• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

What is the third most influential fighting game series?

What is the third most influential fighting game series?

  • King of Fighters

    Votes: 93 7.2%

  • Mortal Kombat

    Votes: 676 52.2%

  • Darkstalkers/Vampire

    Votes: 52 4.0%

  • Super Smash Bros.

    Votes: 427 33.0%

  • Power Stone

    Votes: 8 0.6%

  • Other

    Votes: 38 2.9%
  • Total voters
    1,294
JusDoIt

JusDoIt

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
35,261
South Central Los Angeles
There's no debating what the two most influential fighting game series are. Street Fighter is a given and Virtua Fighter is lowkey responsible for shaping the last three decades of console gaming. But what is the third most influential fighting game series?

I'm not asking about commercial success or popularity, but for fighting game series that inspired the design of games that followed. There are some titles that immediately come to mind. Darkstalkers' DNA runs through most anime/air dashers. Smash was the only major platform fighter for a while, but that's no longer the case with clones like Brawlhalla and Multiversus making noise. And Power Stone is one of the first arena fighters, a subgenre that now includes countless Naruto games, ARMS, and even a battle royale in Rumbleverse. I think good arguments can be made for other series too, and I'm not sure if there is a clear third place after SF and VF.

But what say y'all?
 
Neoxon

Neoxon

Spotlighting Black Excellence - Diversity Analyst
Member
Oct 25, 2017
85,772
Houston, TX
Probably Smash for pioneering platform fighters. Although one could give KoF credit got inspiring Sakurai to create Smash in the first place.
 
eraFROMAN

eraFROMAN

One Winged Slayer
Member
Mar 12, 2019
2,928
Mortal Kombat, despite being pretty jank in the early days, is representative of single player content in fighting games, IMO

Smash is influential, but other games influence it more than the other way around, for the most part. It still doesn't have a AAA competitor in the genre, even
 

dreamstation

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,649
Australia
Mortal Kombat. Which other series has so many entries as well as a whole swag of movies, shows, figurines, merch, etc. Guarantee most people you ask on the street which fighting game they know they'd say either Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter.
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
Member
Oct 25, 2017
50,134
I can't imagine that someone would ask this question if they were into fighting games after Mortal Kombat came out. There was basically a clear split between games that were trying to be Street Fighter and games that were trying to be Mortal Kombat.
 
DrFunk

DrFunk

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,032
I'd say Mortal Kombat as well:

- spawned the idea of 'finishing moves'
- not sure if it was the first, but made digital actors popular
- made the idea of rainbow ninjas popular
 

closer

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,181
whichever game that shifted from buying multiple updates of the same game towards making the player pay for dlc characters
 

closer

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,181
or maybe whichever game that copied the season pass model, which has also affected how often a game gets patched or balanced
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
Member
Oct 25, 2017
50,134
"Mortal Kombat didn't influence much" reads to me a lot like "Sonic might have been relevant in the nineties but"
 
J_Macgrady

J_Macgrady

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,130
I would probably choose Darkstalkers from that list with Smash being a close 2nd. Darkstalkers was the first fighting game with the chain combo system and has influenced pretty much every anime fighter.
 
OP
OP
JusDoIt

JusDoIt

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
35,261
South Central Los Angeles
closer said:
whichever game that shifted from buying multiple updates of the same game towards making the player pay for dlc characters
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Super Street Fighter IV?

J_Macgrady said:
I would probably choose Darkstalkers from that list with Smash being a close 2nd. Darkstalkers was the first fighting game with the chain combo system and has influenced pretty much every anime fighter.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Capcom Fighting Collection is for sure what inspired this question.
 

rude

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,812
what did MK change or influence? Not asking ironically. can't think of anything specific myself.
 
Tribal24

Tribal24

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
2,384
When I read that title I was like wheres Street Fighter! I think it's Dark stalkers though alot of it's Dna was used as the base for VS Games. I think the Vs games inspired things like Smash as well.
 
J_ToSaveTheDay

J_ToSaveTheDay

"This guy are sick" and Corrupted by Vengeance
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
18,975
USA
I initially voted MK, and now perusing other's responses, I think I will gladly back up that MK was wildly successful but not necessarily influential.

But yeah, Darkstalkers pioneering and popularizing chain combos is huge. I think Darkstalkers breaking hard away from martial arts film tropes (in contrast to SF and MK) probably greatly expanded the creative takes on fighting games, too.
 
Mass Effect

Mass Effect

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 31, 2017
16,939
dreamstation said:
Mortal Kombat. Which other series has so many entries as well as a whole swag of movies, shows, figurines, merch, etc. Guarantee most people you ask on the street which fighting game they know they'd say either Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

what does this have to do with influencing other fighting games?

I think there's an argument to be made that it inspired a bunch of clones in the 90s or to make existing fighters more gritty, but even then I feel like MK's influence is long over.
 
skillzilla81

skillzilla81

"This guy are sick"
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
10,053
Vampire Savior is legit responsible for most anime and vs. fighting game mechanics. It's that, imo.
 

t26

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
4,600
KoF for the ideas of cross over series, multiple fighters - you later see it in Capcom VS games, Smash Brothers.
 

closer

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,181
JusDoIt said:
Super Street Fighter IV?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The one I hear about the most is probably sf x tekken, where ppl were really scandalized that there were complete dlc chars on disc already that you had to pay for. I'm not really familiar myself with a lot of the early examples, but there's a decent amount of ppl who think that dlc has kind of added a p2w aspect to modern fgs where you gotta buy em to lab em or where they are constantly overtuned on release (dunno if this is a thing, there's some glaring "examples" but it's not like I know what the data looks like for something like this lol), and these dlc plans often dictate when a game is patched too; there is also I guess an innate expectation that fgs will get patched now, tho how often varies, but we don't really see much full price re-releases much after sf x tekken I think. Like guilty gear did a bunch but now they are on the dlc wagon/rollout for sure

I've only played a couple of fighting games in the last 10 years but I sort of struggle to think of games where dlc or season pass stuff isnt completely integrated with the experience of playing a fighting game now

sorry if this is derailing, I know you mean more influential mechanics, but I had the thought and wanted to spill it out lol
 
Last edited:
ScoobsJoestar

ScoobsJoestar

Member
May 30, 2019
4,071
I'm voting KOF because I'm Latino

edit: For real though, being a good fighting game with cheap(ish) ways to play helped spread the genre across a lot of places in South America and I genuinely owe a lot of my early fighting game memories to this series. Something to be said about half-baked arcades in bakeries.
 
Pirateluigi

Pirateluigi

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,931
Mortal Kombat helped lead to the ESRB. That's a pretty huge influence on its own.

Besides that, there are countless MK rip-offs, finishers in almost every fighting game, and the expansive story mode of the more recent games.
 

Deleted member 29674

Banned
Nov 1, 2017
370
I voted other for Cyber Troopers Virtual-On, which I strongly believe is a spiritual ancestor to Dark Souls and tons of other games spanning across tons of genres.
 
KidAAlbum

KidAAlbum

Member
Nov 18, 2017
3,181
I voted for Darkstalkers just because of the amount of anime fighters that sprung up after. Smash has a good claim for creating a subgenre. The only reason why I chose Darkstalkers over it is because I believe there are less platform fighters than there are anime fighters.
 

Deleted member 34949

Account closed at user request
Banned
Nov 30, 2017
19,101
KidAAlbum said:
I voted for Darkstalkers just because of the amount of anime fighters that sprung up after. Smash has a good claim for creating a subgenre. The only reason why I chose Darkstalkers over it is because I believe there are less platform fighters than there are anime fighters.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It also took a while for platform fighters outside of Smash to really start being developed in earnest; Darkstalkers' influence was pretty immediate in comparison.
 
Judau

Judau

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,848
L Thammy said:
"Mortal Kombat didn't influence much" reads to me a lot like "Sonic might have been relevant in the nineties but"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You said it yourself, though; MK mostly inspired bad MK knockoffs. As far as I'm concerned, MK is MK. The only other games like it are the sequels and the Injustice games, which are made by the same people, anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, but none of the knockoffs spawned a franchise.

Honestly, I'm inclined to say the same about Smash, but also, I'm not enough into Smash or games like it to actually know one way or the other.
 
Ferrio

Ferrio

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,136
If we're going by mechanics and stuff, KoF. Both Capcom and SNK pioneered so many of the mechanics we see nowadays.
 
Zeliard

Zeliard

Member
Jun 21, 2019
10,971
L Thammy said:
I can't imagine that someone would ask this question if they were into fighting games after Mortal Kombat came out. There was basically a clear split between games that were trying to be Street Fighter and games that were trying to be Mortal Kombat.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Agreed. I'd probably put MK above Virtua Fighter honestly.

I don't think the youngins realize just the impact MK had.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.