By now if you’ve read any of my articles you know I’m a huge nerd. A martial arts nerd, of course, but also in general. I’m very much into comics, manga, anime and, of course, video games. Nowadays I’m more into single player rpgs, puzzle platformers and metroidvania like stuff. But as a martial arts fan since before I can remember, I’ve always liked fighting games. Ever since I saw a Street Fighter II machine at my local arcade gallery I was fascinated by them. And that, for me, was the start of a long relationship with the genre.
What about the martial arts?
This was always a question burning in the back of my head (and sometimes in the front). Were this characters doing any real martial arts? I mean back in the days of SFII, Samurai Shodown and Mortal Kombat the answer was most definitely no. Besides E. Honda’s Sumo, Saggat’s Muay Thai, Balrog’s boxing, there is no recognizable fighting style in SFII. And of course that’s nothing against the game, it was beyond any hardware’s capabilities to actually show that level of detail. Queue a few years later and Sega brought us Virtua Fighter, which by the time had some crude 3D graphics but it was the closest we’d get for a long while to showing actual real martial arts on a video game.
The games
From then on martial arts in games got closer and closer to the real thing. Which eventually got us to Sifu the game that prompted me to write this. I’ve yet to play it but it looks amazing and it has real kung-fu in it. You might be guessing what my criteria for choosing my personal favorites will be. So without further ado I give you my top five, in no particular order.
Street Fighter
The one that started it all for a lot of us. My first game was SFII which I played at the arcades. What can I say about this series of games that hasn’t been said? Probably nothing new. Back in the day SFII had it all, several playable characters each with a different gameplay. Ryu and Ken were my favorites but all characters had something cool. When Super SFII came out I was really into Fei Long who was an obvious nod to Bruce Lee. My favorites were the SF Alpha/Zero series which had a nice manga/anime art style, better animation and new characters. When SFIII came out, a lot of characters had a more detailed fighting style inspired by real world martial arts. I’ve yet to play SF IV or V but I want to check them out. The change from 2D graphics to 3D is a big one and I’m pretty sure there’s been a lot of good motion capture done.
Virtua Fighter
This game blew my mind back when it was released. I mean actual 3D graphics were not common back in 1993. You had just three buttons, punch, kick and guard and the 8-way control stick. The first two of the series were a bit clumsy but you could see the potential. I loved the second one because it had a character using drunken boxing and another doing mantis. Years later I learned that Akira Yuki, the main character of the franchise, does Bajiquan (called Hakkyokuken in Japanese). What I love about this series is the lack of crazy powers and abilities. Of course it’s not a fight simulator but from the fighting games I’ve played it’s the closest thing. You don’t have fire balls or ranged attacks, no supernatural abilities so to speak. Just the characters and their particular style of fighting. Each with their strengths and weaknesses.
Soul Calibur
Bring on the weapons! Originally a sequel to Soul Edge, it was kind of a Virtua Fighter (or Tekken) but with weapons and more of a fantasy setting. Most characters have a normal real life weapon and everyone’s fighting style matches their weapon. The exceptions are a couple of guys with really HUGE weapons, Ivy who has a sword that kinda turns into a whip and Boldo who uses some sort of katar or gauntlets (depending on the game or skin). My two favorite characters of this franchise are Kilik who uses a staff with a very Chinese kung fu looking technique, and a samurai like character calleed Mitsurugi
Tekken
Next comes the Iron Fist (no, not the Marvel guy), Tekken literally means iron fist in Japanese. Like Virtua Fighter and Soul Edge/Calibur this is a game with a more “realistic” style. There’re no fire balls or hadouken-like moves. Still, depending on the game, you have your weird characters like Kuma who’s a bear or Ogre who’s a winged ogre that can spit fire at close distance. The game has a LOT of characters and draws from as many styles and inspirations. There’s a capoeira dude, a couple of karate guys, a TKD guy, a Bruce Lee and a Jackie Chan (with drunken mode and everything), even some fighters with more obscure styles like Xinyi Liuhequan and Piguazhang. Each character has their own thing and some are easier to learn than others. I’m a big fan of anything related to Chinese styles but I love Heihachi and Jin, two of the karate guys from this games.
Mortal Kombat
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Last but not least is Mortal Kombat. I bet most of us martial arts geeks who like video games have played at least one edition of Mortal Kombat. Back when it first came out it was huge. It had blood, and real live actors, and the fatalities were mind blowing. In the fifth game, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance every character got two distinct fighting styles and a weapon style. In the sixth game’s bonus content there’s even pictures of behind the scenes martial arts stuff they used for motion capture. The game has a lot of cool characters but there’s a special place in my heart for Ermac whch has Choy Lee Fut as one of his empty hand styles.
I hope you liked my top five. You can tell me what games you like in the comments section.
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