What Happened To Fighting Games?

Once upon a time, in an arcade or corner party store near you, Fighting Games reigned supreme. Street Fighter II, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, whatever the game, the competition was always fierce and most times fun. Quarter after Quarter would line the cabinets as you awaited your chance to assert your dominance over your friends and foes. With the advent of the home systems and arcade-perfect translations of favorite fighting games started to slowly kill the genre. Online Gaming pretty much killed it outright. In the years since however, we feel as though something has been lost. Being able to see you opponents face as you fight. Slapping fives in respect after a hard fought battle. You can’t get that with online gaming. Your opponents are faceless, and many of them, since they aren’t next to you, say some pretty crazy stuff. We miss the crowds around the machine…the hype atmosphere. Today we’re going to discuss what brought us into fighting games, and what’s missing from the genre today.