The best fighting games

Street Fighter II is a classic arcade fighting game developed and published by Capcom. It was first released in 1991 as a sequel to the original Street Fighter. Street Fighter II is widely regarded as one of the most influential a...

Mortal Kombat is one of the most popular one-on-one fighting games, and it's no surprise that it has spawned numerous sequels. Players choose from seven digitized characters and battle their way to the top, facing all other oppone...

Super Street Fighter II is an enhanced version of the iconic arcade fighting game Street Fighter II, developed and published by Capcom. It was released in 1993 as an upgrade to Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting and introduce...

Body Blows is a 2D fighting game developed and published by Team17, released in 1993. It was initially launched for the Amiga and later ported to MS-DOS. Body Blows was one of the few fighting games to emerge from Europe during th...

With a title like Pray for Death, you know you’re not signing up for a cheerful platformer. This is a fighting game with a gothic, heavy-metal aesthetic that screams 1996. It’s less polished than Mortal Kombat and less...

Battle Arena Toshinden was the first game in the Toshinden series and was originally released for the Sony PlayStation in 1995 and later for DOS. Battle Arena Toshinden introduced 3D graphics to the fighting game genre, allow...

One Must Fall: 2097 is a fighting game released in 1994 by Epic MegaGames. Set in a futuristic world, the game features giant humanoid robots known as HARs (Human-Assisted Robots) controlled by human pilots. The storyline revolves...

Mortal Kombat II is an arcade fighting game released by Midway in 1993. It's the sequel to the original Mortal Kombat (1992). The game introduced several new fighters, including Kitana, Mileena, Baraka, and Jax, alongside ret...

X-Men: Children of the Atom is a fighting video game developed by Capcom and released in arcades in 1994. The game features characters from Marvel Comics' X-Men series, including popular mutants like Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, and...

Ah, Budokan, the game where patience and discipline meet awkwardly slow combat and the occasional flying kick. You play as a martial arts student training in various dojos, culminating in a tournament that’s less Enter the D...

Mortal Kombat 3 is a fighting action game developed by Midway Manufacturing Company and released by GT Interactive Software in 1995 for DOS and Windows as well as for many other platforms. Mortal Kombat 3 is the third chapter of t...

Better known as Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior in some regions, Death Sword (1988) is remembered less for its deep gameplay and more for its infamous decapitation move. Swing your sword just right and—plop—your oppone...

A martial arts tournament starring fluffy animals with serious anger issues? Yes, please. Brutal: Paws of Fury is what happens when someone watches too much kung fu cinema and then wonders, “What if a bunny could do a spinni...

By 1996, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition on DOS felt like the veteran fighter returning for one last round. You could finally play as the bosses, which was a childhood dream come true—until you realized the AI was sti...

The sequel nobody expected but everyone button-mashed through. Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 adds more characters, more chaos, and less coherence. This time you’re Lee (no relation to Bruce, allegedly), battling an army of themed fighter...

Pit Fighter is an arcade-style fighting game that was originally released in arcades in 1990 by Atari Games. It was later ported to various home gaming platforms, including DOS, the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment Syste...

Metal & Lace: The Battle of the Robo Babes is a video game developed by Megatech Software and published by Forest Interactive in 1993. It's an adult-themed fighting game for MS-DOS.In the game, players control customizable fem...

Before Street Fighter became a cultural juggernaut, it was this humble 1988 DOS brawler where Ryu’s fists felt more like sluggish bricks than blazing fireballs. The controls were about as precise as a shopping cart with a fl...