Beyond the other stuff mentioned "Mortal Monday" was basically the first big modern AAA game launch in the US with a huge marketing campaign pushing a specific release date.
Nah. This is effectively a direct copy of "Sonic Twosday" (which was also a way catchier name for the day) from a year before. I'm not sure if there's others that predate Sonic 2, but Mortal Kombat is 100% not the first of its kind for this.
Being completely real, Power Stone had no business getting a spot on the poll. If you were looking to nominate a game for spawning the arena fighter subgenre, that game would be Virtual On. Doesn't matter if we're talking Gundam Vs, Dissidia, or all the Naruto, DBZ, etc anime arena fighters... every arena fighter where you play facing forwards Z-locked to your opponent, is derived from Virtual On. There are very few fighters comparatively that adopt a Power Stone / Ergheiz / Bushido Blade style system.
Virtual On is one of the most criminally under-credited IP in gaming considering what it established all the way back in 1996.
I'm gonna go on a bit of a Virtua Fighter tangent here, because I'm seeing a lot of downplaying of Virtua Fighter in here, and I'm kinda not having it lol
I mean, Virtual Fighter for all purpose has been a dead franchise for 20 years.
If Doom 2016 weren't released, that wouldn't make any claims that Doom wasn't super-influential to the FPS genre any less ridiculous. Over time genres go from infancy to maturity. A mature genre has far less left to influence. Mortal Kombat is no doubt a very influential fighter, but it was born into a semi-mature landscape of the 2D fighter, where much of what we have today had already been established by Street Fighter. Virtua Fighter was born into a landscape where effectively
nothing had yet been established, and it established the vast majority of what a 3D fighter STILL is to this day. Much of it in its very first attempt (a far more competent achievement than the first Street Fighter, despite having less prior examples to work off).
You argue as if 3D fighting games wouldn't exist if VF didn't make the first one. They would, how they would be today is impossible to know and a waste of time to argue. Ed Boon and his team certainly didn't use Virtua Fighter as a base to develop most of their games, if you believe that I don't even know what to think of you.
The fact is, MK exists today and influences games today. Since you like the "it wouldn't exist if..." argument so much, let me tell you something, SFVI, the single most anticipated fighting game to come out wouldn't be what it is without MK influence on the importance of single player content.
Again, I do not wish to be dismissive about VF importance to fighting games. It was a pioneer, a fantastic blueprint to a dozen of way better 3D fighting games that happened to be what people look up to when they need to get inspiration nowadays.
Ok. So for the highlighted text above...
No... this isn't how being influential works. You don't just get to say "3D fighters would've happened regardless" to dismiss a game's influence. You could make such ridiculously dismissive arguments about any aspect of any game, and that would include anything you'd credit Mortal Kombat for introducing. Mortal Kombat is hugely popular, but within the fighting game genre the fact that it itself is based on Street Fighter, and Street Fighter still to this day remains the most influential 2D fighter in existence, means Mortal Kombat quite frankly doesn't have enough oxygen left in the room to be as influential to the genre, unless it were able to de-establish much of what Street Fighter had ingrained into the genre. Additional modes, and story presentation are definitely worthy of praise.. but when talking genre influence, stuff like that sits well below fundamental mechanics that establish how a game itself plays. Street Fighter is the undisputed king when it comes to establishing the legacy of how a 2D fighter plays. There is a very clear pre/post line for before and after Street Fighter (especially Street Fighter 2). For 3D, Virtua Fighter is that game.. and here's why:
I actually don't disagree with you that a 3D polygonal fighter was going go happen sooner rather than later regardless of if Virtua Fighter existed or not. But that's unimportant, because being a fighter with 3D graphics never automatically would have meant being a fighter with any similarity to Virtua Fighter. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, King of Fighters, Marvel vs Capcom, etc... all of these are now using 3D graphics, but they are still classed as being 2D fighters despite that. Why is that?... It's because their gameplay
mechanics are still derived directly from Street Fighter's 2D heritage, just with a 3D presentation layer on top. And that is actually the safest, most logical progression for what an early 3D fighting game would be back in 1993 at the height of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat's popularity. But what we refer to as 3D fighters today DON'T look or play anything like that. They look and play like Virtua Fighter, because rather than just be a traditional fighting game of the time, but this time with 3D polygons, Virtua Fighter instead redefined what it meant to be a fighting game entirely, along with bringing 3D graphics to the table.
The number of mechanics Virtua Fighter lays claim to is basically impossible to list out, because it started from ground zero and established pretty much all of them. The new ground game that is standard to 3D fighters, with rising kicks, ground pounds, rolls, etc... none of this was part of the established fighting game template prior. The move away from "special moves" and jump ins, to instead have an entire command list of moves that were considered hierarchically even and situational to create a fully developed ground game. Your physical position in the arena carrying more weight beyond the old "trapped in the corner", with stuff like ring out potentially costing you a round regardless of current health. Feigning an attack by cancelling it after it's initiation. Strings executing regardless of if contact is made with the opponent or if you're just whiffing the entire string. String mixups where the command list is full of strings with branching paths. Running based on distance from opponent (as opposed to just forward and back dashes). Back facing attacks (and a turn around game in general). Throws being height specific. End of round replays from different angles.
If I were to sit here for longer I'd probably just continue coming up with stuff that's considered entirely standard today in a 3D fighter, that cannot be automatically assumed would have been the case regardless if a team with less creative vision had instead made "Street Fighter 2 but in 3D" and become a worldwide phenomenon with that game instead. Virtua Fighter influences EVERY game in the 3D fighter subgenre, because it literally created that subgenre and all the base rules it operates on. And unlike something like Karate Champ, it did it with such incredible competency right out of the gate, that the blueprint didn't need to be significantly redefined by any other game afterwards. But you know... that's not even where it's influence ends. We can also look at some of the more miscellaneous aspects of the genre that it impacted in ways we accept as standard today.
- You know how in 2D fighters, when you pick the same character, and the 2nd player is a palette swapped version of the 1st player? Yea... well Virtua Fighter didn't do that. It gave the 2nd player a different outfit entirely. Thus bringing alternate outfits to fighters
- Virtua Fighter 4 introduced the card system and VF.Net, which basically introduced everything we accept as the standard for fighters in todays online landscape... including:
- Character customisations. Taking alternate costumes a step further, you could now win items to decorate and personalise your character with
- Ranking battle and titles. Ranks, promotion matches, etc... yup, this is where they're from... EVEN IN THE SINGLEPLAYER QUEST MODE... So yea, singleplayer content indeed
- In depth training mode. Not just a mode where you beat up a dummy whilst checking your command list. A real training mode, that covers the various gameplay mechanics from a beginner to intermediate level, with trials and such.
Each Virtua Fighter innovated the genre in ways that many other 3D fighters would learn from. VF2 with its unique throw escape animations for every breakable throw and the addition of secondary "kata" intros. Virtua Fighter 3 for realistic fully 3D arenas and a dedicated dodge mechanic (later refined to more resemble Tekken's take on it). But Virtua Fighter 4... Virtua Fighter 4 with VF.Net established basically everything online fighters now do as standard. So yes, Virtua Fighter is still influencing games today. It's impossible for it not to, because to be a 3D fighter and not be influenced by Virtua Fighter is like being a 3D action game without being influenced by Ocarina of Time. It's basically not possible.
Now I don't wanna read any more Virtua Fighter disrespect in this thread. Thank you for your time.
