If there’s one big plus fighting games have, it’s that they have diverse rosters. In Mortal Kombat, players could follow canon and save the day with Liu Kang. But why do that when they could play more interesting characters like Johnny Cage, Sub Zero, or Scorpion?
Once designers went beyond headband-wearing karate men like in Street Fighter, their fighting games went into some odd places. Darkstalkers revolved around Halloween monsters. Guilty Gear had bizarre names and features, like Sol-Badguy doing a Roman Cancel against Jam Kuradoberi. Then these fighting games went to a whole new level of weirdness.
10 Fighting Layer
Not to be confused with Fighting EX Layer, plain old Fighting Layer was also made by Arika and plays similarly to the Street Fighter EX games. It even had Allen and Blair from those games. Otherwise, it’s its own original game and doesn’t initially have much to help it stand out from the rest of the crowd.
That is until the player takes on a shark as a bonus game. They still move around the stage normally, despite presumably being underwater, since the shark can swim around all over the place. As such, it’s immune to low attacks by default. It’s more likely to swim out of range, then come in to take big chomps out of the player’s health bar.
9 Power Instinct: Matrimelee
Originally published by Atlus, the Power Instinct series had a few weird features in it. The final boss was an old woman the player had to beat to become head of the family. Then, in the sequel, the old woman and her twin sister could regain their youth briefly by sucking health out of their opponent.
Power Instinct: Matrimelee steps things up by having a king of a country open a tournament where the winner gets paired off with one of his two kids. Hence, ‘Matrimelee’: ‘matrimony’ plus ‘melee’. The game has a few gimmicks, like stages with TV showing QTEs for bonuses, or a referee the players can call in to take a hit or throw at their opponent.
8 Red Earth
Red Earth is now available on the Capcom Fighting Collection, but for years it was arcade-only. It was the first game to use the same tech that made the acclaimed Street Fighter 3: Third Strike and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future. Instead of being another one-on-one fighter like them, it combines that with RPG mechanics.
There are only 4 characters to pick from, and they have to be ‘leveled up’ through a series of fights against unplayable bosses. Each level gives the player new moves to use in-game, though the player has to choose between gaining that level-up or using it to do a super move to save their bacon. It’s an inventive idea, though it didn’t help it catch on.
7 Jackie Chan in Fists of Fire
Mortal Kombat was born out of a failed Jean-Claude Van Damme video game project. Gamers would have to wait until 1995 to see the Muscles from Brussels in a fighting game. Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game would make it on this list, but there was another martial arts star that beat him to the tournament fighter punch.
In 1994, Kaneko got Jackie Chan and his co-stars into a fighting game as part of a promotional deal for his film Thunderbolt. The game has fatalities like Mortal Kombat, but it plays more like a Fatal Fury game. There are three versions of Jackie Chan, and all of them serve as the final bosses. They aren’t technically ‘beaten’, and the player can’t kill either of the Chans either.
6 Clay Fighter
Why play as animated sprites and models when there are Plasticine models instead? Interplay’s Clay Fighter parodied the fighting genre with Claymation like a goofier, less gory predecessor to Celebrity Deathmatch. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was unique, and it got two sequels with Clay Fighter 2: Judgment Clay, and Clay Fighter: 63 1/3rd.
The latter had guest characters too, with Earthworm Jim and the lesser-known Boogerman. Luckily, they’re on the regular version of the game. The original game and 63 1/3rd also had rental-exclusive versions with extra characters and moves. So, they’re worth quite a bit of dough to collectors.
5 DreamMix TV World Fighters
Nowadays, platform fighters are everywhere. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is Smash Bros with Spongebob Squarepants and Ren & Stimpy. Multiversus is Smash Bros with Shaggy, Batman, and Gandalf the Grey. However, in terms of weirdness, it still has a way to go to beat DreamMix TV World Fighters.
Released exclusively in Japan for the Gamecube and PS2, DreamMix TV pits characters from Konami and Hudsonsoft up against the Takara Company’s toy lines. In gameplay, it’s just a mediocre Smash clone. The novelty is in the roster, where Solid Snake and Simon Belmont can clobber Bomberman, Yugo from Bloody Roar, and Optimus Prime from Transformers on Adventure Island.
4 Super Gem Fighter: Mini Mix
This goodie can also be found in the Capcom Fighting Collection. It took the chibi art style from Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo and made a simple fighting game out of it. Cartoony versions of Ryu, Ken, Morrigan, Felicia, and more, would beat gems out of each other to power up their special moves.
It would be simple enough, but they don’t just punch and kick. They do it with funky cosplay attacks too. Dan Hibiki dresses up as Elvis between kicks. Chun Li becomes a cheerleader in her dash attacks. Sakura slips into a Playboy bunny girl outfit, then summons two muscular men in speedos to beat her opponent up off-screen. It’s worth playing just to see what other weird moves it has.
3 Fighters Megamix
Despite reaching arcades in 1996, Virtua Fighter 3 wouldn’t make it to people’s homes until the Dreamcast ‘3TB’ port in 1998. So, Sega kept the Saturn going with Fighters Megamix, where the Virtua Fighter 2 cast take on the Fighting Vipers 2 roster. It plays somewhere between the former’s more methodical pace, and the latter’s faster, cage-busting action.
But why play as them when Bark and Bean from Sonic the Fighters are also available? Or Siba, a swordsman character that was cut from Virtua Fighter 1. Janet Marshall from Virtua Cop appears and uses Aoi’s moves from VF3. Then there’s an inflatable bear called Kuma-chan, a walking green bean called Deku, the Hornet car from Daytona USA, and the palm tree from the Sega AM2 logo.
2 Waku Waku 7
Created by Sunsoft for the Neo Geo, Waku Waku 7 is a cheery, colorful game that’s full of goofy anime and video game parodies. The plot copies Dragon Ball with its 7 players searching for the wish-granting WakuWaku Balls. No series is safe from its jibes. Its lead character is a riff on an already comedic character (Kensou from King of Fighters), but then it goes further.
Politank-Z is a big tank owned by the cops à la Dominion Tank Police. Mauru is based on Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro. Then, the final boss 'Fernandeath' parodies Godzilla by being a giant monster the player has to grow large to fight. Except instead of being a big lizard, it’s a giant black ball with a smiley face that eats the opponent and farts them out at the other side of the screen.
1 Dong Dong Never Die
This fan game stands out among the others as it’s not just some bonkers MUGEN build. Instead, it’s a bonkers parody of King of Fighters, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and anything else developers Jiangxi Dinosaur could stick in there. It has digitized characters like Mortal Kombat that fight all over locations in China.
Players can pick the titular Dong Dong or his broken dark equivalent Violent Dong Dong. Or they could go for the John Woo-esque action man Gouki, who celebrates his wins by checking out the centerfold in his magazine. Beyond them, there’s the nurse duo Jie Mei Hua, the nerdy Ming Boy, historical tactician Zhuge Liang, a red stick figure man, and Mario. Yes, Nintendo’s Mario…who has the same moves as Akuma from Street Fighter for some reason.