I miss ACTUAL 2d fighters...

[RetroShmetro]

The gorgeous pixel art, oh how I long for you! I hate how all the 2d fighters still go for 3d to save on budget, makes all of them feel the same.

 

[Bonkers225]

They're still around. You aren't looking hard enough.

Review: Blazing Strike (Switch) - A Beautiful Love Letter To The Fighting Game Hardcore

Blazin' squad

www.nintendolife.com

 

[Stingy Perry]

They're still around. You aren't looking hard enough.

Review: Blazing Strike (Switch) - A Beautiful Love Letter To The Fighting Game Hardcore

Blazin' squad

www.nintendolife.com

Well there’s games like this or you can always play classics.

 

[otogirisou]

There are also software called "emulators" that allow you to play the gorgeous 2d pixel art games from those days.

 

[Ikagura]

Well, drawing 2D pixel art is much more time and resource consuming. Even BlazBlue had 3D models to use as templates for the animations.

But indies can still try like these:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1555150/Pocket_Bravery/

Blazing Strike on Steam

Challenge fighters from all dimensions with Blazing Strike! In this dystopian world run by a corrupt and murderous government, a resistance group is ready to stand up for the people. Will they succeed in overthrowing these evil autocrats?

store.steampowered.com

 

[RetroShmetro]

There are also software called "emulators" that allow you to play the gorgeous 2d pixel art games from those days.

Fighting game with bots just don't hit the same and those games that do get played are filled with players who have decades of experience. You wouldn't have fun racing Verstappen would you?

 

[Boog111]

There aren't as many new ones being released but many of the older pixel based fighting games have been re-released. I've enjoyed the re-releases of SVC Chaos, King of Fighters XIII, and Breakers Collection. I also like the Capcom Fighting Collections. Some of those games in the collections had no home port release or limited releases.

 

[RetroShmetro]

There aren't as many new ones being released but many of the older pixel based fighting games have been re-released. I've enjoyed the re-releases of SVC Chaos, King of Fighters XIII, and Breakers Collection. I also like the Capcom Fighting Collections. Some of those games in the collections had no home port release or limited releases.

True that, but still, I'd like to see ANYTHING new that's not an obscure indie

 

[SkunkyBeaumont]

 

[RetroShmetro]

Listen to this on repeat to become an American!
Btw netflixvania is cheeks

 

[SkunkyBeaumont]

 

[Virtuafighter]

I'm with you. Modern 2D or 2,5 fighters are not visually appealing to me. I wish SNK and Capcom would go the ArcSystem way. But I guess that's too expensive or maybe not appealing enough for modern audiences. KOF 13 is peak pixel art in fighting games.

 

[Somnia]

But indies can still try like these:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1555150/Pocket_Bravery/

Blazing Strike on Steam

Challenge fighters from all dimensions with Blazing Strike! In this dystopian world run by a corrupt and murderous government, a resistance group is ready to stand up for the people. Will they succeed in overthrowing these evil autocrats?

store.steampowered.com

Forever bitter that Aksys is charging such an absurd amount for that game because it basically guaranteed it would be DOA.

 

[newageretrohippie]

have you played skullgirls? it's 10 years old, but it has been constantly developed during its life cycle
(you can choose 2D or 3D backgrounds, and the animation is like Darkstalkers or Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (the cps 3 game) style, but HD. Also, the soundtrack is AWESOME

the base game is $2.49 on steam sale right now!

Skullgirls 2nd Encore on Steam

--Main Stage Game at Evo 2022!-- The ultimate Skullgirls experience: Featuring 14 hand-animated characters, fully voiced story mode, countless palettes, and unparalleled GGPO-based multiplayer netcode.

store.steampowered.com

Vangaurd princess is a pretty good one.

Vanguard Princess on Steam

Vanguard Princess is a classic 2D fighting game that features an all-female cast each with its own unique fighting style. Choose from ten girls and pair them with a powerful partner to form an unstoppable team. Navigate their journeies in Story Mode or engage in head-to-head battles in Versus Mode.

store.steampowered.com

Arcana Hearts Love max 3 is pretty good too

Save 80% on Arcana Heart 3 LOVE MAX!!!!! on Steam

With its own unique battle system and a wide selection of characteristic angels, the girls are appearing on Steam for the first time in [Arcana Heart 3 LOVE MAX!!!!!]!!

store.steampowered.com

i guess all of these are about 10 years old, but maybe if you didn't know about them, they would definitely be worth picking up on steam sale.

Post automatically merged: Jan 1, 2025

I'm with you. Modern 2D or 2,5 fighters are not visually appealing to me. I wish SNK and Capcom would go the ArcSystem way. But I guess that's too expensive or maybe not appealing enough for modern audiences. KOF 13 is peak pixel art in fighting games.

I really like the arc system works style too. All those Guilty Gears and Blazblue (did they do that one?)

Guilty Gear really has a highly developed shader style that's up there with a Disney film or something... or maybe better depending on what you like.

 

[Ecruz275]

i guess 2d fighters arent it anymore lol but yes well missed

 

[SkunkyBeaumont]

i guess 2d fighters arent it anymore lol but yes well missed

It's like the weather in Maine, wait 5 minutes, you might get what you want.

 

[stealthRUSH]

yes but at the same time I came to appreciate 2.5D since it retains the gameplay speed (at the cost of that beautiful 2D animation).

 

[Galatea]

It's a total pipe dream, but I'm still waiting for the day a Darkstalkers game hits shelves again..

 

[Somnia]

The way art and modeling teams have to be structured for pixel art tends to be different than 3D stuff so I have to wonder if companies like Arcsys could make a new 2D game that doesn't require some level of upending to their current development pipelines and staff.

That said, a bit sad to see this thread pay little respect to the one big company keeping the high quality pixel art dream alive, Soft Circle French-Bread!

Under Night 2 may just be a massive update to the last version of the original game, but it is still stellar! Melty Blood Type Lumina dropped a couple years back with absolutely stellar artwork too! I guess some might cry foul because their backgrounds aren't all pixel art as well, but I think that they do a stellar job at blending their 2D fighters with 3D background elements, much like Arcsys did with Blazblue.

Raito also just NEVER misses with the OSTs!

 

[Gorse]

I'm not opposed to new 3D fighting games, but all the big mainstream franchises right now truly need to improve their visual style. All the modern Street Fighter games look absolutely atrocious in both character and environment design (SF6 has the ugliest characters, especially the new ones, I've seen from a Japanese game this generation), and the new KoF and Guilty Gear games look way worse than the earlier ones. Why did the artwork for these games so suddenly fall off a cliff during the 2010s!? The last Street Fighter characters I liked were Dudley and Juri Han, and they're both approaching 20 years old.

French Bread's 2D pixel art anime fighters still look excellent, fortunately, and I really do think those games are way better than the big multi-trillion dollar franchises. That said, though, it would be nice if at least one franchise switched to high-quality, hand-drawn 2D artwork, like in all the promotional pictures... I can't imagine why that hasn't been done, yet.

 

[RetroShmetro]

I'm not opposed to new 3D fighting games, but all the big mainstream franchises right now truly need to improve their visual style. All the modern Street Fighter games look absolutely atrocious in both character and environment design (SF6 has the ugliest characters, especially the new ones, I've seen from a Japanese game this generation), and the new KoF and Guilty Gear games look way worse than the earlier ones. Why did the artwork for these games so suddenly fall off a cliff during the 2010s!? The last Street Fighter characters I liked were Dudley and Juri Han, and they're both approaching 20 years old.

French Bread's 2D pixel art anime fighters still look excellent, fortunately, and I really do think those games are way better than the big multi-trillion dollar franchises. That said, though, it would be nice if at least one franchise switched to high-quality, hand-drawn 2D artwork, like in all the promotional pictures... I can't imagine why that hasn't been done, yet.

Sf5 looked pretty nice, better than 4 at least. 6 does look dreadful, the game is what, 2 years old? Already looks worse than 5, it just won't age well. Guilty gear I think looks pretty good

Post automatically merged: Jan 2, 2025

The way art and modeling teams have to be structured for pixel art tends to be different than 3D stuff so I have to wonder if companies like Arcsys could make a new 2D game that doesn't require some level of upending to their current development pipelines and staff.

That said, a bit sad to see this thread pay little respect to the one big company keeping the high quality pixel art dream alive, Soft Circle French-Bread!

Under Night 2 may just be a massive update to the last version of the original game, but it is still stellar! Melty Blood Type Lumina dropped a couple years back with absolutely stellar artwork too! I guess some might cry foul because their backgrounds aren't all pixel art as well, but I think that they do a stellar job at blending their 2D fighters with 3D background elements, much like Arcsys did with Blazblue.

Raito also just NEVER misses with the OSTs!

Not a fan of the visual style and I don't play anime fighters

 

[Somnia]

That said, though, it would be nice if at least one franchise switched to high-quality, hand-drawn 2D artwork, like in all the promotional pictures... I can't imagine why that hasn't been done, yet.

Way harder and more time consuming to animate than pixel art already is. Skullgirls does exactly this and it requires roughly 1300 hand drawn frames of animation for every character, the end result of which is about $200k+ per character produced for a small scale independent fighting game team. That number only balloons if you tried adapting it to a larger project, not to mention Skullgirls launched with only 8 characters, a number that would be scoffed at by anybody paying $60-70 for a fighting game in the modern era. Hell, SF6 launched with 18 and people lamented it as being too small.

Then there's the issue of creating content outside of arcade runs and online play. You can't get away with a fighting game having a laughable training mode, an arcade mode, a vs mode and maybe a time attack/survival mode like you could in the 90s. People expect more bang for their buck, meaning more elaborate and playable story modes and such. All of that is stuff that you'd have to hand draw to stay visually consistent.

It just isn't remotely feasible for any large scale project to commit to.

THAT SAID there is another indie fighting game with some unique flourishes (namely up to 4 characters allowed on screen at once with up to 4 players) called Diesel Legacy that is also hand-drawn.

 

[Ikagura]

The King of Fighter XII and XIII almost killed SNK again.

Capcom couldn't realistically go back to 2D sprites (even Capcom vs SNK recycled many sprites because it would've taken too much time redrawing every animation frames).

That's also why Street Fighter III Third Strike barely introduced more characters compared to Alpha 3 that had a massive roster for a Street Fighter game pre-SFIV.