Dreiko said:
Mortal Kombat has been a joke for the last 15 years and just last year released one game that wasn't as horrible as the last 10 of them.
It's been a joke for you. But the series has been getting enough support over the years to actually *last* for this long, and that means a lot of people would disagree with you. Even if Mortal Kombat *is* a joke, the fact still stands that it's been around for almost 20 years now and it's a household name in fighters. You really can't argue that Mortal Kombat doesn't belong on the list. It's right up there with Street Fighter as one of the most popular fighting franchises ever.
Dreiko said:
Super Smash Brothers is a party game whose depth stemmed from the glitches that were overlooked by the devs and by it's community cutting away 90% of the content in order to make is as playable as actual fighting games. It's also (brawl especially) widely considered a party game over a fighter by most fighting game experts.
By most fighting game experts? I didn't realize you could major in "fighting game nomenclature" in grad school. I'm just as much an expert as anyone else, considering I've played through every game on the poll and ALMOST every game people are mentioning (except Dead or Alive). And if you're wondering, then no, I'm not a Nintendo fanboy. As a matter of fact, I have absolutely no respect for Nintendo at the moment. So no, I didn't put Super Smash Bros up there because I'm a fan of the series. I put it up there because it's popular. And, all things considered, it's a game where you choose one of a bunch of characters and use them to beat up another one of a bunch of characters. That's the premise of just about all fighting games. And, as you can see by the results, people seem to agree that SSB is a good fighter. Sure, it might be less deep than others, and it might be designed to play with friends, but that doesn't evict it from the genre. It's very possible for a game to be both a fighter and a party game at once. (And this is coming from a so-called "expert")
Dreiko said:
Guilty Gear isn't obscure, it has been out since 1998, has over 10 games and has been renown as one of the best fighters ever to the fighting game community. Blazblue, it's spiritual successor, has received raving reviews, ones even found on THIS site too, as well as awards for best fighter of the year etc. It's an egregious series of oversights to not mention either of them.
Yeah, I've heard this story before. Every single franchise listed on the poll has more or less the same history. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat started as arcade games in 1991 and 1992 respectively. Since then, both have been consistently evolving to fit with the newer generations of technology while at the same time being hugely supported by their respective fanbases. They're household names. They belong on the list.
If I'm not mistaken, the original Marvel vs. Capcom was released in 1995 as an arcade game, and was instantly deemed the "greatest fighting game of all time" by most fans of the genre. At the time, MvC was about as deep and advanced as the genre got. And all the critic acclaim of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 means that, yes, it still holds the same reputation today. That belongs on the list.
Super Smash Bros, I already covered.
If you remember, Soul Calibur started out as Soul Edge, which was released in 1996 as an arcade game. It was the second fully 3D fighting game ever to be released (the first being some obscure arcade release that nobody's played). Also, at the time, it was an oddity for fighting games to feature weapons. If you remember, not even Mortal Kombat had much of the arsenal it uses today. Most characters just fought bare-fisted, because that's the way fighting games were. Soul Calibur changed that, as well as fixed the misconception that fighters could only be played on a 2D plane. That belongs on the list.
Tekken's first game was in 1994, and though it didn't do much in the ways of innovation, it's a series that's held in high esteem by most gamers, not just fighting enthusiasts. It's probably the third most popular name in fighters, just below Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. And, if I remember correctly, it was the first fighting game to be completely loyal to actual martial arts (that is, every move the characters use is something possible in real life. No hadoukens, no flaming breath). I don't know if it's still that way today, as I haven't played very much Tekken lately, but its historical significance still stands. That belongs on the list.
I'm not downgrading Guilty Gear's importance. I'm just saying that it's not quite in the league that these legendary fighters are in. Again, I would have listed more, but there are only 8 slots. And yes, I *did* feel that the "all fighting games suck" choice was necessary.
