10 Best Fighting Games Forgotten by Time

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Fighting games, as a genre, have been around for decades, bringing people into arcades by the bucketfull to see the latest characters and combos. Of course, as with any genre of game, not every game can safely weather the passage of the ages. More than a few top-shelf fighting games have sadly been lost to the tides of time, barring perhaps the occasional cameo in another of the same publisher’s games or a token legacy collection.

I’m aware that it’s not really realistic to wish that every single fighting game could have a modern presence on par with the likes of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, nor am I suggesting these games are objectively better than those big names. Rather, in this industry, it’s vitally important to know and respect your roots, to appreciate the myriad fighting games that got us to where we are today, even if they themselves couldn’t make it across the finish line with us.

10 Bushido Blade

One Shot, One Kill

There are plenty of fighting games in which the characters use weapons, chiefly swords, but for the most part, these swords are just extensions of their fists. In an actual swordfight, it doesn’t typically take more than one quick swish to instantly kill someone. There was one fighting game released in 1997 that dared to ask, “what if these swords were as deadly as they looked?” That game was Bushido Blade.

Bushido Blade seems like your typical one-on-one weapon fighter a la SoulCalibur at a glance, but the first time you get into a match, you’ll notice the difference: no health gauges. This is because, rather than whittling an opponent down to a KO, it’s a strictly one-shot, one-kill system. All it takes is one well-placed strike, and your foe will collapse in a pool of blood.

Of course, it wouldn’t be very interesting if every match only lasted two seconds. You’re supposed to carefully parry and dodge attacks, mix up your stance, and aim for vital points like the arms or legs to slow your opponent down. It’s a fighting system with a big barrier to entry, but high-level play is the stuff of legends.

9 ClayFighter

Let’s Get Silly With It

Who doesn’t like claymation? It’s a fun and creative way to bring fantastical characters to life, if not a particularly time-effective one. Several modern games have dabbled with claymation or similar forms of stop-motion, but one of the most prominent examples also happens to be one of the silliest fighting games on the SNES: ClayFighter.

ClayFighter is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a cast of claymation abominations brawling it out with wacky, ridiculous moves and powers. From Bad Mr. Frosty to Bonker the clown, this cavalcade of freaks is packed with bizarre animations and reactions that makes smacking them against each other a ton of fun.

The actual gameplay is kind of like a mix of Street Fighter Alpha and Killer Instinct, with a big emphasis on parries and combos in addition to the usual special attacks. The entertainment value comes mostly from the presentation, and that’s a quality that persisted into subsequent games. Fun fact, the final game in the series, Sculptor’s Cut, is one of the most valuable N64 games out there.

8 King Of The Monsters

It’s A Kaiju World, And We’re Living In It

It feels like there aren’t enough fighting games about giant monsters. It seems like a really obvious concept, especially considering how often monsters fight each other in movies, but not so much in games. One of the few examples of kaiju brawlers we’ve gotten is the SNK arcade classic, King of the Monsters, no relation to the Godzilla movie.

King of the Monsters is an arena brawler game in which you can go head-to-head with the computer, another player, or team up with a partner to battle the computer. You’ve got six monsters to choose from, all copyright-safe knockoffs of giant beasties like Godzilla, King Kong, or Ultraman, and an entire destructible city to duke it out in. Despite the fantastical premise, the game is actually more akin to wrestling than anything else, with monsters making extensive use of pile drivers, body slams, backdrops, and other heavy-duty grapples in addition to the usual punches and kicks.

The city arena is full of buildings for you to smash, intentionally or otherwise, which then drop point bonuses and power-ups to help you along the way. You can also sling your foe across the arena into the boundaries, where they’ll be electrocuted and launched back to you. It’s like watching super-sized WWE.

7 Primal Rage

Everything’s Better With Dinosaurs

Speaking of giant monsters, if you want to make a game about giant monsters, you can always rely on everyone’s favorite prehistoric beasts, the dinosaurs, for quick inspiration. Everything’s better with dinosaurs, and who doesn’t like watching dinosaurs beat the snot out of each other? That’s what gives Primal Rage its enduring appeal.

Primal Rage is a one-on-one fighting game with a similar vibe to Mortal Kombat, in which you play as one of several super-powerful dinosaurs (or similarly large creatures like an ape or cobra) and duke it out for ownership of post-apocalyptic Earth. Every monster has its own unique set of special abilities, like breathing fire or performing leaping claw slashes, alongside some sillier stuff like blowing giant, toxic farts.

It’s a pretty visceral game, which I guess is thematically appropriate. You can pick up the humans wandering underfoot and either eat them or chuck them at your opponent, and after draining your foe’s health, you can perform brutal finishing moves to really seal the deal, punctuated by the heart on the health meter exploding in a little splotch of blood.

6 Bloody Roar

Going Beast Mode

I am an absolute sucker for games with transformation mechanics. There’s something about being a regular dude, and then turning into something decidedly not regular in a flash of light, that always gets my hype thrusters firing. That’s why it’s such a shame that Bloody Roar hasn’t persisted into the modern age, because it’s got the transforming thing down to a tee.

Bloody Roar is a 3D fighting game, similar to Tekken or Virtua Fighter. At the start of a match, both characters seem normal, going at each other with the usual punches and kicks. However, using the meter under your health bar, you can transform into a unique Beast form, a half-human, half-animal hybrid. Not only does the Beast transformation look awesome, it grants a major power-up to your character, unlocking additional moves, passively restoring some of their life bar, and shifting their weight and jumping properties a bit.

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Bloody Roar has a similar energy to a forgotten afternoon anime series, with fighters transforming into hulking Beast forms and crackling with energy as they pummel each other senseless. It’s the kind of thing that would have had great action figure potential, thinking about it.

Let The Robots Do The Talking

Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness

While we’re on the subject of things that make great toys, giant robots. Much like giant monsters, there aren’t that many giant robot-themed fighting games, or at least not many that are traditional one-on-one affairs rather than high-flying arena skyboxes like the multiplayer Gundam games. If you want a game with giant robots going head-to-head like gentlemen, you’re looking for Cyberbots.

One of Capcom’s forgotten arcade classics, Cyberbots is like supersized Street Fighter with a customizable twist. Both combatants have their own robot to pilot, each of which can be customized with swappable arms, legs, and weaponry, all of which affect how they handle and the attacks they can use. Despite the relative size of the robots, it’s a pretty fast-paced fighting game, something that the super robot fan in me appreciates. Of course, this doesn’t affect the intense impact you get when a robot gets to unleash its super move.

Fun fact, the game’s main pilot, Jin Saotome, was a playable character in Marvel VS. Capcom. Of course, Jin only controls his robot, Blodia, rather than fighting himself, so they pretty much had to make up an entire moveset for him from scratch.

4 Red Earth

A Fighting Game RPG

Developer

Platforms

Release Date

Capcom

Arcade

December 1996

While we’ve seen all kinds of genre crossovers over the gaming generations, it’s a bit tricky to mix fighting games with other genres due to how much work goes into balancing them alone. One of the few examples I can think of that made an earnest attempt at combining fighting with another genre, specifically RPGs, is Red Earth.

Red Earth is a slightly different game depending on whether you play it solo or with a friend. In the latter case, it’s a pretty traditional Capcom fighting game, with every character having their own unique move list of skills and specials for pitched combat. Where Red Earth really shines, though, is as a single-player game. When you play solo, the game becomes an entire fighting game RPG, including battles against giant monsters and leveling systems.

In addition to the regular human-sized opponents you can fight in versus mode, the solo campaign pits you against substantially larger boss monsters like dragons and automatons, each with much larger health bars that require concentrated efforts to whittle down. As you clear fights, you’ll receive recovery items, as well as EXP that unlocks new moves in your movelist. The game even had a password system so you could retrieve your properly-leveled character, even in the arcade.

3 Rival Schools

Two For The Price Of One

Rival Schools: United by Fate

Two on two fighting games have been a thing for decades, with standouts like Marvel VS. Capcom having you tag between two fighters or calling your partner in for a joint Hyper Combo. Rival Schools is a bit of an outlier amongst tag-team fighting games in that your partner is more of a resource than a usable character, at least from round-to-round.

In Rival Schools, one player controls a team of two characters. However, you can’t tag in your secondary character at your leisure like in other games. Rather, by filling up your super meter, your primary character can call them in for a unique team-up attack, which changes depending on the particular combination of characters you’re using. You still have regular, single-character supers that consume less meter, so if you want to phone a friend, you have to really commit to it.

You can only swap characters between rounds, and if you tag your secondary in, there are no take-backs, so you need to either commit wholly to using one character and leave the other on standby, or be absolutely sure you know how to play as both characters on your team.

2 Power Stone

The Dreamcast Classic

There’s a certain subgenre of fighting games that I like to call “party fighters,” which place less of an emphasis on pure skill and tactics and more on utilizing the environment and consumable items. Super Smash Bros. is a good example of this, though one of my personal favorite party fighters is that forgotten seller of Dreamcast consoles, Power Stone.

Power Stone is an arena fighting game where you have free rein of a larger, open arena to do battle in. Each individual character, while aesthetically very different, has more or less the same basic abilities, including a basic combo and grabs. Rather, the real meat of the system is in your environment. You can chuck loose boxes and furniture at each other, perform spinning leaps off of support beams, or if you’re a larger character, even rip those beams right out of the ground and swing them like bats. Chests with items and weapons regularly spawn in, allowing you to perform more powerful attacks for a limited time.

Of course, the big draw is the titular Power Stones, colorful gems that periodically spawn in. If you collect three, you’ll transform into a superpowered form, gaining an entirely new moveset of unique attacks and super-flashy finisher moves.

1 Darkstalkers

Still Waiting, Capcom

If you ask most fighting game fans which lost franchise they wish would return from the shadows, there’s a strong possibility they’ll all say the same thing: Darkstalkers. Darkstalkers was one of Capcom’s biggest arcade franchises, rivaling even the likes of Street Fighter in its heyday. Its characters still show up in crossover games, collections, and cameos, but there hasn’t been an actual new Darkstalkers game since 1997, and that’s just sad.

The original Darkstalkers starred a cast of monsters from around the world battling in the dark of night, with standouts like Demitri the vampire, Morrigan the succubus, and Felicia the catwoman. Compared to Street Fighter, it was a much more fantastical game, reveling in magic and curses for its characters and their special abilities, which helped to give it a much more distinctive visual identity.

The gameplay is built off the conceptual bones of Street Fighter 2, but the first Darkstalkers actually pioneered some mechanics that would become fighting game mainstays later on, like air blocking, EX-specials, and crouch walking. It’s a pretty technical game, and that’s what made it so cool to watch in arcades back in the day.