micromania |
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Platforms |
MS-DOS, Amiga, Amiga CD32 |
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Release Date |
1993 |
I have to assume that anyone who would actually go to the trouble of making a fighting game would do so because they like fighting games and understand what makes them entertaining. I guess that’s my fault, making assumptions of people, because I am reasonably certain that whoever made Dangerous Streets had never played a fighting game before in their life.
This 1993 MS-DOS game is completely bonkers from the word go, and not in an endearing way. The characters are all hideous, with some designs being outright tasteless, and the stage backgrounds are garish and distracting, especially since some of them have foreground elements that straight-up block your view. That’s only the tip of the iceberg, though.
Rather than a traditional button layout, Dangerous Streets has dedicated buttons for the following: punches, kicks, specials, a crouching attack, a neutral, non-moving jump, and an elaborate blocking animation. Specials are performed by pressing the special button and performing an esoteric input, and most of them take so long to come out, they’ll never hit. It’s like a fighting game created by someone who only overheard the vague concept of fighting games in a crowded train station.
10 Best Abandonware Games
I’m not endorsing emulators, but…
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Author: 360 Technology Group
