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[FortNinety]

I'm almost certain this topic has come up (hell, I might have contributed to such a thread) but after a search, I found nothing. So please don't rape me.

A friend asked a question and I have my answer, but was curious of everyone else's: what makes a fighting game a fighting game? More specifically, why if Virtua Fighter a fighter and not Fight Night?

 

[Oichi]

Fight Night is a fighter, but it's also in the subgenre of boxing, so it's more accurate to call it a boxing game. Games that don't belong to any particular subgenre (like Tekken, Street Fighter, etc.) would simply be considered fighting games, imo.

 

[borghe]

fight night is boxing

fighters can be summed up with:

controls mainly consisting of multi-button combinations to execute.
in an arena or static area (or multilevel area)
usually matches (2 out of 3, 3 out of 5, etc)

if most of these are present, it is a fighter.

fight night fails on 2 of these points.

 

[FeedMeAStrayCat]

I think that every fighting game fits into some sort of subgenre. Even if it's just "2D fighter" or something like that, because that's definitely a hardcore category.

Fight Night is a fighting game, but it's more about boxing that strict all out "fighting". SSB: Melee is just all-out crazyness, so it deserves a genre of it's own.. Well maybe it can be thrown in with the almighty Power Stone series, but it's a little more restrictive (in terms of movement) than those are..

The Clayfighter series, however, is not a fighting game. It's a terrible game. Does not fit in.

 

[Pimpwerx]

Oog say, "Kickass action missles." Oog rip Oog head off! Oog crazy! PEACE.

 

[Quartet]

it's a very basic type of gameplay, as simple as early 80's arcade game in fact. It's based on memorisation of moves and strategy on how to use them.

It then can be expanded, like powerstone and Supersmash brother. In that case it become a brawler. That mean you include liberty of movment to the gameplay and the environment become much a part of the gameplay (lot more than vf3 for exemple).

It can also be expended more, in that case it become a beatmup. In those you can have open level instead of simply play arena.

As fighter are really fundamental gameplay you can insert it in many genre, even in shump like ai cho aniki or platformer like vexx.

 

[Minotauro]

How about wrestling games? Would people classify them as a fighting sub-genre?

No denigrating comments, please.

 

[Kobun Heat]

This is another situation in which the identifying characteristics of the genre go beyond the simple dictionary definition of the word (like "role-playing game" et al).

Specifically, "fighting game" is not used to refer to 'any game in which fights occur.' It's used to refer to the genre of over-the-top, non-realistic, mixed-martial-arts arcade player-versus-player games that follow after the pattern of Street Fighter (1987).