In our latest episode of Talk and Block I sit down with long time love of all things fighting games Nicholas “MajinTenshinhan” Taylor to talk about the various ages our community has gone through.
Things start with the arcade age kicked off by the resounding success of Street Fighter 2 in, well, arcades, and it was here we saw the starts of many of the mainstay franchises (Mortal Kombat, Versus, Tekken, King of Fighters just to name a select few). Then we hit what many regard as a dark age, at least for Street Fighter.
It’s no secret that Street Fighter 3, though now revered as one of the best fighting games of all time, did not see a ton of commercial success when it dropped around the turn of the century. This sent the Street Fighter franchise into a dark period where the routine pattern of releases spaced only a year or two apart was broken as Street Fighter 4 would not surface until 2008.
Other franchises, however, continued on just fine during this window of the early 2000’s. Mortal Kombat roared through its 3D phase, Tekken continued right along with 4, 5, and 6, and plenty of others progressed in similar manners.
When Capcom launched Street Fighter 4, however, we officially started in on what we might call the online age. Arcades were more than on their way out, and though SF4 wasn’t necessarily the first to take fighting games online, it was the most conspicuous and prominent to do so.
With Capcom opening yet another major door, the fighting game scene saw a boom not entirely unlike what happened following SF2 in the early 90’s. The company combo’d with a one-two punch releasing the now iconic Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in 2011, and a new rising tide raised all ships as more eyes were cast on other franchises as SF4 and MvC3 brought wider attention to the scene.
How dependent has the genre been on the success of Capcom? It certainly feels to a heavy degree, given the presentation I just offered, but when we discuss this during our talk MajinTenshinhan isn’t all that convinced.
It’s little disagreements and different ways of looking at situations like this that give our dialogue an intrigue that ultimately leaves answering such questions to you, and we’d love to hear your thoughts on them both in the comments here on this article as well as on the video directly on YouTube (it helps us out with getting promoted in the algorithm if you comment, like, and subscribe).
We also get into the crashing and burning of Street Fighter X Tekken, which led to a less than stellar situation for Capcom when it came to creating Street Fighter 5 in the eSports age.
With Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and Mortal Kombat 1 all coming out in quick succession (along with plenty of other franchises chugging along nicely) we could argue we’re currently in another golden age of sorts, but even now we may be able to see darkness on the horizon.
Some of the decisions made in terms of micro-transactions, accessibility, and other major arenas might have these current games on shaky ground, and if they fall too out of favor with the public so as to crash and burn, it could mean another rough patch where we all end up playing more Fortnite and Helldivers 2.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
01:20 – The Arcade Age
09:37 – The Online Age
17:47 – The eSports Age
23:44 – Destructive Chain Reactions
29:45 – Current Age
36:56 – Darkest and Brightest Parts of the Timeline