Five 2D Fighters You'd Take With You to Your Grave

[BogusMeatFactory]

Garou Mark of the Wolves
Street Fighter 3rd Strike
SF Alpha 2
CVS2
Samurai Showdown 2

All of these game have great depth to keep anyone busy for a lifetime.

You have composed the perfect list. I would have comprised the exact same list. There is one 2d fighting game not listed (for good reason) that I would maaaaybe include for personal nostalgia and love and that is eternal champions on the Sega cd. I adore that game for a million stupid reasons. It is horribly flawed but just soooo much dumb fun.

[bmoc]

1. X-Men Children of the Atom
I LOVED me so 6 player Konami X-Men back in the day. I also religiously watched the 90's X-Men tv show which a lot of the character models are based off of (and many of the voice actors reprised their roles). I always preferred Capcom fighters to SNK so I was able to get a feel for the gameplay very quickly. This game was made for me.

2. X-Men vs Street Fighter
This one is probably my favorite 2D fighter of all time. My jaw hit the floor when I saw this for the first time at my local arcade. Street Fighter characters that play like Children of the Atom! Sign me up! I couldn't believe my eyes. This one also has a very forgiving CPU opponent. I one CC'ed it the first time I played it with Cyclops and Gambit. I felt like I really for my money's worth with this one in the arcade. I gave the PS1 version a pass because it did not have tag team. Unfortunately I didn't know squat about importing Saturn games until 2010ish. Now the boxed Saturn version is one of the crowning jewels on my collection.

3. Mortal Kombat Trilogy
I like Mortal Kombat II and UMK3 about equally. MK Trilogy tips this scales in its favor by having stages and characters from the first three games. They might as well have called it Mortal Kombat: Fan Service Edition. It was one of the first games I purchased with my N64. I really should get the PS1 or Saturn version some day.

4. Vampire Savior
I only played the Darkstalkers games a handful of times in the arcade and they didn't do much for me then. It wasn't until I got a Saturn as an adult that I really gave the series a fair shake. Great gameplay, spritework, and characters makes this one a real winner.

5. Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter
I never played this one in the arcade. In fact, I did not know it existed until I got a Saturn. I'm not sure how I missed it since it was on PS1 as well. It plays very similar to X-Men vs Street Fighter so I like it a little better Marvel vs Capcom 2 which would probably had this spot in the list otherwise. It also has my boi Omega Red which was unfortunately missing from X-Men vs Street Fighter.

2.5D Honorable mentions:
Killer Instinct (arcade)
Killer Instinct (2013)
Mortal Kombat 9
Mortal Kombat X
Super Smash Bros Ultimate

[strangenova]

I wish there were more talk of fighters on here. It's one of my favorite genres.

My five would be:
Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Street Fighter 3 Third Strike
Garou Mark of the Wolves
Dragon Ball Fighterz
Samurai Shodown

I've never played the second SS game but so many of you ranking it highly. I need to check it out.

[Melek-Ric]

Is this topic asking favorite five fighting games that play on a 2D plane or with 2D graphics?

[bmoc]

Is this topic asking favorite five fighting games that play on a 2D plane or with 2D graphics?

I wasn't sure either but I assumed 2D graphics since that was what most people were listing. That's why I listed 2.5D (2D plane) fighters in a separate list with less fanfare. Perhaps pierrot will chime in with the original intention.

[isiolia]

I lost interest in fighters years ago mostly because the genre seems to exclusively target competitive gamers now. It's all about ranked matches online and real life tournaments. These companies don't care about people who mostly play games for the single player experience. It's basically a tournament genre. I stopped caring once I realized that I was no longer the target audience.

May depend on which you play, as I'd contend that many Arc System Works and NetherRealm Studios releases (at least) include substantial single player oriented content. Others, such as Killer Instinct, do as well, albeit tainted by microtransactions. Including online play and so on is fairly logical though,as PVP/tournaments have been a not-insignificant part of fighters since SF2. Frequent reliance on DLC, on the other hand, is what started to get to me, even if it's also pretty logical to some degree.

That said, my fighting game play definitely peaked around college, as many evenings were spent passing controllers around on versus modes. So for me...

Capcom vs SNK 2
First one was good too, but this was a mainstay for my apartment for a while, letting us have a little of everything with the balance system and all that...but still be kinda grounded.

Marvel vs Capcom 2
Similar the above, but, not so grounded

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Consider more as a general SF2 entry, since I played plenty of the SNES releases as a whole (in particular), so it's the mainstay one for me. Alpha series are good, SFIII are good, but at some point with those I'd just rather play the vs games above.

King of Fighters '98
Though XIII is also good. Similar to SF2, more the all-inclusive entry for the series to me.

Guilty Gear XX
Similarly, there are a bunch of variants on this, to include the new 2.5D version, light on content as it started out.

Runner ups
Blazblue only due to slight overlap with GGXX.
Last Blade 2
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
SF Alpha and III
Persona 4 Arena
Vampire Saviour

[Melek-Ric]

Is this topic asking favorite five fighting games that play on a 2D plane or with 2D graphics?

I wasn't sure either but I assumed 2D graphics since that was what most people were listing. That's why I listed 2.5D (2D plane) fighters in a separate list with less fanfare. Perhaps pierrot will chime in with the original intention.

Well I'll just list my 2D plane favs. I really only consider 3D and 2D plane fighters different sub genres.

My personal Top Five, no order:

• SF Alpha 3 (I like it more than SFA2, so sue me)
  
• SFII HDR (I like the gameplay changes, music)
  
• Killer Instinct 2013 (Could do without the guests, but everything else is God-like for a budget fighter)
  
• SFIII 3rd Strike (I actually played it in the arcade before Evo 2004!)
  
• Killer Instinct 2 (I like the gameplay depth more than KI1)

Honorable mentions: MK3, KI 1, CVS2, MVC1, SFII HF, Garou MotW

[Gunstar Green]

I don't really play many fighters anymore but probably something like this.

One Must Fall 2097
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Dreamcast)
Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness
King of Fighters XIII

[pierrot]

Well I'll just list my 2D plane favs. I really only consider 3D and 2D plane fighters different sub genres.

Same. It's fine as long as it has a one-dimensional null space along a linear axis. Okay, well, technically that's true for 3D fighters, too, since they're all mapped to a screen--. So I guess, just as long as the fighting takes place along two normal/orthogonal axes, without any change of bases.

SF Alpha 3 (I like it more than SFA2, so sue me)

Expect to hear from my lawyer--.

SFIII 3rd Strike (I actually played it in the arcade before Evo 2004!)

--Nevermind, this redeems it.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Dreamcast)

What kind of trauma led you all to want to abuse yourselves this much?

Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness

Okay, I forgive you.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I played through the original version of Street Fighter II again the other day, and I really appreciated it. It is so much slower than later versions of the game, and so much more deliberate too. Unlike a lot of modern fighters, where you pull of 20+ hit combos with just a few moves, the hits in Street Fighter II are all so meaningful, and it doesn’t really take that many hits to KO your opponent (especially if you’re playing as Zangief). Samurai Shodown II feels this way too, and it’s something I think we’ve lost with modern, more “frantic
2D fighters.

Also, M. Bison is a ferocious final boss, and I forgot how tough he could be. I’m a bit embarrassed at how many attempts it took me to knock him over.

If you haven’t played the original Street Fighter II in a while, I recommend you revisit it. I found it quite refreshing.