[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Sumac

I disagree with MK having more competition at home consoles in 2000s. Extinction of arcades and popularization of First Person-Shooter and availability of good network connection led to extinction of fighting games, so only few titles ended up being popular - MK, Tekken, SoulCalibur and Dead or Alive. But DOA was an exclusive at the time, SC was getting worse with each next game, so it was between MK and Tekken.

Everything else was so irrelevant and low key, that it is strange to compare, say Guilty Gear or Melty Blood to Mortal Kombat. Until recently Guilty Gear was extreme niche, no better than some one off titles, which never left Japan. I am not saying they were bad games, but they had nowhere near enough presence, unlike MK.


I think that at home consoles MK in the 90s was almost unrivaled - its only viable rival was Street Fighter and everything else at home market was too niche (SNK games, VS Marvel and the like, mostly due to the shoddy ports). That's up until quality ports of 3D fighting games started to appear. That's of course relevant to US only.

Other regions had different stuff being popular, like SNK being more popular in Latin America than Capcom titles or MK or MK having no presence in Asia.

You're actually agreeing with me more than disagreeing with me, for the most part, except in a place where we're talking about different things. I'll address that part first.

- You're talking more about "quality" of fighting games in the 2000s and I'm talking about popularity on home consoles and the parity that existed between the "Big Brand" fighting games at that time. It wasn't "just between MK and Tekken" because those other fighting game franchises still sold a lot of copies and generally got good-to-great reviews. Nobody's speaking to whether or not the quality of SoulCalibur slipped. It was still a very popular franchise that moved a lot of units. Even the DOA franchise, despite being console-exclusive, sold a lot of copies. It had a movie made. If it wasn't "popular", that couldn't have happened.

- I don't recall saying that Guilty Gear ever sold a lot of copies. I know that I said Tekken, SoulCalibur etc. did, because they did. I'd put Guilty Gear with BlazBlue, in being a "good game most people never heard of." You're saying it's niche, and I don't - and didn't - disagree with that.

- "I think that at home consoles MK in the 90s was almost unrivaled - its only viable rival was Street Fighter and everything else at home market was too niche (SNK games, VS Marvel and the like, mostly due to the shoddy ports). That's up until quality ports of 3D fighting games started to appear."

This is literally exactly what I've been saying, sir. That MKII had an easier road to "success" in its day because there was less competition at home, whereas in the MK: DA era there were more choices of better quality available for home users. You're literally agreeing with me, here, almost word-for-word.

- "Other regions had different stuff being popular, like SNK being more popular in Latin America than Capcom titles or MK or MK having no presence in Asia."

I've already clarified that I can't speak to the happenings in parts of the world I don't exist in. and that regional differences exist. E.G.: Nobody in the U.S. cares about Darkstalkers, for the most part, but it does well elsewhere. So yes, obviously differences in regional popularity exist. That doesn't do much to move the needle on the broader conversation, though.

So yeah, the only real "disagreement" here is that while I'm speaking to the parity between the Big Brand fighting games available to home users in the 2000s - the fact that multiple franchises consistently got great scores and sold millions of copies - you've spoken more to the fact that some of those franchises "got worse" as they went on and that only MK and Tekken were "any good" (in your opinion) after a while. But that's different, that isn't the same conversation. Even if SCIII and IV were "worse" than SCII, for example, they still sold a lot of units and the series was very popular. DOA managed to become very popular despite being console-exclusive. And so on and so forth. And you agreed with me that during the MKII era, the only competition on home consoles was SFII, which is literally what I said from the beginning.

This all started when Cubed implied - wrongly - that fighting games were "dead" or invisible in the 2000s. And I've been saying, "That's literally impossible considering all the units sold and awards given out in that genre during that decade across the board." The genre didn't "die", arcades did, and with fighting games being the most popular staple of arcades then naturally their spotlight was diminished somewhat as the way people played games in general started to shift. But they were by no means "invisible". They remained very, very popular and the general quality of the various games went Up, not Down. And if a brand like MK was no longer a dominant topic of conversation, it was due to parity between its brethren moreso than "lack of popularity."

Originally Posted by AquaParade

It’s also true that Street Fighter, another rival, was essentially dead on home console around that time.

It sure was! And that always bothered me. That would have potentially changed the entire landscape of fighting games, if there was a sincere and dedicated SF game out during that time. But Capcom decided to just "take a knee" for the whole decade and only push SF as part of the "vs. SNK" games.

I guess it actually worked out well for them, though. Since when SF did come back with SFIV, it made a huge splash and revitalized the whole genre in a way reminiscent of what SFII had done originally. I guess "absence made the heart grow fonder" for most people. Can't really argue with it, the results speak for themselves. But I was definitely wondering "Why no SF?" during that whole era when MK, Tekken and SoulCalibur were dominating the conversation. Looking back it makes that decade feel sort of "incomplete". You had all these fighting game franchises cleaning up, but not the one that started it all. Didn't feel right.