Fighting games have been popular since Karate Champ introduced one-on-one combat into arcades in 1984. But it wasn’t until Street Fighter 2 revolutionized the genre that they became a craze. Sure, the first Street Fighter and Yie-Ar Kung Fu made their advances. However, there’s a reason why Guile and Chun Li became classic characters and Geki and Lee didn’t.
Everyone wanted to play Street Fighter 2 and its rivals, but not everyone lived close enough to an arcade with their machines. Usually, the console ports would do a good job replicating their experience at home but other ports just left fans scratching their heads. Why were these weird ports made?
7 Street Fighter 2 - ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum's graphics may have been quite humble even for 1982, but so was its price. Those limited colors, slow loading, and rubber keys feel more bearable when the games are ten times cheaper than NES cartridges. But by the late 1980s, it was really showing its age next to the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, or the upcoming Sega Mega Drive.
Still, it struggled on to 1992 to gain this version of Street Fighter 2. Published by Tiertex, the studio behind its unofficial predecessor Human Killing Machine, the game managed to fit every character. However, the load times were unbearable, taking up to 30 minutes to load two sprites and the background for a match! That’s while cutting out the intros, endings, combos, and dizzy animations, among other features. The game was a sign it was time for the Spectrum to be laid to rest.
6 Mortal Kombat 2 - Game Boy and Game Gear
The original Mortal Kombat was a highlight title for the Genesis, but the ground was more even for its sequel. SNES owners got the blood back for Mortal Kombat 2, so its audiovisual perks felt more worthwhile. But for handheld owners, the choices were a little less appealing: the monochrome Game Boy or the battery-munching Game Gear.
Both ports were missing 6 characters, including mainstays like Raiden and Johnny Cage. Everyone only had one fatality each, and only the Kombat Tomb had a stage fatality. No Friendships either. That’s on top of the graphics and audio being choppier too. However, the Game Gear did find room for Kintaro, Smoke, and blood since it was in color. Surely that's worth 6 AA batteries!
5 Street Fighter Alpha 2 - SNES
When Killer Instinct hit arcades, its splash screen announced it would be coming to the ‘Nintendo Ultra 64’. But that console got delayed, so Rare had to make its heavily reduced SNES version instead. In other words, they had an excuse. Why Capcom and Nintendo produced this port is hard to say. It’s a programming marvel in some ways, akin to Crawfish Interactive’s ports of Alpha 1 and Alpha 3 to the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, respectively.
Retro Gamer even included this port in their Perfect Ten list of SNES titles. Still, by 1996 the writing was on the wall for the Super Nintendo. The game already had more accurate ports on the Playstation and Sega Saturn, which had less arduous load times and more secret characters. Still, this port had its surprises, as one of its hidden characters wasn’t discovered until 25 years after its release.
4 Marvel Vs Capcom - Playstation
The Playstation had some great 3D fighters, like Tekken 3 and Bloody Roar. But when it came to 2D, it left something to be desired. Its versions of the Street Fighter Alpha games and King of Fighters series were stiffer and slower compared to their Saturn counterparts. The crossover games like X-Men Vs Street Fighter were worse, as they had to cut out the tagging just to fit them in! Only the Saturn versions had this feature in, and they were Japan-only releases.
Luckily, Marvel Vs Capcom's Dreamcast port brought the tag action westwards, but it also got a Playstation release too. A very strange Playstation release. The Crossover Mode enabled tagging, but only for set teams against mirrored opponents. Super moves could be canceled into each other à la Marvel Vs Capcom 2's Delayed Hyper Combo function. Duo Team Attacks replaced the lead character's partner with a clone of themselves. Then, for air combos, the camera would zoom in for each hit.
3 Fighters Megamix - Game.Com
The Sega Saturn’s 3D fighters didn’t catch on as well as the Playstation’s brawlers. However, their best entries could rival them, if not beat them, in terms of mechanics. Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki considered the Saturn version of his bouncy opus the definitive edition of the game. While Virtua Fighter 2 is still considered one of the best entries in the series.
Sega AM2 liked it enough to cross it over with Fighting Vipers, Sonic the Fighters, Virtua Cop, and the fun but bonkers Fighters Megamix. It was great on the Saturn, but then Tiger Electronics ported it to the Game.Com to show off their machine's capabilities. Which it certainly did. It played much slower, had worse controls, fewer characters, and the device’s blurry gray screen made it hard to see what was happening. The Game.Com was ambitious... but rubbish.
2 Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance - Game Boy Advance
The first Mortal Kombat of the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation had fewer features and fatalities than Mortal Kombat 4. However, Deadly Alliance did have better gameplay. Plus, it paved the way for the underrated MK: Deception and rightly hated MK: Armageddon with its free movement and style switching. But while it was a humble start for the 128-bit machines, it was still surely too big to fit onto a Game Boy Advance cartridge, right?
Well yes, yes it was. That’s why Midway split the game into two. MK: Deadly Alliance on the GBA had one half of the roster. Then MK: Tournament Edition had the other half, alongside exclusive characters Sektor, Noob Saibot, and MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero’s Sareena in her playable debut. The games weren’t a pretty sight, but they retained Deadly Alliance's gameplay and gave its characters two fatalities instead of one. So, weird as they are, they’re admirable ports.
1 King of Fighters XIII - iOS and Android
When its contemporaries made the jump to 3D, King of Fighters XIII's hi-def sprites, flashy effects, and intricate gameplay still made 2D look good. Even after the series finally succumbed to models over sprites, KOF XIII is arguably the best modern entry. Still, there wasn’t much difference between its PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 ports. However, it did somehow make it onto smartphones via KOF-i 2012 for iOS and KOF-A 2012 for Android.
The games came out fairly well too. True, the touchscreen controls are to everyone’s taste, the animations were cut down a touch, and it can take some finagling to work on modern phones. However, the games managed to fit in all 32 default characters and a few DLC ones, missing out on just Mr Karate and Human Saiki. It had online play and extra modes too. While these ports won't be turning up at Evo anytime soon, they're quite decent for smartphone games.