I agree with what max said, some time ago I just wanted play Project Justice so much and learn more about the game, then I found a community on discord with guides and people to interact it was awesome. Two years later the game collection was announced and I just jumped to that server again and people were so happy about it, truly magical
this is why crossplay is important, every game ive ever played that has crossplay has survived for a really long time and never stopped anyone from playing with eachother
If people can play Melee for years and Japan can play and have tournaments with Psychic force on the dreamcast in EVO and for years, anything can be played.
I don’t count Smash because it has too much of a casual appeal because people Feel as though they can play die to the intuitive and easy controls. Sure there’s advanced stuff but it doesn’t deter people From playing it if it is brought up
Melee is a bad example here; It hasn't been in danger of dying in over a decade and also has a populated platform for automated skill-based matchmaking
A few years ago, I discovered a game called Martial Champion through Fightcade, and quickly fell in love with it. It's just the right combination of simple to play with some strategic depth. However, there was an issue: I was all alone in the lobby. Nobody had even mentioned Martial Champion in years. But, rather than moving on from this clearly dead game, I decided to do something about it. I learned how to make a discord server for the game, and told anyone who would listen about it. A little while later, a wiki was developed with the help of some friends. And my efforts have paid off: as of now, there's over 60 people in the discord server, including a good friend of the original lead developer of Martial Champion, whom has shared development stories and concept art and such with the community ♥. So, if you think a game you love is 'dead', you may have to be the one to try and revive it. If you're determined enough, it will work out.
Martial Champions is an old school fighting game that I learned about 15 years ago through MUGEN. Then I did my research and in the late 80's early 90's I remember seeing it in the local pizza shops and other stores. Awesome game.😁👍🏻
I feel like the FGC is the only community that gives you the opportunity to go back to old games and still learn about them. people are passionate about this shit man and it shows. Everyone is so welcoming and are always excited to show you what they’re super passionate about
every old fighting game has lore too lmao. You could learn about some legendary set that was played 20+ years ago or some tech that completely changed the meta for the game etc etc. It's honestly the most unique part about the FGC
I disagree, everyone the community is full lf elotist that hates a lpt of game for pretty shallow reasons "oh it has only female characters? TRASH "Oh it has anime aesthethics? TRASH "oh it doesn't play ñike street fighter? ULTRA TRASH
tbf fighting games are also one of the only genres with both enough technical depth to make it interesting and the only genre where it's particularly feasible without expensive fan servers being paid for, as well as being 1v1 instead of like, 6v6 or more.
@ironmaster6496 Those people do exist too, for sure, but I think there's more nuance than "they're all good" or "they're all bad." In reality, they're just like any community that has a mix of both.
i kinda dont care much if a fighting game is dead or not, im happy enough with playing the arcade mode from time to time. I get that the multiplayer factor it´s the essence of the genre, but I´m okay if i cant experience that with some titles.
Arcade mode enjoyers like us are living our best lives. 🗿 I've still got some story modes to complete, high scores to achieve, speedruns to take on and trials to master since online is basically a non-factor for my interest.
Samurai Shodown 2019 is my jam, I have so much fun playing that game, there’s so many fantastic characters with unique play styles and I’m shocked more people don’t play it.
Because SNK completely screwed it up, compounded by the pandemic lockdowns. The netcode on launch was delay-based, and particularly bad delay-based netcode at that. Even when the game was new it took forever to actually find matches with the game's sorry matchmaking, and when you did find one it was unplayable. There was the standard issue of there being no crossplay, so each system was limited to its own smaller pool of players. Then on top of everything, offline gatherings were just not a thing for the whole of the pandemic, and online was effectively the only real way to play which spelled disaster for the game (and others like Granblue). Then there's the disaster that was how they treated the game on PC. For starters, there was no PC launch initially. Instead a few months later you could only play it on a PC through Google Stadia, which itself was a complete failure. Then a year after the game came out on consoles, it was released on PC but only as an Epic Store exclusive when basically every PC fighting game player primarily used Steam. It took until 2 years after the game's initial launch for it to finally come out on Steam, while still having the netcode problems of the console versions, but nobody cared anymore. The game was unplayable for the entirety of the pandemic, and it's pretty much SNK's fault because they completely underestimated how important netplay was. If Covid19 never happened, part of me feels like SNK's games STILL wouldn't be getting rollback.
As a humongous Skullgirls fan I think more "Dead" fighting games need to be checked out more. Being in such a tight knit and amazing community is amazing! There's such a stigma of trying to just play the big thing recently but I legit just think these smaller communities are so much more lively, fun, and awesome to be in than people think.
Heck, Skullgirls is even pretty active as far as "dead" games go too. During COVID especially, it seemed like SG players were earning more from their usual weekly online tournaments than a bunch of other games. And those weeklies have been running for nearly a decade now.
What about em trendy New AI technology? Why can't we make learning AI-bot that can B applied 2 every dead Fighting game? So we always have a worthy adversaries!
@@KillYounglings definitely the game has quite a decent player base and you can find games on QUICKMATCH but the community is very dedicated. It's like GG xrd sorta level o' dead
@@Jurgir09 I mean sf6 is experimenting with this but obviously playing against a trained AI is never gonna be the same as a human and it ain't the same. It's nice just being able to play with a small pool of people.
@@radicalpokemaniacs wel yes but if you want to appreciate the game in the way other did you kinda need 2, i mean Mew2King played against CPU's for years before playing comp and said that once he started playing vs humans it was a completely different game
@@slaterism2762nah, its people like you laughing at those who don't have friends are the problem i could lecture you but it would be a waste of my time
Downloading Fightcade and finding a community for Darkstalkers 3/Vampire Savior was insane to me the first time, I knew people were still playing old fighting games but to find a random one like that *thriving* was eye-opening
I think to not be afraid of media death is one of the few things that I believe makes it hard for a casual player to turn into a diehard fan of fighting games. Usually a game they're currently playing gets a new yearly release. Fighting games currently don't have such a luxury. You have to truly love these games and practically be their life support in order to keep them going when the budget doesn't.
Never thought it like that. Always like you had to have all the combos down and interactions down with frame data to not be a casual. Really changed my way of thinking about it.
The fact that I still consistently can go to events or conventions or even the occasional arcade and find a Vampire Savior cabinet with people playing it, I have reset my belief of what defines a dead game. If you can’t access it retail or digital, no one ever talks about it or supports a community with it, and it’s relatively low or rare in circulation, dead. To say nothing of games with dead services. The beauty of fighting games, especially with local play, is they’re only dead when they leave the communities mind. They can always come back.
Real talk, I love the FGC and always have. Tekken, SF, Gramble, love it all. …but my absolute peak enjoyment in the FGC is playing Competitive Catherine and Magical Drop III. There is no scene of fighting and puzzle gamers that I absolutely adore more. Everyone there embodies the spirit of “I love this game, let’s throw hands and love every minute on the oldest jankest game ever”
@@juanramos4322 Harada had the chance to bring Soul Calibur into Tekken 8 using the comeback of Heihachi. He just needed to make the monks somehow summoned Heihachi from the past (Soul Calibur II's Heihachi.) It will open the gate for other Soul Calibur characters to join Tekken while at the same time also connect the origin of the Devil Gene to the Soul Edge! (Fun fact: Soul Calibur and Tekken takes place in the same universe, just at different time.) But no, he missed this once-of-a-lifetime chance and simply made Heihachi lava-proof. The end. And then he brought a Soul Calibur character but from Final Fantasy instead smh.
@ It could have been better, but it was fun with all the jank in it. It has it's charm. I'm no pro, so I really didn't care for all the hate. I thought it was fun.
I'm an offline player. I frankly don't care if a gsme is "dead" or not, since it doesn't apply to me. I still play Soul Calibur, and I played SSB Melee for years. I'm sure you can find groups to play old games.
@@Labasta_de_Lua In all honesty, it just sounded like common sense to me. Never let other "communities" and "fanbases" tell you what you should play. If you love it, play it. For games, age is just a number.
One of my favorite contributions to the FGC was building Tatsunoko's Scene their PCs that they now use for Frosty's and Combo Breaker. I asked originally what they were running on and they said like 2-3 laptops at the time and I told them no, I'm building you PCs let me talk to my boss. (I worked at an internet cafe at the time)
I grew up playing fighting games single player. Back then, they had more single player content to enjoy. But thanks to that, games never really die for me.
For me, it's less about the convenience, and more about being able to play with people that aren't the 30 best players in the world. And sure, I could just "Git Gud" but it's hard to Git Gud when every available opponent just wrecks you. In the FGC if the skill gap is too wide, the better player might as well be playing against a training dummy. And that's not a good learning environment for the game. But playing single player is also a bad learning environment. So yes, there are people out there playing the game, but there's not a great way to get to their level to where you can actually play the game. I see this all the time in Fight Cade. I would hop on, get in a lobby, and my opponent would realize they're better than me, and pick some cheese strat, which I'm fine with. But after barely beating them 1 time out of the 15 games we played, they immediately got upset, locked in the best team, won one time with that best team, then quit the session. That was the only realistic way for me to play that game against other people, and that's the experience. It's not about convenience, it's about fun. Playing against people like that isn't fun.
This TBH. Not having a concurrent playerbase large enough for skill-based matchmaking makes these games so frustrating to learn that it's hardly worth it when I would otherwise enjoy them.
This is why I love sharing A-Cho videos. They play some obscure shit sometimes, and it's just so cool to see what games, let alone fighting games are just lying in wait out there.
I usually agree with all points. But not everyone has a full time schedule to seek out fights for thier old game. When you factor work and family life into it all. It just makes sense to stick with what's new. I'm just thankful for the fighters collections coming out. They breath new life and give us old heads that matchmaking factor. All in all. I wish Fightcade had a queue system or some sort of matchmaking...
it’s getting harder and harder to find matches on dbfz and it’s really upsetting to watch one of my favorite games ever fall into obscurity because of lack of interest
Some games die way before their time, on no fault of their own. Umineko Golden Fantasia is still to this day one of the sickest fighting games ever made. The fact that it never took off or built much of a scene for itself is super disappointing to me.
@@meru2695an intrinsically “canon” fighting game, mind you In supplementary material for umineko it’s been stated black battler existed in bernkastle’s game but not outright shown to us, golden fantasia _is_ bernkastle’s game for intents and purposes
It was a genuine journey for me to go back and try a ton of older fighting games, realize I liked some of them more than the newer ones, and come to accept that I can simply play those whenever I want. I know that may sound crazy to people on the older side of the FGC but as someone who grew up in the modern era of gaming, I was just hardwired to play the newest and shiniest game. It took me a couple years to accept that, I had an actual anxiety not playing the newest thing because I felt like I was "missing out". Just a really odd phenomenon.
Thi is why we do what we can to keep Virtual-On alive. I suck at ranking, but I do my best to share all the other media about it wherever and whenever I can.
I watch so many channels that have old fighting games. Live streams from arcades playing Rumberfish, Darkstalkers, Virtual-On, Gem and Puzzle fighter and what have you and many others tunning in. Love of these games never die.
I am definitely one of those people who really wished they didn’t have to join a discord just to find matches for the games they want to play. I’ve done it, I’ve joined the discords for basically all modern fgs that I actively want to play, but even discords aren’t perfect. For every good experience I have in them that makes me come back the next day for more matches, I’ll have a not so good experience that makes me swear off discord fighters for a whole month and just boot up Street Fighter or Tekken. At least in those I can just queue up and not have to go out of my way just to play the game online.
Seriously, it is so toxic that people love to label fighting games dead and only embrace the latest and biggest name, even when older games are either complete, better or something else. Like, the old games were the ones that made the names and were the biggest thing in their time, and yet people love to label them as the worst things ever the moment the next game comes out just cause they don't have as many players anymore. I can't think of any other genre of games that is quite like this. Still loving the older Guilty Gear games, SFIV and Garou to name a few.
There's so many cool unknown games More people should try One Must Fall 2097; it's tournament mode is one of the coolest single player modes I've ever seen
OMF 2097 is genuinely fantastic, and while I’m happy that it is Freeware now, I’m still bummed it’s never gonna get the full attention it deserves. I’m genuinely curious how a modern remake of it would fare.
games never really die if there is at least a few people playing. might just be a struggle, but its a lot easier now to play some of the very obscure games that never really saw much love.
Some of these fighting games could be brought back. But these companies, however, don't want to take any risks whatsoever. Their safest bet is to re-release their fighting games through collections. Speaking of collections... Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is arriving soon. :)
I bought SVC Chaos on steam when it came out, and the surge of players that lasted a couple weeks made me fall in love with the game, and now I play casual matches on fightcade. I don't like ranked because of how insane the top tiers are, but man playing as Mai and Akuma against the more normal characters is the most fun I've had in an SNK game and it was my gateway drug to seriously trying KOF.
This definitely applies outside of fighting games too. I know Max is a big fan of Phantasy Star Online and that game definitely shows that just because official support doesn't exist anymore, you can still find a way to maintain a community and keep the game alive. With PSO, it happened through the creation of private servers which are still operating 20-25 years later, with active Discord communities. With fighting games it's a little different but I think the overall sentiment is the same. If you love a game, there is probably a community out there already trying to keep it available to play.
Before I started playing FGs, I used to play a game called Lost Saga, (which is kind of a FG), and 2 years ago I tried to find a community for this game in my region, luckily I found 3 other dudes who also love this game, and we have been actively playing it ever since.
Very happy to see many people talk about SoulCalibur in the comments! We have a great community keeping the older titles alive both casually and competitively, and even upcoming tournaments! I'll drop the Discord as a reply for anyone who'd like to join us!
Would love to join if you figure out how to share. Been getting heavy into SC6 in a way I didn’t think I would. Was obsessed with Soul Blade/SC1 when they came out. Picked up SC6 a little while ago and having a blast
Totally agree! USF4 may not be as played as it used to be, but there's still a group of people that play this game daily. You'll find them (us), hundreds, mostly on PC. Yet even on the Xbox or PlayStation, there's a good couple of dozen players that are dedicated and find ways to play together. There's a few Discord channels, like the USF4 Revival group. There's even a few dedicated streamers, like GhostSFO in the UK that hold weekly tourneys. It doesn't have to be thousands of players to enjoy good matches between friends. Like Max said, we don't do it for the glory, or the money or even the points. We LOVE our game and we want to keep playing it. The publishers and devs may have forgotten us, but we won't forget our game.
2025 is going to be a dope year because were getting a whole new wave a cool new fighting games coming out and while you'll always have the people that will only play the brand names (SF, Tekken, MK), this year will be the year that we'll see more depth to community as we'll see people start to explore and support the games that actually excite them. Excited to see it!
I love Melty Blood Type Lumina (shout out Jiyuna). It's awesome. A little janky compared to MBAACC for sure, but it's still one of the most enjoyable free form anime fighters I've ever played. I love Skullgirls. The art, the characters, the mechanics are all peak for me. I love Persona 4 Arena, it's an awesome spin off to probably my favorite JRPG of all time. Same reason I love JoJo All Star Battle R. These games are "dead" and I irrationally wish every fighting game could always have enough people to play ranked. I love that EVO wants to put older games on main stage and I hope that continues for the foreseeable future.
The thing with fighting games is it's still a niche genre, especially ones that are not SF or MK. So i feel like if a brand new fighting game were to come out right now it'll have a ton of players at first then it will drop a lot later on. It makes me think fighting games aren't that profitable. I'm saying this cuz I did plan out to make a fighting game but it's gonna be very expensive and might not make a lot of money back, not that I intended for it to be a very big franchise but it's something I realized.
I love SCII so much I own it on 3 different consoles (Xbox, PS2, & GameCube) just to each have all the guest characters Xbox: Spawn PS2: Heihachi GameCube: Link I miss this era man😭
Awesome video, Max! I love a lot of old and niche fighting games, and it can definitely be hard to find other players for them. Luckily, by becoming a member of various fighting game Facebook groups, I found a decent number of people to play these games with. As long as I can find other people to play with, certain fighting games will never be "dead" to me.
If something the FGC teached me is that if a game is dead, it's because we are not playing it enough. Its a nice thing seeing people getting back or going for old games tye first time.
I also would like Max to make a video on why people in fgc just often time stick to one game and don't want to learn or try other fighting games. And now they just have some weird reason/Stereotype around it to not play it ever.
I couldn’t find matches for vampire savior on capcom fighting collection so I went to fightcade and I had a blast. The Darkstalkers community is awesome
Fighting games will always be my favorite. I thank you Max for you getting me more into playing fighting games. I've been making shorts for fighting games specifically the arcade mode. Might go into making full length videos from my xbox from all fighting games i have. You inspire me to put out any content i have that is fighting games.
5:12 speaking facts right here. I agree and also respect it. I just play games I like NOT because its popular or new but because I like it. Its not any deeper than that.
One thing about finding communities, is they're usually kept alive by the hardcore players. For some of us with kids, full time work, and additional responsibilities, it's daunting to try and join these. Hopefully some people are willing to help skill those up that have the nostalgia but not the skills.
Typing this at 2:10 into the video It goes beyond fighting games as well. Favorite shooter of all time Titanfall 2 has a discord community with a client you can install where the game lets you pick a server to play in and all kinds of new stuff. If you love a game odds are there's a community fostering it already, possibly with some upgrades. Like Max with Infinite and Beyond.
Honestly I 100% agree with this, crazy take ik but not even 3 months ago I got really into KOF 2002, but I live in south Africa so I rarely got stable connection matches, but I recently discovered a fairly massive community of other South African players who genuinely whoop ass, but they're always ready to help out and introduce new people to the game and why they love it so dearly, it just made me happy
I fully agree. Because of my job and family, I unfortunately don't have the time to play a single game intensively anymore, but some time ago I took heart and joined a Discord channel for the first GBVS and also took part in weeklys there. That was the most fun I've had with a fighting game since I played in arcades in Japan.
Max is spitting right now. Thank you for touching on this weird E-Sports mentality with gaming these days. People put so much emphasis into rank and meta. They don't want to play the game that isn't popular because they don't think they'll have a big enough audience. I don't even feel like many gamers even focus much on fun anymore, and you can tell from the way people talk about games, even to how they play them. Gaming is different these days.
This echoes so much with certain aspects of the retro gaming community as a whole. Games like Super Metroid have these booming communities, centered around community-made tools like the Map Randomizer. Strong Discord community, weekly races, community leaderboards, etc., well over 30+ people at the core of it, with a varied mix of skill levels from world record speedrunners to newer people coming in from seeing it played on UA-cam/Twitch. Play the games you love. Find the communities that exist for them, because they do.
The thing about fighting games is that to get a match you only need 1 person to get a match going. Other genres don't have that advantage where you might need other 3 or 9 people to get a match, god forbids if its a big multiplayer game when the standard match needs 60 to 100 people.
Losing SRK was such a huge blow to keeping older fighting games alive. We have discord, but you have to have an invite or know someone to get access. There needs to be another open forum site
Part of me wonders if game developers rereleased "dead" fighting games on modern consoles that it will help regain some form of popularity and create a resurgence of the franchise.
What timing. Very recently I had someone make a new account on Reddit to dm me “dead game” over and over again 😂 the topic leads to some toxicity from others
It really is the modern equivalent of “how it used to be”. There was no online ranked back then. You had to go out of your way to find the arcade where they were playing your game. It’s the same thing now, but online. You wanna play Darkstalkers? You gotta find the platform and the Discord where they’re playing it, just like you had to find the arcade.
I think my favorite thing about the fighting game community isn't just that no game ever truly does, but the 50 to 100 people that might keep any given game alive if just a new random person showed up and they got to watch by proxy someone grow all over again. I finally joined my local FGC Discord based on finally getting Street Fighter 6, but I'm really happy to know that all of the games that have been burning a hole in my pocket with none of my friends able to play with me, I can guarantee that there's one person in that group who will play it with me. After almost a decade I have someone IRL to help me learn pro level Skullgirls, a game that I love so much I literally changed my last name to Valentine. I literally never engaged with anything outside of the story just because I was too worried I'd get my ass kicked, but at this point in my life it actually makes me really happy that that's going to be the case, because the idea that I could beat like, even one of them someday is a literal underdog movie story.
I agree with what max said, some time ago I just wanted play Project Justice so much and learn more about the game, then I found a community on discord with guides and people to interact it was awesome. Two years later the game collection was announced and I just jumped to that server again and people were so happy about it, truly magical
That is awesome!
whats the server? I’m tryna learn some sauce for that game 👀
@@Johjibebop try this code: PPq7WRe
this is why crossplay is important, every game ive ever played that has crossplay has survived for a really long time and never stopped anyone from playing with eachother
Facts
I've been saying this since COVID, crossplay should be mandatory. Luckily, all my friends are on PC now
If people can play Melee for years and Japan can play and have tournaments with Psychic force on the dreamcast in EVO and for years, anything can be played.
The fact that people still play Psychic Force is crazy!!
I don’t count Smash because it has too much of a casual appeal because people
Feel as though they can play die to the intuitive and easy controls. Sure there’s advanced stuff but it doesn’t deter people
From playing it if it is brought up
@@renovendange5388 I am one of them
Now I just gotta find people to play P4U with.
Melee is a bad example here; It hasn't been in danger of dying in over a decade and also has a populated platform for automated skill-based matchmaking
A few years ago, I discovered a game called Martial Champion through Fightcade, and quickly fell in love with it. It's just the right combination of simple to play with some strategic depth. However, there was an issue: I was all alone in the lobby. Nobody had even mentioned Martial Champion in years.
But, rather than moving on from this clearly dead game, I decided to do something about it. I learned how to make a discord server for the game, and told anyone who would listen about it. A little while later, a wiki was developed with the help of some friends.
And my efforts have paid off: as of now, there's over 60 people in the discord server, including a good friend of the original lead developer of Martial Champion, whom has shared development stories and concept art and such with the community ♥.
So, if you think a game you love is 'dead', you may have to be the one to try and revive it. If you're determined enough, it will work out.
This is wholesome AF.
@@tmtmtmtmtmtmtmtmtm Thank you, I agree. :)
Martial Champions is an old school fighting game that I learned about 15 years ago through MUGEN. Then I did my research and in the late 80's early 90's I remember seeing it in the local pizza shops and other stores. Awesome game.😁👍🏻
@@TripleMugen4678 That's really cool! And yes, it is an awesome game. :D
you are a goddamn legend. Serious kudos ❤
I feel like the FGC is the only community that gives you the opportunity to go back to old games and still learn about them. people are passionate about this shit man and it shows. Everyone is so welcoming and are always excited to show you what they’re super passionate about
every old fighting game has lore too lmao. You could learn about some legendary set that was played 20+ years ago or some tech that completely changed the meta for the game etc etc. It's honestly the most unique part about the FGC
I disagree, everyone the community is full lf elotist that hates a lpt of game for pretty shallow reasons "oh it has only female characters? TRASH "Oh it has anime aesthethics? TRASH "oh it doesn't play ñike street fighter? ULTRA TRASH
tbf fighting games are also one of the only genres with both enough technical depth to make it interesting and the only genre where it's particularly feasible without expensive fan servers being paid for, as well as being 1v1 instead of like, 6v6 or more.
I love that
@ironmaster6496 Those people do exist too, for sure, but I think there's more nuance than "they're all good" or "they're all bad." In reality, they're just like any community that has a mix of both.
Shout out to the Bloody roar community
They show up and show out every time
I Still want to see a rate the finisher on Beast Drives!
OMG, I wish I could play it nowadays. BR2 and 3 were my favorites.
I miss playing Bloody Roar 2. Fun times.
Just bought extreme on impulse i dont even have a GameCube
i kinda dont care much if a fighting game is dead or not, im happy enough with playing the arcade mode from time to time. I get that the multiplayer factor it´s the essence of the genre, but I´m okay if i cant experience that with some titles.
Arcade mode enjoyers like us are living our best lives. 🗿 I've still got some story modes to complete, high scores to achieve, speedruns to take on and trials to master since online is basically a non-factor for my interest.
That’s me with DOA6 I clicked with that game and I’m sad it didn’t last longer. Haven’t looked for a community maybe it time I do that lol
Same. There were plenty arcade modes worth playing in the old days. Hell, even MvC3's arcade mode is pretty good, because it ends with Galactus!
Holy fk I dig that I recently booted Soul edge on ps 1 and the arcade and that tour mode was so Freakin fun.
Glad I’m not the only one who enjoys constantly playing arcade modes.
As someone who still plays DNF Duel, it is sad to see a game you love to play, not have many players.
I agree 100% I had 2 match's. Wasn't much but mannn it was fun
I love this game so much. I wasn't the best but playing Grappler online was so incredibly fun.
I'll have to hop on more and give DNF Duel other go. even if I don't happen to be that good.
i got it for free but naa it's not for me...
I feel you... Pokken player here
Samurai Shodown 2019 is my jam, I have so much fun playing that game, there’s so many fantastic characters with unique play styles and I’m shocked more people don’t play it.
That was a really good game. The netcode was atrocious though.
Because SNK completely screwed it up, compounded by the pandemic lockdowns. The netcode on launch was delay-based, and particularly bad delay-based netcode at that. Even when the game was new it took forever to actually find matches with the game's sorry matchmaking, and when you did find one it was unplayable. There was the standard issue of there being no crossplay, so each system was limited to its own smaller pool of players. Then on top of everything, offline gatherings were just not a thing for the whole of the pandemic, and online was effectively the only real way to play which spelled disaster for the game (and others like Granblue). Then there's the disaster that was how they treated the game on PC.
For starters, there was no PC launch initially. Instead a few months later you could only play it on a PC through Google Stadia, which itself was a complete failure. Then a year after the game came out on consoles, it was released on PC but only as an Epic Store exclusive when basically every PC fighting game player primarily used Steam. It took until 2 years after the game's initial launch for it to finally come out on Steam, while still having the netcode problems of the console versions, but nobody cared anymore. The game was unplayable for the entirety of the pandemic, and it's pretty much SNK's fault because they completely underestimated how important netplay was. If Covid19 never happened, part of me feels like SNK's games STILL wouldn't be getting rollback.
I installed the game again today lol. Awesome game
yeah i love samsho too, but there arent players in my region 😥, fun game anyway
Sam Sho will always be one of the greatest fighting game, Reboot or V both have their good stuff
As a humongous Skullgirls fan I think more "Dead" fighting games need to be checked out more. Being in such a tight knit and amazing community is amazing! There's such a stigma of trying to just play the big thing recently but I legit just think these smaller communities are so much more lively, fun, and awesome to be in than people think.
Heck, Skullgirls is even pretty active as far as "dead" games go too. During COVID especially, it seemed like SG players were earning more from their usual weekly online tournaments than a bunch of other games. And those weeklies have been running for nearly a decade now.
What about em trendy New AI technology? Why can't we make learning AI-bot that can B applied 2 every dead Fighting game? So we always have a worthy adversaries!
@@KillYounglings definitely the game has quite a decent player base and you can find games on QUICKMATCH but the community is very dedicated. It's like GG xrd sorta level o' dead
@@Jurgir09 I mean sf6 is experimenting with this but obviously playing against a trained AI is never gonna be the same as a human and it ain't the same. It's nice just being able to play with a small pool of people.
No game is ever truly dead so long as one person wants to play it. That's the beauty of it
you need 2 people to play a fighting game
@@mcbill7352 not true given cpu battles, fighting games can live on forever
@@mcbill7352 so you dont have at least 1 friend?? sounds like youre the problem lmao
@@radicalpokemaniacs wel yes but if you want to appreciate the game in the way other did you kinda need 2, i mean Mew2King played against CPU's for years before playing comp and said that once he started playing vs humans it was a completely different game
@@slaterism2762nah, its people like you laughing at those who don't have friends are the problem i could lecture you but it would be a waste of my time
As a bbtag and soul calibur 6 enjoyer, it makes me happy to find others who still play and enjoy these games, despite the unpopularity.
A few weeks ago me and some of my Discord friends had a casual SC6 tournament with custom characters.
Those are two of my favs ever!
The C in FGC stands for 'community'. Community needs to be maintained.
Agreed. Fuck tribalism, community is what it’s all about.
@@KeirosDragontribalism is what keeps communities together
Downloading Fightcade and finding a community for Darkstalkers 3/Vampire Savior was insane to me the first time, I knew people were still playing old fighting games but to find a random one like that *thriving* was eye-opening
I still play Street Fighter x Tekken on my 360
The PC community is actually pretty stable. There's a decent amount of people you can find.
I play tag 2 and tekken 6 on 360 still lol
It's a shame they never made Tekken x Street Fighter
Same
That's really freaky because I was just about to type this.
I liked SFxT
the new age of modding old fighting games on PC to breath new life into them is a beautiful experience
I think to not be afraid of media death is one of the few things that I believe makes it hard for a casual player to turn into a diehard fan of fighting games. Usually a game they're currently playing gets a new yearly release. Fighting games currently don't have such a luxury. You have to truly love these games and practically be their life support in order to keep them going when the budget doesn't.
Never thought it like that. Always like you had to have all the combos down and interactions down with frame data to not be a casual. Really changed my way of thinking about it.
The fact that I still consistently can go to events or conventions or even the occasional arcade and find a Vampire Savior cabinet with people playing it, I have reset my belief of what defines a dead game.
If you can’t access it retail or digital, no one ever talks about it or supports a community with it, and it’s relatively low or rare in circulation, dead. To say nothing of games with dead services.
The beauty of fighting games, especially with local play, is they’re only dead when they leave the communities mind. They can always come back.
Real talk, I love the FGC and always have. Tekken, SF, Gramble, love it all.
…but my absolute peak enjoyment in the FGC is playing Competitive Catherine and Magical Drop III. There is no scene of fighting and puzzle gamers that I absolutely adore more. Everyone there embodies the spirit of “I love this game, let’s throw hands and love every minute on the oldest jankest game ever”
Soul Calibur is in its dormant state. I fully believe that it will have a new entry within the next 4 years.
Fingers crossed!
@@juanramos4322 Harada had the chance to bring Soul Calibur into Tekken 8 using the comeback of Heihachi. He just needed to make the monks somehow summoned Heihachi from the past (Soul Calibur II's Heihachi.)
It will open the gate for other Soul Calibur characters to join Tekken while at the same time also connect the origin of the Devil Gene to the Soul Edge! (Fun fact: Soul Calibur and Tekken takes place in the same universe, just at different time.)
But no, he missed this once-of-a-lifetime chance and simply made Heihachi lava-proof. The end.
And then he brought a Soul Calibur character but from Final Fantasy instead smh.
I hope so too, but I doubt it.
Soul Calibur peaked at #2. The best thing about the later games is the character creator, but that's it.
@@Fools_Requiemto each their own on that.
Every now and then I play every MK before mk11 . The 3D era is super nostalgic
even MK vs DC?
@ just bought it again to replay believe it or not, I’m more just being hopeful for a much better sequel
@ It could have been better, but it was fun with all the jank in it. It has it's charm. I'm no pro, so I really didn't care for all the hate. I thought it was fun.
The fans added trophies to those, which gave me an excuse to play Deadly Alliance, Deception and Armageddon again.
@@feartheolivebread wym ?
I often want to play older games but at a novice level. The ONLY people playing old dead games are elite players.
Yea that’s true
Harada claims there is no demand for older Tekken games, which couldn't be further from the truth. I would preorder a Tekken collection on day 1
I want to respect Harada, but that is a dumb as hell quote
Hes lying.
I want tekken 6 and tekken tag 2 on steam
Understandable that he doesn't want Tekken players to be divided. He would rather have all Tekken players only play Tekken 8.
I don't know anyone who would turn down a Tekken 3, 5 or Tag 1 remaster.
People always complain about games being dead but they don't want to be the one to revive it
They only chase what's new
People prefer to bitch about things than find ways to make them better.
No one wants to do the work
speaking facts my man, although when you want to revive too many games it kinda backfires too
This right here
I'm an offline player. I frankly don't care if a gsme is "dead" or not, since it doesn't apply to me. I still play Soul Calibur, and I played SSB Melee for years. I'm sure you can find groups to play old games.
That's the most based thing I've ever read
@@Labasta_de_Lua In all honesty, it just sounded like common sense to me.
Never let other "communities" and "fanbases" tell you what you should play. If you love it, play it. For games, age is just a number.
@@MrDibara agreed, that's the way
@@MrDibara
Spot on, 100%
Same. I have some friends on a Discord server, and if I want to play any multiplayer game I just ask some of them. I know someone will answer.
"They're not dead... 😢😢😢 Shush, let me cope."
Man... it's kinda sad to think about it.
One of my favorite contributions to the FGC was building Tatsunoko's Scene their PCs that they now use for Frosty's and Combo Breaker. I asked originally what they were running on and they said like 2-3 laptops at the time and I told them no, I'm building you PCs let me talk to my boss. (I worked at an internet cafe at the time)
I grew up playing fighting games single player. Back then, they had more single player content to enjoy.
But thanks to that, games never really die for me.
For me, it's less about the convenience, and more about being able to play with people that aren't the 30 best players in the world.
And sure, I could just "Git Gud" but it's hard to Git Gud when every available opponent just wrecks you. In the FGC if the skill gap is too wide, the better player might as well be playing against a training dummy. And that's not a good learning environment for the game. But playing single player is also a bad learning environment. So yes, there are people out there playing the game, but there's not a great way to get to their level to where you can actually play the game.
I see this all the time in Fight Cade. I would hop on, get in a lobby, and my opponent would realize they're better than me, and pick some cheese strat, which I'm fine with. But after barely beating them 1 time out of the 15 games we played, they immediately got upset, locked in the best team, won one time with that best team, then quit the session. That was the only realistic way for me to play that game against other people, and that's the experience. It's not about convenience, it's about fun. Playing against people like that isn't fun.
This TBH. Not having a concurrent playerbase large enough for skill-based matchmaking makes these games so frustrating to learn that it's hardly worth it when I would otherwise enjoy them.
This is why I love sharing A-Cho videos. They play some obscure shit sometimes, and it's just so cool to see what games, let alone fighting games are just lying in wait out there.
Don't forget to archive their stuff since they're gonna shut down and take down the videos
I love Soul Caliber and I agree with Max. Playing games for love is the way to go.
I usually agree with all points. But not everyone has a full time schedule to seek out fights for thier old game. When you factor work and family life into it all. It just makes sense to stick with what's new. I'm just thankful for the fighters collections coming out. They breath new life and give us old heads that matchmaking factor. All in all. I wish Fightcade had a queue system or some sort of matchmaking...
As I always say, a game is "dead" when the community leaves it.
😂😂😂
Hey Max, I hope everything’s going OK and I wanna say thank you so much for your content!
it’s getting harder and harder to find matches on dbfz and it’s really upsetting to watch one of my favorite games ever fall into obscurity because of lack of interest
Some games die way before their time, on no fault of their own. Umineko Golden Fantasia is still to this day one of the sickest fighting games ever made. The fact that it never took off or built much of a scene for itself is super disappointing to me.
Wtf is even that??!
Holy shit, I just started reading Higurashi and I find out like this that there's an Umineko fg? That's SICK!
what is umnineko?
@@meru2695an intrinsically “canon” fighting game, mind you
In supplementary material for umineko it’s been stated black battler existed in bernkastle’s game but not outright shown to us, golden fantasia _is_ bernkastle’s game for intents and purposes
They added rollback as steam update by themselves
It was a genuine journey for me to go back and try a ton of older fighting games, realize I liked some of them more than the newer ones, and come to accept that I can simply play those whenever I want. I know that may sound crazy to people on the older side of the FGC but as someone who grew up in the modern era of gaming, I was just hardwired to play the newest and shiniest game. It took me a couple years to accept that, I had an actual anxiety not playing the newest thing because I felt like I was "missing out". Just a really odd phenomenon.
If we’re playing dead fighting games do we get to call them zombie games
Thi is why we do what we can to keep Virtual-On alive.
I suck at ranking, but I do my best to share all the other media about it wherever and whenever I can.
Shocking that the 360 version of Oratorio Tangram dodged the delistings (but for how much longer is a good question)
I watch so many channels that have old fighting games. Live streams from arcades playing Rumberfish, Darkstalkers, Virtual-On, Gem and Puzzle fighter and what have you and many others tunning in.
Love of these games never die.
The beauty of fighting games is that they’re 1 on 1, if you can find someone else who loves the game and wants to learn it it’s never truly dead
I am definitely one of those people who really wished they didn’t have to join a discord just to find matches for the games they want to play. I’ve done it, I’ve joined the discords for basically all modern fgs that I actively want to play, but even discords aren’t perfect. For every good experience I have in them that makes me come back the next day for more matches, I’ll have a not so good experience that makes me swear off discord fighters for a whole month and just boot up Street Fighter or Tekken. At least in those I can just queue up and not have to go out of my way just to play the game online.
Seriously, it is so toxic that people love to label fighting games dead and only embrace the latest and biggest name, even when older games are either complete, better or something else. Like, the old games were the ones that made the names and were the biggest thing in their time, and yet people love to label them as the worst things ever the moment the next game comes out just cause they don't have as many players anymore. I can't think of any other genre of games that is quite like this.
Still loving the older Guilty Gear games, SFIV and Garou to name a few.
There's so many cool unknown games
More people should try One Must Fall 2097; it's tournament mode is one of the coolest single player modes I've ever seen
OMF 2097 is genuinely fantastic, and while I’m happy that it is Freeware now, I’m still bummed it’s never gonna get the full attention it deserves.
I’m genuinely curious how a modern remake of it would fare.
games never really die if there is at least a few people playing. might just be a struggle, but its a lot easier now to play some of the very obscure games that never really saw much love.
I still piss about what happened to Them's Fightin' Herds.
OOF... I've heard about that. To quote a certain Fire Lord: "That's rough, buddy."
Some of these fighting games could be brought back. But these companies, however, don't want to take any risks whatsoever. Their safest bet is to re-release their fighting games through collections.
Speaking of collections... Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is arriving soon. :)
I bought SVC Chaos on steam when it came out, and the surge of players that lasted a couple weeks made me fall in love with the game, and now I play casual matches on fightcade. I don't like ranked because of how insane the top tiers are, but man playing as Mai and Akuma against the more normal characters is the most fun I've had in an SNK game and it was my gateway drug to seriously trying KOF.
Same but PS4. Those online matches were hard. I main Tessa/Tsubasa
This definitely applies outside of fighting games too. I know Max is a big fan of Phantasy Star Online and that game definitely shows that just because official support doesn't exist anymore, you can still find a way to maintain a community and keep the game alive. With PSO, it happened through the creation of private servers which are still operating 20-25 years later, with active Discord communities. With fighting games it's a little different but I think the overall sentiment is the same. If you love a game, there is probably a community out there already trying to keep it available to play.
I still play Bloody Roar religiously.
Only played Extreme which seems to be really fun.
2 and 4 are goat, my childhood games
I need another Bloody Roar game
Fighting games are sick because they can stay relevant via local multiplayer 🎉
Before I started playing FGs, I used to play a game called Lost Saga, (which is kind of a FG), and 2 years ago I tried to find a community for this game in my region, luckily I found 3 other dudes who also love this game, and we have been actively playing it ever since.
Lost Saga brings back some memories T^T, which server are you guys playing?
@@Alkavine We're playing on Exotic server, since it has p2p connection.
My man JeritheOg been trynna keep Bloody roar extreme alive for damn near 9 years. Show some love
I still fire up SFIV from time to time because it’s fun and to get ideas and inspiration on tools to use in my other SF game.
I only played sfiv for the first time recently and I wish makoto was in 6
@ A Third Strike 30th anniversary character pack with her in it would be sweet. Call it ‘Thirdieth Strike.’
I adore how fighting games are all about love
Very happy to see many people talk about SoulCalibur in the comments! We have a great community keeping the older titles alive both casually and competitively, and even upcoming tournaments! I'll drop the Discord as a reply for anyone who'd like to join us!
Please, do.
Would love to join if you figure out how to share. Been getting heavy into SC6 in a way I didn’t think I would. Was obsessed with Soul Blade/SC1 when they came out. Picked up SC6 a little while ago and having a blast
Eyyy Enryyy! The discord needs more newcomers for sure 😭
@feeharn5531 Can you drop the link?
Totally agree! USF4 may not be as played as it used to be, but there's still a group of people that play this game daily. You'll find them (us), hundreds, mostly on PC. Yet even on the Xbox or PlayStation, there's a good couple of dozen players that are dedicated and find ways to play together. There's a few Discord channels, like the USF4 Revival group. There's even a few dedicated streamers, like GhostSFO in the UK that hold weekly tourneys. It doesn't have to be thousands of players to enjoy good matches between friends. Like Max said, we don't do it for the glory, or the money or even the points. We LOVE our game and we want to keep playing it. The publishers and devs may have forgotten us, but we won't forget our game.
Still rocking USF4 on my Playstation
Good man
2025 is going to be a dope year because were getting a whole new wave a cool new fighting games coming out and while you'll always have the people that will only play the brand names (SF, Tekken, MK), this year will be the year that we'll see more depth to community as we'll see people start to explore and support the games that actually excite them. Excited to see it!
I love Melty Blood Type Lumina (shout out Jiyuna). It's awesome. A little janky compared to MBAACC for sure, but it's still one of the most enjoyable free form anime fighters I've ever played. I love Skullgirls. The art, the characters, the mechanics are all peak for me. I love Persona 4 Arena, it's an awesome spin off to probably my favorite JRPG of all time. Same reason I love JoJo All Star Battle R. These games are "dead" and I irrationally wish every fighting game could always have enough people to play ranked. I love that EVO wants to put older games on main stage and I hope that continues for the foreseeable future.
The thing with fighting games is it's still a niche genre, especially ones that are not SF or MK. So i feel like if a brand new fighting game were to come out right now it'll have a ton of players at first then it will drop a lot later on. It makes me think fighting games aren't that profitable. I'm saying this cuz I did plan out to make a fighting game but it's gonna be very expensive and might not make a lot of money back, not that I intended for it to be a very big franchise but it's something I realized.
Max playing bloody roar would be amazing!
dengeki bunko fighting climax and undernight inbirth stay rotating on my vita
Soul calibur, I love popping the GameCube version of 2 from time to time, I will buy a new one in a heartbeat
I love SCII so much I own it on 3 different consoles (Xbox, PS2, & GameCube) just to each have all the guest characters
Xbox: Spawn
PS2: Heihachi
GameCube: Link
I miss this era man😭
@@Luisknowstooons I remember the HD version of 2 having both spawn and heihachi in it, shame it never jumped to newer generations of consoles
Awesome video, Max! I love a lot of old and niche fighting games, and it can definitely be hard to find other players for them. Luckily, by becoming a member of various fighting game Facebook groups, I found a decent number of people to play these games with.
As long as I can find other people to play with, certain fighting games will never be "dead" to me.
There are freakin what's app groups that are playing kof '97 and '98 etc. In a random ass country like India.
There is a game for everyone. I have played nearly every genre of game, but I always seem to make my way back to Skyrim. That's just MY game.
Very necessary video thanks max
If something the FGC teached me is that if a game is dead, it's because we are not playing it enough.
Its a nice thing seeing people getting back or going for old games tye first time.
I also would like Max to make a video on why people in fgc just often time stick to one game and don't want to learn or try other fighting games. And now they just have some weird reason/Stereotype around it to not play it ever.
No game is dead if people still play em. Long live ALL fighting games!
if someone is blind, mute and deaf at the same time, are they still "living" ?
@@anthonybulgheroni9716crazy comparison, holy…
@@anthonybulgheroni9716 comparing a human being with a innamte object is very weird...
@@anthonybulgheroni9716you didn’t cook with this
@@anthonybulgheroni9716 Uhh, you doing ok there??? 🤣
USF4 and SFV both have hundreds of players active and it's no trouble to find a match.
Us in the Blade Strangers discord are still goin.
Max thank you so much for this video i really wish this concept was more practiced in the gaming communities outside of fighting games
"You have to enter the FGC-"
"No reward is worth this."
I couldn’t find matches for vampire savior on capcom fighting collection so I went to fightcade and I had a blast. The Darkstalkers community is awesome
I was playing guilty gear xx acr+ just to enjoy the story. We need more on switch.
My favorite GG
It's like walking into an arcade and putting a quarter into street fighter 2, then another person put in their quarter and fights you.
Shout out to all my brothers and sisters still playing tatsunoko vs capcom 🤗
Jumped back on MKX today and was blessed to be able to still find matches and rooms full of dudes trying to learn the game
This encourages me to play the various "dead" fighting games I have installed on my PC.
Fighting games will always be my favorite. I thank you Max for you getting me more into playing fighting games. I've been making shorts for fighting games specifically the arcade mode. Might go into making full length videos from my xbox from all fighting games i have. You inspire me to put out any content i have that is fighting games.
I was playing MvCI before Beyond lol
I don't even play fighting games and this was the most heartwarming shit to hear. I hope these communities continue forever.
5:12 speaking facts right here. I agree and also respect it. I just play games I like NOT because its popular or new but because I like it. Its not any deeper than that.
One thing about finding communities, is they're usually kept alive by the hardcore players. For some of us with kids, full time work, and additional responsibilities, it's daunting to try and join these. Hopefully some people are willing to help skill those up that have the nostalgia but not the skills.
Typing this at 2:10 into the video
It goes beyond fighting games as well. Favorite shooter of all time Titanfall 2 has a discord community with a client you can install where the game lets you pick a server to play in and all kinds of new stuff. If you love a game odds are there's a community fostering it already, possibly with some upgrades. Like Max with Infinite and Beyond.
This game is just peak fps. Fps never went ahead this title.
Honestly I 100% agree with this, crazy take ik but not even 3 months ago I got really into KOF 2002, but I live in south Africa so I rarely got stable connection matches, but I recently discovered a fairly massive community of other South African players who genuinely whoop ass, but they're always ready to help out and introduce new people to the game and why they love it so dearly, it just made me happy
Yes, More Dead Fighting Games, They need more Attention cuz some are actually better thanthe Popular Ones
I fully agree. Because of my job and family, I unfortunately don't have the time to play a single game intensively anymore, but some time ago I took heart and joined a Discord channel for the first GBVS and also took part in weeklys there. That was the most fun I've had with a fighting game since I played in arcades in Japan.
Max is spitting right now. Thank you for touching on this weird E-Sports mentality with gaming these days. People put so much emphasis into rank and meta. They don't want to play the game that isn't popular because they don't think they'll have a big enough audience. I don't even feel like many gamers even focus much on fun anymore, and you can tell from the way people talk about games, even to how they play them. Gaming is different these days.
This echoes so much with certain aspects of the retro gaming community as a whole. Games like Super Metroid have these booming communities, centered around community-made tools like the Map Randomizer. Strong Discord community, weekly races, community leaderboards, etc., well over 30+ people at the core of it, with a varied mix of skill levels from world record speedrunners to newer people coming in from seeing it played on UA-cam/Twitch.
Play the games you love. Find the communities that exist for them, because they do.
If we’re doing dead fighting games, would you wanna give One Must Fall 2097 a go on the channel one day?
Absolute frickin PC CLASSIC......jaguar bot all the way.
This video got me to seek out and find a Divekick server because I miss that game so gosh darn much, thank you
The thing about fighting games is that to get a match you only need 1 person to get a match going. Other genres don't have that advantage where you might need other 3 or 9 people to get a match, god forbids if its a big multiplayer game when the standard match needs 60 to 100 people.
Losing SRK was such a huge blow to keeping older fighting games alive. We have discord, but you have to have an invite or know someone to get access. There needs to be another open forum site
Here when the title changed from 'Play more "dead" fighting games" in real time
Part of me wonders if game developers rereleased "dead" fighting games on modern consoles that it will help regain some form of popularity and create a resurgence of the franchise.
What timing. Very recently I had someone make a new account on Reddit to dm me “dead game” over and over again 😂 the topic leads to some toxicity from others
It really is the modern equivalent of “how it used to be”. There was no online ranked back then. You had to go out of your way to find the arcade where they were playing your game. It’s the same thing now, but online. You wanna play Darkstalkers? You gotta find the platform and the Discord where they’re playing it, just like you had to find the arcade.
I’m getting so many flashes of trying to work out the online matchmaking for Soku…
Shoutouts to anyone that’s even heard of Soku (aka Hisoutensoku)
Touhou hijack lol❤
Hadn’t heard of it till now but it looks sick.
It's one of the only fighting games I've ever entered a tournament for actually! (That was, mind, ages ago)
I think my favorite thing about the fighting game community isn't just that no game ever truly does, but the 50 to 100 people that might keep any given game alive if just a new random person showed up and they got to watch by proxy someone grow all over again. I finally joined my local FGC Discord based on finally getting Street Fighter 6, but I'm really happy to know that all of the games that have been burning a hole in my pocket with none of my friends able to play with me, I can guarantee that there's one person in that group who will play it with me. After almost a decade I have someone IRL to help me learn pro level Skullgirls, a game that I love so much I literally changed my last name to Valentine. I literally never engaged with anything outside of the story just because I was too worried I'd get my ass kicked, but at this point in my life it actually makes me really happy that that's going to be the case, because the idea that I could beat like, even one of them someday is a literal underdog movie story.