Fighting Games

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Arc System Works recently released a new video that highlights I-No in Guilty Gear StrIVe.


Here's some fighting game history!


Mirror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGLtfq7xrx0

This is a tech demo for Virtua Fighter 3 that was showcased in the Amusement Machine Operators' Union (AOU) Show in 1996.

This was a year after the release of the PS1... this was also before Quake, before the Nintendo 64, and even before the 3DFX Voodoo 1 were released. Yet here we have a game with real-time graphics that looked like an early PS2 game. Think about that for a minute.

Of course, being so powerful meant that the price for a single Model 3 arcade board was enormous.

While we are still at it, let me remind you that back in the day, fighting games were THE cutting edge graphics showcases, together with racers and shmups/Shoot 'em ups, genres that were really popular in arcades. Be the 2D ones (SNK and Capcom entries mostly) or 3D (Sega, Tecmo and sometimes Namco). That was during times when arcades not only were more powerful than home systems, but also popular enough. That's no longer the case tho, what with arcades going niche and consoles/PC becoming the new gfx showcases - mostly PC, they were always ahead of consoles in that regard. The spot that originally belonged to fighting games, racers and shmups as the 'cutting edge graphics showcases' was filled by other genres like FPS.

This was specially the case with Virtua Fighter, as those games were intended from the very begining to double as tech demos. A video game that also doubles as a tech demo. Pretty cool, huh? An FPS example is Crysis.

I know there are modern fighting games out there that are graphically impressive, but those are more of an exception rather than the norm.

EDIT: Yes, I know graphics and visuals aren't everything. But hey, there's nothing wrong with talking about it from time to time.