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History of fighting games.
Every year at the Evolution Championship Series, or EVO, fighting game fanatics from all over the world gather in Las Vegas to prove who is the best of the best for glory and cash prizes. This summer’s EVO was historic for a few reasons. It was the tournament’s 20th anniversary. This is the first EVO to feature Street Fighter V, the latest installment in a series that has single-handedly defined the fighting game genre. And the SFV final were broadcast on ESPN2, creating a new sports hero, Long Island Joe, in the process.
The Street Fighter games are arguably the best-known fighting titles ever released (only Mortal Kombat comes close), and the series has sold a staggering 37 million copies. Fighting games, though, have been around since the very beginning of the medium. The first one we hit on this list landed in arcades in 1976 – a full 40 years ago! Lace up your gloves, charge up your ki, and let’s write the book on the history of fighting games.
I tried to play, either on original machines or through emulation, every single game that could be considered a “fighting game” in the history of video games. I’m going to try and talk briefly about as many as humanly possible, and provide YouTube links for gameplay footage, but please let us know in the comments if I missed any. And since this article is, seriously, the length of a novella, we’ve included a handy table of contents so you can easily hop between sections.
