irst we’ve got to go back to a time before
Xbox, of course... before consoles at all in
fact, when your fix of great fighting games
had to come from the arcades.
The first hand-to-hand fighting game is
credited as being from arcade giant SEGA,
and it was a boxing game. There are of course
loads of sports-sim fighters, which we’re not
going to talk about here. But Heavyweight
Champ could be found in arcades from 1976,
and was a monochromatic, primitive affair
in which, crucially, the action was viewed
from a side-on perspective – thus laying the
foundations for every fighting game since.
Strangely, the new genre took a little while
to catch on, and it wasn’t until the 1980s
that the beat-’em-up became popular, and
more recognisable today, with the release
of Data East’s Karate Champ and Konami’s
Yie Ar Kung Fu. Although the action took
place against a static backdrop, the small
sprites of both games had more in common
with the following trend for side-scrollers –
leading eventually to the likes of Streets Of
Rage. What was needed was more fluidity
of movement, a wider, more reactive range
of attacks and defensive moves, while the
sprites needed to get bigger and bolder – and
they certainly did that with 1987’sStreet
Fighter. Capcom’s hit arcade series set a real
benchmark, with its inclusion of a choice of
memorable characters, special attack moves
and mashable multi-button controls, though
it wasn’t until its sequel,Street Fighter IIin
1991, that the series really took off. To this
day,Street Fighter IIremains a benchmark of
fighting games, and can be played on Xbox
One as part of the30th Anniversary Edition.
First fatalities
The early ’90s saw the genesis of another still
popular and massively influential franchise,
Mortal Kombat. The influence of Ed Boon and
Midway’s fighter is still being felt today in
every single videogame. The photo-realistic
style was a counterpoint toStreet Fighter’s
hyper-real, cartoon style, but it was the
realism of the violence on offer inMortal
Kombatthat really shook things up. Such
TOP Tekken 7.
ABOVE Street
Fighter II.
LEFTDragon Ball
FighterZg.was the controversy around the game’s
fatalities – involving cutting your opponents
in half or ripping their spines out through
their mouths – that it resulted in age ratings
being introduced to videogames. In fact,MK
pretty much single-handedly started all those
ridiculous and still-raging debates about the
effects of videogame violence on the fragile,
egg-shell minds of the young.
Street FighterandMortal Kombat
led to not only a resurgence in the“Mortal Kombat’s fatalities
resulted in age ratings
being introduced to games”
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