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What's your favorite "hidden gem" fighting game?

yungronny

Banned
Nov 27, 2017
1,349
I really enjoy playing old or obscure fighting games and I feel like there are a ton that went unnoticed. Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus was a total blast in my opinion, despite some questionable design choices. Aquapazza and Advanced VG2 are great as well(love "non-fighter" characters).
 
Strings

Strings

Member
Oct 27, 2017
31,419
In 1997 some obscure foreign company and nobody director (who worked on some 'street fighting' game) made Rival Schools.

It was awesome.
 
Platy

Platy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
27,699
Brazil
Rakuga Kids is pure love and style



Sonic Battle is also a pretty underated sonic spinoff that is a very unique fighter

 
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WyLD iNk

WyLD iNk

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,236
Here, duh.
Dong Dong Never Die. Like, c'mon. It's fantastic. We can pretend it isn't secretly the best fighting game ever made, but why live in denial?

 
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eddiemunstr

eddiemunstr

Member
Jan 20, 2019
1,532
Not a hidden gem really since its not obscure, but I really enjoyed kof xi and its tag style gameplay. Yeah I know the game wasnt that balanced but it was still fun to play.
 
StrangeRoboMemory

StrangeRoboMemory

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,766
Toronto, ON
Kizuna Encounter is pretty cool --

kizunaencounterNC.jpg
 
Pellaidh

Pellaidh

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,177
Does Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs. Full Boost count as a fighting game? Because that one. Super easy to just pick up and play, tons of characters, and pretty deep gameplay once you get into it. It also had netcode good enough to play against Americans from Europe, which is extremely rare for a fighting game.

Sadly, while it's super popular in Japan (by far the most popular fighting game I've seen in their arcades), the franchise is basically completely dead in the west.

Full Boost was a Japanese exclusive so the only playerbase it had was from people that imported it. And instead of just bringing the game over Namco instead developed a crappy free-to-play PC "clone" called Rise of Incarnates that completely sucked, didn't even have the Gundam license, and died literally three months after the beta launched. Then they released Gundam Versus on current gen consoles with netcode so bad it was completely unplayable for me.

What's more, the PS4 Gundam Versus was apparently so unnoticed that it doesn't even have a wikipedia page. Even Rise of Incarnates has one, and again that's a game that literally shut down three months after launch.
 
OneThirtyEight

OneThirtyEight

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
5,663
I dont remmember the name of it, but me and my friends played a ton of a PS1 fighter game where the fighters here robots, or at leat some of them. One of the bosses was called Cancer and remember tht name since it was the first time i heard tha word outside of the desciese.
 
the7egend

the7egend

Member
Mar 6, 2018
356
Not technically a gem since it got several releases, but it seems to have fallen into obscurity thanks to Konami but Bloody Roar was one of my absolute favorite fighting games. I still turn on my Xbox from time to time to play a couple games of Bloody Roar Extreme, man I miss that serious so much.
 
Instant Vintage

Instant Vintage

Unshakable Resolve
Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,985
5taquitos said:
I played hours upon hours of the shareware version of One Must Fall on PC.
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Strings said:
In 1997 some obscure foreign company and nobody director (who worked on some 'street fighting' game) made Rival Schools.

It was awesome.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Both of these. OMF2097 was it for a long time as I didn't have a SNES to play KI. My mom bought me the full version after she saw how much I played the shareware.

Rival Schools is what steeled the competitive nature between my brother and I. He was excellent at MK and I couldn't beat him; I was untouchable in Tekken and he took a round here and there, but never won an outright match. Rival Schools was an even playground for us both.
 
Hayama Akito

Hayama Akito

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,326
Funny that, in the supposedly ""dark ages"" of fighting games it was at the same time the golden age of Doujin Soft fighting games:

Akatsuki Blitzkampf
Eternal Fighter Zero Memorial
Melty Blood (the real Doujin era)
Big Bang Beat
Vanguard Princess
Ougon Musou Kyouku CROSS
Yatagarasu
Hinokakera
Crucis Fatal+Fake
Alice Senki 2

All those are great and competitive-worthy. I had a blast with all these at the time and still enjoy it with some friends.

OneThirtyEight said:
I dont remmember the name of it, but me and my friends played a ton of a PS1 fighter game where the fighters here robots, or at leat some of them. One of the bosses was called Cancer and remember tht name since it was the first time i heard tha word outside of the desciese.
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That's Zero Divide, the closest thing to Fighting Vipers on PS1. Both titles are awesome.
 
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CyborgNumberBlue

CyborgNumberBlue

Member
Oct 26, 2017
558
Rage of the Dragons, tag team fighter with Jimmy and Billy Lee from Double Dragon, as well as some Power Instinct characters. Really fun game!

 
MattXIII

MattXIII

Member
Oct 28, 2017
396
A few we play fairly regularly below...

Golden Axe the Dual, beautiful 90's style sprite work

gakain-1.png


Kakuto Chojin: - fun broken-ass 3D fighter made by ex Tekken staff, the game was quite a looker back in the day.

1307738-kakuto_chojin_01.jpg



...and the God of SF2 clones - Breakers Revenge

107527-breakers-neo-geo-screenshot-fighting-tia-the-woman-with-the.png
 
signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,197
i dont consider power instinct series to be obscure so i don't know. Vanguard Princess was fun I guess.
 

Deleted member 31873

Banned
Nov 8, 2017
3,532
Didn't expect so many others here to mention Waku Waku 7! My bro and I played that a lot and we're hardly even into fighting games at all!
 
Bane

Bane

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
5,905
I've always loved Power Rangers: Fighting Edition on the SNES. I can't really comment on how deep the gameplay is but I just have a blast fucking things up as various megazords.

 
KillstealWolf

KillstealWolf

One Winged Slayer
Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
16,097
Whilst I don't know how the gameplay holds up to this day, I always enjoyed Digimon Rumble Arena on the PS1 (Just the first one, Rumble Arena 2 didn't work for me at all).

I think its the diverse roster over all three generations of digimon at the time (Adventure, 02 and Tamers), cool touches like the original tamer cutting in with digivolutions (And you can even use a button hold on the main menu to get an alternate tamer skin like Adventure Tai and Matt or Emperor Ken).

Oh and the soundtrack, soundtrack is still amazing to this very day.

 
Royer

Royer

Member
Oct 27, 2017
52
Someone remember a fighting game from the first PS that was uber obscure? I don't remember pretty much aside from two characters, one was a crippled guy that used his own leg as a weapon and the other was a guy in a straitjacket
 
OP
OP

yungronny

Banned
Nov 27, 2017
1,349
Platy said:
Sonic Battle is also a pretty underated sonic spinoff that is a very unique fighter

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Sonic Battle! I absolutely loved that game. Remember lots of card rides and waiting rooms grinding it out as Amy or Cream.

Royer said:
Someone remember a fighting game from the first PS that was uber obscure? I don't remember pretty much aside from two characters, one was a crippled guy that used his own leg as a weapon and the other was a guy in a straitjacket
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Thrill Kill! Just played that for the first time last night after being interested for years. Never got an official release because of the content. Game is janky but ridiculous.
 
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