Famous Firsts in Fighting Games

People are always curious as to who or what came first. Who made the first telephone? Who was the first to climb Mount Everest? What was the first computer? There are simple answers (e.g. Alexander Graham Bell, Edmund Hillary, Atanasoff-Berry Computer, respectively), but they’re not always necessarily the right ones as there might be contesting accounts (e.g. Antonio Meucci, Norgay Tenzing, The Difference Engine).

It’s the same with video games. Which game was the first to do what, and what impact did they have on the scene? Sometimes these questions turn up some surprises. For example, Manbiki Shōnen from 1979 beat Metal Gear by 8 years to become the first stealth game. So, which fighting games turned out to be pioneers with some famous firsts?

8

Heavyweight Champ

First Fighting Game (1976)

• Developer: Sega
• Platform: Arcade
• Release: October 1976

Capcom, SNK, Bandai-Namco, ArcSystem Works, French Bread, and other developers broke ground in the fighting game genre. But it was Sega who set the ground in the first place all the way back in 1976 with Heavyweight Champ. In this arcade game, up to two players used a boxing glove-shaped controller to mix between low and high strikes.

The game used two big, black-and-white sprites to display the action, with a basic score counter. As simple and ugly as it looks, it was a success when it hit the arcades. Unfortunately, it wasn’t successful enough to avoid becoming lost media, as neither its original cabinets nor its ROMs have survived the test of time. The only version of the game available today is its 1987 remake, which played more like Punch-Out with a behind-the-back view.

7

Warrior

First Weapons-Based Fighter (1979)

• Developer: Tim Skelly
• Platform: Arcade
• Release: October 1979

Most fighting games see characters trade feet and fists in hand-to-hand combat. But others prefer to clash steel against steel with weapons-based fighters, like SoulCalibur, Samurai Shodown, and the Guilty Gear series. Pitting swords of all kinds against each other, or against axes, kunai, cat claws, etc., can be just as thrilling as the genre’s barehanded equivalents.

The earliest example on record is Warrior, a top-down view vector arcade game where players used two sticks and a button to control the action. The button switched the player’s knight character between armed and unarmed combat. One stick controlled their movement, while the other controlled their sword. It was the first game to use motion capture, but it was tricky to get to grips with, and its cabinets were prone to hardware failures. Luckily, it can be played today via MAME.

6

Karate Champ/Street Fighter

First Games with Special Moves (1984/1987)

• Developers: Technos Japan/Capcom
• Platforms: Arcade, Apple 2, Commodore 64, NES, Famicom Disk System (Karate Champ), Arcade, Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, MS-DOS, TurboGrafx-CD (Street Fighter)
• Release: May 1984

Trading basic kicks and punches was one thing, but fighting games caught on better once characters could pull off their own special moves. The big question is: what qualifies as a special move? Does it need to be a fireball or flashy rising uppercut, or just a better punch or kick? If it’s the latter, it would go to Karate Champ, where players can press a direction+punch/kick to pull off extra moves.

But if fans want the former, the first Street Fighter was the first game to let players throw Hadoukens and Shoryukens. These did a lot of damage if they hit. The keyword being ‘if’, as SF1‘s controls were much stiffer compared to rival games. The CPU would let Sagat throw Tiger Shots and Tiger Knees all day, but players were stuck desperately trying to get Ryu to fire back. It’s little wonder that most people prefer its more famous follow-up.

5

Shanghai Kid/Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior

First Games with Combos (1985/1991)

• Developers: Nihon Game/Capcom
• Platforms: Arcade (Shanghai Kid)/Arcade, SNES, Sega Master System, PC Engine, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MS-DOS, Game Boy, CPS Changer, Java ME (Street Fighter 2)
• Release: June 1985/March 1991

This one seems easy, as it’s a famous story. Combos started off as a glitch in Street Fighter 2 that let players cancel the animation of one move into the startup of another. It switched the focus of the genre from getting one big meaty strike, to seeing who could link the most attacks together. This one bug made every game that came before it feel dated overnight. Yet there were earlier games that intentionally let players combine strikes together, like Shanghai Kid.

It wasn’t quite the same as SF2, as players couldn’t pull off combos right from the start. But once that ‘RUSH!’ prompt came up, players could press the punch and kick buttons in a rhythm to keep their chain of strikes going. While it was a stiffer approach compared to SF2, SNK were inspired to use a similar approach for their fighters, with later KOF games still calling their combos ‘rushes.’

4

Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior

First Game with Fatalities (1987)

• Developer: Palace Software
• Platforms: Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Apple 2, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, ZX Spectrum, MS-DOS, Amstrad CPC, Java ME
• Release: 1987

Much like combos, the first game to do fatalities depends on the definition. If the term means a post-match execution players could pull off if they knew the code, then it would go to Mortal Kombat. If they mean a game where the player could kill their opponent with the right strike (more like MK’s later Brutalities), it would be Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior (aka Death Sword). It lets fighters use a spinning slash that could decapitate foes if it connected.

Then a goblin would turn up to drag the body away and kick the head off-screen like a football. This act of violence didn’t cause as much controversy as MK later would, since it was less graphic. (It was an 8-bit game). However, the scantily clad model on the game’s cover caused an uproar in the press. Decapitation is one thing, but barely covered body parts is apparently quite another.

3

Art of Fighting

First Game with Super Combos (1992)

Once SF2 made the term ‘Hadouken’ a household name, it was only logical that the next step up from these special moves was to produce even bigger special moves, or super combos for short. They’d be harder to pull off, as they’d usually require the player to fill a special meter, but pulling them off at the right time would deal enough damage to turn the tide of battle. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo is generally credited as the first game to feature them, usually in tandem with Art of Fighting 2.

But Ryo and Robert could pull off their giant fireballs and attack barrages right in the first Art of Fighting too. They weren’t commonly used, as it required the player to be low on health and high on spirit meter. Other SNK fighters at the time also required the player to either be low on health or take damage to fill their meter, making their super combos, or ‘Desperation Moves’, some of the first comeback mechanics in the genre.

2

4D Sports Boxing/Virtua Fighter

First 3D Fighting Games (1991/1993)

• Developers: Distinctive Software/Sega AM-2
• Platforms: Commodore Amiga, MS-DOS, Macintosh, FM Towns Marty (4D Sports Boxing)/Arcade, Sega Saturn, Sega 32X, R-Zone, PC (Virtua Fighter)
• Release: June 1991/October 1993

Surely the first 3D fighting game was Virtua Fighter? The Guinness Book of World Records says it was, and it certainly looks the part. Those blocky figures were enough to convince other companies to get in on 3D gaming themselves. Yet Sega AM-2 was beaten to the punch by 2 years by 4D Sports Boxing, where even blockier-looking boxers could try to beat each other.

4D Sports Boxing had full 3D movement (sidesteps, etc.), and used motion capture to produce realistic animations. Players could even train between bouts to boost their boxers’ stats. But it was slower and stodgier than VF1, and only replicated different kinds of boxing as opposed to VF1‘s jeet kune do, crane kung fu, wrestling, etc. Nonetheless, the crew at Distinctive Software, including then-future Xbox head Don Mattrick, could be credited as pioneers of the 3D fighting genre.

1

Net Fighter

First Online Fighting Game (1998)

• Developer: Syrox Developments
• Platform: PC
• Release: 1998

There are fans who prefer the weird, wacky lore behind the big series, or the variety of single-player content on display. But fighting games live or die depending on how well their online modes work, since they’re ultimately about two people fighting each other, rather than one person and a CPU. It’s how SF2 helped keep arcades alive for another decade, and why fighting games almost died with them until online play became commonplace in the mid-2000s.

The first game to let players battle it out over the internet was Net Fighter, a rather generic brawler that was exclusive to SegaSoft’s Heat.net service. The game didn’t have the pizzazz to pull players away from Quake 2 or Baldur’s Gate, but it worked okay for late-90s net play. It would be another two years before Capcom gave it a try with the Japan-exclusive Super Street Fighter 2 X for Matching Service on the Dreamcast, and 6 years before Mortal Kombat: Deception gave it a go in 2004.