Back To Special Features
By Contributing Writer Jimmy Payne In this feature, I will compare four fighting games much in the same way that four RPGs were compared in RPGs: The Best of the Best. I will rank four top fighting game series in order from best to worst in nine categories, and add up the point totals at the end of the feature. Each first place finish earns a game four points, second place earns a game three points, and so on. The four series included in this feature are Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and Soul Calibur. Virtua Fighter wasn't included because it would have been ranked last in almost every category. Mortal Kombat hasn't been fun for years and it's very weak in many of these categories, but it's also very strong in several of them. Best Music 1. Soul Calibur 2. Tekken 3. Street Fighter 4. Mortal Kombat Soul Calibur has the best soundtrack of any fighting game I've ever played. All of the tunes are rich and well-composed. They do exactly what music should do in a fighting game: Add to the feel of the game without being the least bit irritating. Tekken and Street Fighter have some of the catchiest fighting game music around, but they're not quite as impressive as Soul Calibur in this area. Mortal Kombat has never had anything resembling an actual song. Most of its music is un-noticeable and generic. Best Sound Effects 1. Soul Calibur 2. Street Fighter 3. Mortal Kombat 4. Tekken Soul Calibur has the clearest sound out of all these games, thanks in part to the audio capabilities of the Dreamcast. It's always music to my ears when the weapons clang together, and there's not a single annoying sound effect in the entire game. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat finished ahead of Tekken because in both of them, the characters say goofy things that will probably be in my head into the day I die. All of the Japanese phrases in Street Fighter are great. In Mortal Kombat, I love Scorpion's "Come here!" and the words that came out of Liu Kang's mouth when he does a bicycle kick (which can't be spelled out because they're too weird to understand). Tekken has some decent sound effects, but the voice-overs in Tekken 3 spoil it for the entire series. Some of them are just pathetic, like Nina's victory laugh and cry of defeat. Best Character Personalities 1. Tekken 2. Soul Calibur 3. Mortal Kombat 4. Street Fighter Having a good story isn't the most important thing that a fighting game needs to have, but it's always nice when it does. Besides being just plain cool, the characters in Tekken have deep back-stories that make you care about them rather than just viewing them as tools to beat the game with. Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat, and Street Fighter also have some memorable characters, but they aren't as deep as Tekken's. Best Final Boss 1. Tekken 2. Mortal Kombat 3. Soul Calibur 4. Street Fighter Tekken has always had great final bosses like Devil Kazuya and Ogre. Mortal Kombat edged out Soul Calibur because of the classic Shao Khan boss battle. Soul Calibur's Inferno isn't very unique; it's just a mass of fire that randomly wields another character's weapon. Street Fighter came in last place because M. Bison never really struck me as a threatening figure for any reason other than the fact that he's too damn fast. Best Backgrounds/Arenas 1. Mortal Kombat 2. Street Fighter 3. Soul Calibur 4. Tekken Mortal Kombat has imaginative and skillfully-drawn backgrounds that looked very real at the time of the game's release. They have since been surpassed technologically, but some of the designs still stand out as being a cut above the rest. Street Fighter also has some very imaginative arenas, but they're not as interactive as Mortal Kombat's (no impaling your opponent by uppercutting them into spikes). Still, the backgrounds all present a different mood and feel that match the character they're associated with. Soul Calibur and Tekken don't have any spectacular combat arenas, but Soul Calibur's are still nice simply because they're so big. Best Endings 1. Tekken 2. Soul Calibur 3. Street Fighter 4. Mortal Kombat The CG endings in Tekken are often weird, but they're all beautifully crafted, and they provide plenty of motivation to beat the game with every character. The endings in Soul Calibur are also nice because they do a good job of tying up the story lines for all the characters, plus they feature great artwork. Street Fighter's endings also do a nice job of typing up the story lines, but you usually have to beat the game on a hard difficulty level to see them. Mortal Kombat's endings have lots of story line information in them, but many of them have been contradicted by future games in the series. Best Speed 1. Street Fighter 2. Soul Calibur 3. Tekken 4. Mortal Kombat Street Fighter has always had the best sense of speed without being too fast. This is especially true in the Street Fighter Alpha series, which has amazingly crisp animations for such a fast game. Soul Calibur is fast enough to keep the action moving, without being so fast that you can't see what the characters are doing with their weapons. Tekken 1 and 2 aren't very fast, but Tekken 3 increases the pace significantly in most fights. The Mortal Kombat series has always been too fast for its own good. Combos are executed extremely quickly, often to the point that they're unfair. Most Replay Value 1. Soul Calibur 2. Tekken 3. Mortal Kombat 4. Street Fighter The final two categories (Replay Value and Balance) are worth double the points of the other categories because they're the most important ones. The Replay Value category boils down to whether each game has more stuff to do than simply beat the arcade mode and see a short ending. Soul Calibur wins this one because of its addictive Mission Mode and huge gallery of things to unlock. Tekken came in a very close second because of all the cool mini-games that you can unlock in Tekken 3. It's nice to unlock characters and special cheat codes in Mortal Kombat, but this doesn't make you want to keep playing the game as much as the extras in Soul Calibur and Tekken. The Street Fighter series has never had a whole lot of replay value in my opinion because there aren't as many things to unlock as there are in the aforementioned games. Most Balanced Moves and Characters 1. Street Fighter 2. Tekken 3. Soul Calibur 4. Mortal Kombat Street Fighter comes out on top in this category because every character has equal amounts of strengths and weaknesses. With enough practice, you can make any character in the game an awesome force. Tekken has always had imaginative moves, but it's notorious for giving certain characters kick-ass moves that give them big advantages over everyone else. Tekken still came in second place because as unbalanced as some of the moves are, the game usually counter-balances them with by changing the strength and speed of the characters with devastating moves. However, there are exceptions to this. For example, you can kick anyone's ass in Tekken 3 by using Hwang's leg moves, which keep their victim up in the air for three or more hits in a row. Eddy Gordo also has a lot of unfair combos. Soul Calibur is similar to Tekken in this category. It's a nicely balanced game overall, but there are still a few characters that can disrupt the balance of the game if used properly. For example, with the right knowledge and execution of moves, Nightmare can be virtually unstoppable no matter what your opponent does. All of the killer moves in Mortal Kombat belong to a select few characters, making all of the other characters seem like filler. A few of the moves in the game are just too good, like Scorpion's "Come here" move and the freeze moves of Sub-Zero and Katana. Some of the characters in Mortal Kombat suck so much that they're almost completely useless. Every character in a fighting game should be capable of dishing out some serious damage, as is the case with Street Fighter. Point Totals Soul Calibur: 33 points Tekken: 31 points Street Fighter: 26 points Mortal Kombat: 20 points Mortal Kombat didn't fare too well. It only won a single category, and it was one of the least important ones (best backgrounds/arenas). On the other hand, Street Fighter did very well, winning the all-important category of Most Balanced. It just goes to show you that many older games can still stand toe-to-toe with their newer, flashier competition. Not surprisingly, Soul Calibur came in first place, but Tekken put up one heck of a fight. Send your thoughts on this feature to jimmy@mastergamer.com
© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com