Musings of a Virtua Fighter Boomer: Are We in a Fighting Game ‘Golden Age’?
I’m a bit of a boomer when it comes to fighting games, and I’m not sure how or when it happened. One day I’m playing Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown at the Battle Kat Bunker, (a sadly now-defunct video gaming venue) and then overhear as I’m packing up to go home; “It must be getting late, the Virtua Fighter Boomers are leaving”.
Now, I think (hope) that this wasn’t meant to be anything more than a friendly jab in our direction from a fellow fighting game community member, in fact it became something of a running joke. It did however, make me realise that I really do see the modern era of fighting games through a certain lens. I can’t deny that I’m definitely in the age bracket to be considered ‘old’ by many gamers' standards. Let’s face it; I did decide to start writing a blog exclusively about video games that were released 25 years ago. And so it makes me wonder how accurate it is when I see many fighting game fans calling for a ‘Golden Age’ of fighting games in 2023.
There’s certainly a lot to be happy about, with Street Fighter 6 by all accounts being a critical and commercial success. Tekken 8 and (the hilariously confusingly titled) Mortal Kombat 1 (nice to see the person who came up with the name ‘Xbox One’ managed to find work) are just around the corner, with many other franchises having instalments released recently too. Hell, Mark of the Wolves just had a teaser trailer drop the day I was writing this up!
On the surface of it all, it really does seem that the genre has been ‘eating well’ to recycle an increasingly overused expression. Is this really a ‘Golden Age’ in the grand scheme of things though? The obvious comparison on this blog is to look at 1998 as an example of the decade of the 90s for fighting games. If you’re a regular follower of my blog (hi mum), then you’ll already have seen 1998 was host to cross section of 3D and 2D fighters such as;
Even relatively niche titles like the arcade-exclusive Fighting Vipers 2 would receive coverage from magazines such as this excerpt from Sega Saturn Magazine #97.
And that’s just the four that I’ve written about so far! There was also legendary entries like Real Bout Fatal Fury 2, and the birth of new franchises with the original Marvel vs Capcom and Soul Calibur (I plan to cover these all in the blog in the months to come, so please stay tuned!). This is all just in one year. This also isn’t counting ports to home consoles or localisations, which would bring the list considerably longer. Even though 1998 is undoubtedly a stacked year for big releases, the 90s definitely saw a deluge of big-name fighting games. If we were to pick 1996 as a random 90s decade year for arguments sake, we had Street Fighter Alpha 2, King of Fighters ‘96, X-men vs Street Fighter and Tobal No. 1 amongst others. Fighting games were a very hot genre.
This excerpt from the CVG #178 cover story shows how much excitement surrounded the launch of Virtua Fighter 3 in 1996.
I suppose it’s not fair to say that there were definitely more fighting games released in an average year of the 90s than there are in 2023, since the modern day has the very real advantage of digital publishing. Never before has it been easier for independent developers to publish their games and find an audience. There were arguably more ‘B’ games in the 90s, with quirky games getting arcade and full retail physical releases, where today that privilege is reserved for the increasingly big budget ‘AAA’ titles. I’ve always argued that those more experimental (or lower budger ‘B’ grade) games continue to live on in the world of online stores, and there’s definitely a lot of additional fighting games being released exclusively in the realm of cyberspace to close up some of that gap.
As anybody who’s ever sampled a Dominoes Pizza ‘2 for 1’ deal will tell you, sometimes quality is more imporant than quantity. In that regard, I’m afraid it’s too subjective to say which era had the ‘better’ fighting games. Maybe it’s a case of personal preference, (and to belabour this already weak analogy even further) it’s like preferring either supreme or hawaiian topping. It’s all a matter of taste (or lack thereof).
Punch Planet is an example of an indie fighting game getting released digitally in the modern era, and it looks and plays fantastic. Please check it out;
Punch Planet - Early Access on Steam (steampowered.com)
One thing we can more easily look at and quantify is the variety of games. Going back to the earlier examples from the 90s, we had a number of both 2D fighters and 3D fighters being released (probably still favouring 2D as the more ‘traditional’ type of fighting game). In the games coming out in 2023, I can think of only Tekken 8 as being a representation for 3D. Yes, they’re all featuring 3D graphics now, but only Tekken has 3D movement and even then, Tekken is starting to borrow ideas that are traditionally associated with 2D games like super moves and projectiles. Where are the formerly reliable stalwarts of the 3D genre? Where is Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive and my beloved Virtua Fighter? Is there any hope for a brand new 3D fighting game franchise to launch? I haven’t even seen one come up as a digital release from an indie dev, which is almost shocking to me considering the sizeable fanbases behind these titles.
Perhaps this is just what people think of when they think of ‘fighting games’ now. They are expected to look and play a certain way, and anything harking back to the older days of fighting games where you had nothing on screen except for two life-bars is seen as a risk in the market. The only game I can think of that fits that description that’s been released in recent times is Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, which itself is identical to the 2010 Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown. 13 years. Damn, I really am a boomer.
Waiting 13 years for a new Virtua Fighter title would have been laughable in the mid to late nineties.
When discussing this very topic with a friend recently we got onto the tangent of player count, and if there are more people playing fighting games today than there was back in the 90s. While today it’s relatively easy to get a ballpark figure of players through websites like steamspy and the like, it’s a bit harder to quantify just how many players there were when sales data wasn’t as easy to come across.
Let’s try to quantify some of it as best we can though; the recently released Street Fighter 6 has sold over 2 million copies in the first month on sale (https://www.ign.com/articles/street-fighter-6-sales-hit-2-million-rashid-gameplay-revealed). An impressive number, and one that will no doubt grow as it continues to add content and see price promotions. Let’s look at Street Fighter Alpha 3 as a comparison (seeing as it’s featured on this website already), and we can see that as far as home console sales go, it doesn’t live up to the success of 6. Street Fighter Alpha 3 has about 1.12 million units sold across PS1 and Dreamcast according to estimates (https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Street_Fighter). Not bad for a third revision of an already less-popular Street Fighter title. If we were to instead roll up the combined sales of home ports of Alpha, Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 (to take into a account that we no longer get iterations, and instead get DLC updates), we get approximately 3 million units sold across the ‘Alpha’ series. This does not, however, take into account the arcade cabinet and sales. This is where things get tricky when it comes to profitability and player counts. Let’s take a look at how profitable arcade machines were, and if they can tip the scales in favour of the 90s.
Tekken 3, released in 1996 sold an estimated 35,000 arcade cabinets compared to an estimated 8.5 million units on the PlayStation (holy shit). How does that compare to Tekken 7’s alleged 10 million units sold to date? It’s unfortunately almost impossible to know without getting some kind of data around how much money was made by the arcade machines, although I’d have to imagine it’s at least comparable, if not significantly more than the playerbase for Tekken 7.
I did manage to find some information on Mortal Kombat’s arcade machine, which apparently made an average of $95,000 per machine (!!). This would be an extremely high return for any arcade machine, seeing as Mortal Kombat was something of a cultural phenomenon in 1993. Arcade in general were probably also more popular in 1993 than 1996, so while it' isn’t a typical example it does go to show that the arcade business was a serious revenue source and avenue for players. When arguing player count and popularity of the genre it’s also worth noting that Tekken 7 has the advantage of digital storefronts and multiple platforms, where Tekken 3 sold entirely on only one console, and did so with only physical copies at retail stores.
Tekken 3 arriving on PlayStation in 1998 was a huge deal. If this blog was to cover ports and localisations this would definitely be on the list (I had to draw the line somewhere, if only for my own sanity).
So far, we haven’t really gotten a solid answer on if there were more or less players now than previous ‘golden ages’. I would argue that in the late nineties there were probably more players, just based on the sheer number of releases. We haven’t even looked at things like Soul Calibur, King of Fighters and all of SNK’s other releases, as well as Capcom’s various franchises of the era such Darkstalkers, Cyberbots and Marvel series. When you take all those into account, even the less popular games, I would have to give the edge to the playerbase being bigger back then. It also raises an interesting topic about major publishers having more than one franchise being supported at a time, whereas in more recent years that’s increasingly rare, or at least the releases are spread much thinner over the years. No doubt this is a result of increasing budgets and ever climbing break-even points for video games, but that’s a topic for another time (and probably for a better writer than myself).
It’s worth noting that I haven’t even looked at the early 90s, and in particular I haven’t addressed the Street Fighter II-shaped elephant in the room. Frankly, it blows everything from any era out of the water, with Street Fighter 2 selling mind-boggling 220,000 arcade cabinets and over ten million copies of home console ports. Every fighting game since has lived in its shadow, and I don’t think anyone can seriously argue that 1992 and the early 90s is the high water mark for fighting game popularity.
The popularity of Street Fighter 2 in the early 90s cannot be overstated. Street Fighter II and Street Fighter II Turbo BOTH feature on the top ten selling SNES games of all time. Over ten million copies sold, all at retail.
A notable difference between now and the 90s would be the level of play and access to competition. Yes, the 90s had some seriously hardcore arcade scenes and competitive players, but I would argue there’s nowhere near as many as today. With the incredible advancements in technology, fighting game players now have access to online competition and live-streamed events. It’s easier than ever to arrange a tournament or gather large groups of competitive players and broadcast the contest for millions of viewers to see. Tutorials are made on a daily basis, catering to all skill levels and are freely available to anyone with an internet connection and the inclination to find them.
Yes, fighting games might have been in more hands in the 90s, but many of those hands were content with playing the arcade mode and occasionally having a laugh with friends. This isn’t ‘bad’, by any stretch of the imagination, and in fact goes a long way to show the scalability of the games that they could be enjoyed by players of such different skill levels. I do think that it does open the doors to the argument that perhaps we are in a golden age, one for competitive play. I still lament that the variety of fighting games has narrowed (open to have my mind changed on this viewpoint), but I can’t deny that this is the best time in history for any player to be able to learn, improve and then find similarly matched competition online or offline.
As someone who’s been increasingly distant from the fighting game community since Covid-19 disrupted our regularly scheduled gaming meetups, I find myself keeping one foot in the door with the few games I still like to play and organise meet-ups for. Many of the new fighting games that come out don’t appeal much to me, but by the same token I’ve never had so many options to play old favourites. Almost every franchise and every major release is available either through official means via digital storefronts or via more dubious methods like Fightcade (which is no less incredible for playing with friends online). Never before has it been easier to find players, even for niche titles. To quote New York Virtua Fighter legend Cruzlink, “There’s never been a better time for retro gaming”. It’s a statement that is 100% true and rings true for retro fighting games too, and it’s only going to get better.
More than any other time in history, we have easy access to so many fighting games, online or offline. Enjoy the new Golden Age, I feel it’s only going to get better. As always, ‘Take the Game to Locals’!