Analysis: Why Graphics Matter in Fighting Games 

“This is why graphics matter” *shows closeup of 2 girls in thongs throwing a guy around*

I would say that graphics don't matter, but animation does.

People saying that KOF XIV looks like a PS2 game have obviously never played a PS2 game before.

"I think graphics and gameplay are inseparable" I used to have the philosophy that graphics meant literally nothing. After designing a few games, I very quickly learned that's not the case. Though, any art style can work. It's the visual feedback and animation that matters.

*"The FGC blew up over how bad it's outdated PS2 style graphics were"* From what I understand though, the FGC blows up over pretty much anything?

"There's more to graphics than I ever have them credit for" *Shows R. Mika's atomic peach*

KOFXIII has the most beautiful sprite graphics of any game I've ever seen. The way they animate is amazing, and it saddens me greatly that they gave all that up for the sake of 3D graphics in KOFXIV.

SF3 feels like you're playing a piece of art, it's great.

I love the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure arcade game's graphics.

Probably Guilty Gear Xrd. That game is a damn spectacle.

Skullgirls and Guilty Gear XRD both look astonishing. I also have a soft spot for good ol' Street Fighter 2, but who doesn't?

I mean just look at FighterZ the graphics alone made it blow up

Really weird how the games that look bad (KOF14 and MvC: Infinite) play the best. It's a real shame. I bet if the games looked better, more people would play them. Since their graphics are the only real flaw.

Pretty much every ArcSys game is phenomenal graphically

This is why I play SFIII. The art and animation gives everything so much personality it just draws you in. Every SF game since then has looked like robots fighting each other.

Art direction > Graphics

marvel vs capcom style graphics are my style. i like that old cartoonish look. it's like fighting in a comic book.

"We need graphics in games, otherwise we can't see" ~MauLer

I really just wanted another KOF that used Sprites. I always considered SNK the King of Sprites.

Guilty Gear Xrd pretty much makes me wish Blazblue having that appeal.

graphics are definitely important when it comes to readability and things like knowing where you are on the screen, but I’d say animation factors in more. Not only can it make moves feel insanely more impactful, if the animation is done well each move will look unique, which will make them more memorable it also just looks nice lol

KoF XIII looks incredible but I think Skullgirls is my favourite, purely based on how much character and flair they put into every single attack. For clarity purposes it's probably not the GREATEST but from an artistic standpoint I think it's gorgeous

Holy shit my KOF reaction is in this vid LMAO!

2D Marvel vs graphics are my absolute favorite. Every game from Street Fighter vs X-Men on really felt like watching animated comics. And MvC 2 was the ultimate form of that.

Garou - Mark of the Wolves It got some of the best flowing 2D Animations

Guilty Gear Xrd is the best fighting game currently. Both gameplay and graphics are excellent. Disappointed you didn't mention it.

Street Fighter III: Third Strike remains as my favorite fighter thus far.

Guilty Gear XRD is the best graphically

For me Street Fighter 3 New generation and 2nd Impact are my favorite fighting games when it comes to ART and SOUND. I know everyone loves 3rd strike but the sounds in NG and 2I are amazing. Everything from the announcer to the sound effects and voice actors. The artwork is great too reminds me of SF2 World Warriors promo art. Also X-Men COTA and Street Fighter Alpha 2 are great for visuals and sound.

Honestly, out of every fighting game, I think that Super Smash Bros has some of the best animations (at least the newest games). They balance out gameplay with character origins, move function, and a lot of other stuff, it’s really cool.

Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact has a widescreen mode on the arcade version, however I doubt many arcades at the time were able to actually utilize it. Try finding an affordable big widescreen CRT during 1997 that'll fit into an arcade cabinet. I imagine that wasn't easy nor practical

The best fighting game graphics I have seen have to be from Skullgirls.

The only way I could complain about graphics is when they straight up don't give the proper information about what's happening

Blazblue is so fucking beautiful. The vivid, dynamic backgrounds and the sprites are just eye candy. I hope BB and GG never go 3D!

I can't see why people were complaining about the KOF XIV graphics, those look gorgeous to me. And sorry, but even after this, I'm not convinced, it seems you only proved how much better it makes it look, not how it improves the way it plays.

I personally love the artstyle of Skullgirls.

I'd love it if Street Fighter returned to drawn sprites, I love Persona 4: Arena, BlazBlue: Central Friction, and Skull Girls for that very reason.

I think the mid 360/PS3 era of graphics really impressed me. From MVC3's cel shaded style, to Tekken 6's high detail models, BB's sprite work, and DOA5's amazing visual presentation. Obviously in current gen it's even better, but i think it was back then when I really noticed that fighting games had reached the next level in terms of visuals, as it were. Nowadays, fighting games are as impressive to look at as much as play, which is a big deal for spectators who see what's going on and understand it more.

I don't see what's wrong with KOF XIII's graphics. They look fine to me.

Tatsunoko vs Capcom is an underrated classic.

I like Tekken's graphics.

Look at KOF 14 graphics now. They look gorgeous

Skullgirls is probably my favorite graphically speaking. But the Samsho games have probably left the biggest impact on me in terms of graphics in fighting games.

Good animations are important in fighting games so the player can easily understand what a move does and how it works just by looking at it and without looking up framedata and guides

I usually prefer 2D sprite based fighting games, my favourite being Street Fighter Alpha 3. But when I saw Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 I realised what 3D graphics in fighting games could be and that became my favourite.

Dead Or Alive 5: Last Round's graphics takes it for me. The amount of detail on the characters and the stages are great! The stage transitions and power blow specials that interact with the stages, add a lot of depths into the graphics. Debris, cans, and even coconuts falling from a tree to bonk your head. It's amazing.

In my opinion KOF 14 graphics aren't that bad!

KOF 13 looks INSANE, it easily has the best sprites I've seen in a videogame

I really like Tekken Tag 2 or Tekken 7 FR's graphics, I like how it mixes realistic and cartoon and so you get realistic looking characters that also look pretty and can still have over the top designs

I love 3rd Strike. The details are great, they convey emotions, and Yun looks drop dead cool. Lookin' to see if I can get a more modern game tho.

Why does no one talk about virtua fighter 5 anymore?

I think that melee has showed us all that graphics don't matter to a game

0:51 i wonder what made him change his mind 🤔

I actually prefer 2D sprite fighters when it comes to graphics. good stuff

Love the ink style used in Street Fighter 4. and of course, Skullgirls has amazing graphics.

melty blood and dbfz graphics literally great

For some reason this channel reminds me of Every Frame A Painting.

•Guilty Gear and BlazBlue have awesome spirte work and graphic design in general. •I actually like SFV's graphics, it looks kinda fancy. •Soulcalibur III was the most beautiful Soulcalibur game before they moved to next gen, specially the stages. Check out Eurydice Shrine, or my personal favorite, Lost Cathedral. They're beautiful as hell. •Soulcalibur IV gave us gloomy graphics and that's why I like them. The animations are also way better than SCIII's (those looked quite ankward, if you ask me). •Tekken, in the other hand, has semi-realistic and attractive graphics. •Dead or Alive always looked great and ahead of its time, honestly. Look at Dead or Alive 2, it aged incredibly. •Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late looks cool too. I like that, ejem, "night" feel it has... I dunno how to explain myself.

Yeah without graphics there won't be physics in Tekken and DoA

Third Strike has the most smooth and fancy sprite animations of any SF game...which makes for a great gameplay because it's a sheer pleasure to strike a good combo, and see how everything just fits great

Melty Blood series has great 2D sprites.

Dead or Alive 3 is one game I truly admire graphically. It blew my mind, when I first saw it in 2001. It still holds up well to this day.

Speaking of SF3, games with their own "SF3" production also got me hooked and I am very strong fans of it. Garou: Mark of the Wolves was the pinnacle of the Garou/Fatal Fury series. It had beautiful sprites and animation that expressed all the characters. From veteran older Terry Bogard, to younger upstart Rock Howard, the waifish small Hotaru Futaba, The stern bruising Gato and even the lively B. Jenet. They all stick out very well. martial masters also was a very fluidly animated game. Very nice to look at in action.

Skullgirls prettiest game

at a base level it affects how well you're able to see what's going on.

Blazblue has nice sprite art At least central fiction

I love how Ryu has the exact same stance for years lol

Very interesting, for some reason I got recommended it 4 years late.

persona 4 arena ultimax. it's a spin-off of another series but it still has since beautiful visuals

high definition 2d sprites are my favorite in fighting games, something like blazblue for example. I've invested most of my time in Melee and sm4sh, i would love if they were sprite based instead of 3d.

We also need to consider the actual implementation of 2D and 3D graphics for fighting games. KOF 2D is way ahead of KOF 3D. Street Fighter 2D and 3D are both explored and evolved nicely. Street Fighter Alpha 3D was not great, but decent back then. Tekken has always been 3D, like DOA also, it is good that way.

I would like to see the entire video where they took the sequence at 2:12 from. So that we can see the secret behind the special moves in Street Fighter 1.

God, there isn't a single bad Core-A video. Top tier shit my dude.

I love Guilty Gear Xrd, too. It had style, beauty and really helps to give dept into the characters. Besides, i am a huge fan of 2D graphics and GGxrd cell shading emulates it so well.

Hey Core-A! What you're talking about is actually aesthetics, not graphics. Graphics are the technical capabilities that the game shows off, while aesthetics are the choices that go into color palette, animations, character and setting design. For example you mention Street Fighter III at the end of the video as your favorite graphics in fighting games. However, the graphics are clearly worse than that of say Street Fighter IV. But perhaps there's something about the aesthetics and how that information is communicated to you that pleases you more in III than IV. Though I've never played any of the KoF games, I can guess that the negative response to the new trailers is due to the aesthetic not meshing well with the actual gameplay, even though the graphics are clearly better than older gamesi n the franchise, which is also something you mentioned. Great video, just thought I'd make that correction.

Arc System Works style of FG’s are my favorite thing ever. It’s literally orgasmic.

I really like skullgirls, in terms of graphics and gameplay. But I also adore 3D cel shaded stuff like GG XRD or Dragon Ball Fighterz.

In a more general sense, I think good graphics indicate that a certain level of love and care was applied in making the game; it wasn't just made by soulless developers looking to cash in on your nostalgia, it was made by people who cared enough to do the game and its characters justice

I like the 2-D animation. MvC2 looks great even though its been around for a while.

This is my introduction to your channel and, I gotta say, I'm invested. You got yourself a new subscriber

DBFZ has my favourite graphics. It’s amazing how arc system works recreated the anime art style

I think Skullgirls is the most beautiful 2D FG there is.

man's didn't give one good argument. just kept repeating that it's important

Where does Skullgirls fit into this?

Although it's no match for something like Skullgirls, Touhou: Antimony of Common Flowers has some great animation and sprites

KOF 13 looked and played like a well researched peer reviewed scholarly article. My personal favorite Versus games like Capcom vs SNK 2 is beyond a shadow of a doubt the way versus games should be. Characters, different meters, backgrounds and the sheer fun it produces. You can’t go wrong at all with that game

I liked old SNK beautifulsprites with all their details. I also liked the Srteet Fighters vs Marvel.

my favorite graphics are in Art of Fighting 2 for neo geo. I just wish it were hd and had more frames of animation. I love the art style and zooming effects

Bro, you didn't talk about graphics you talked about character designs and hardware limitations limiting animations and spite size limiting animation. But you didn't talk about graphics quality.

I love what guilty gear did. It really shows how much KOF felt like it fell flat compared to the huge jump GG made.

Good stuff as always mate! These vids are rly well made. I started playing fighting games like 22 years ago with SF2, Primal Rage, Ninja Turtles etc on my Sega Mega Drive. Once the Dreamcast was released FG graphics got to a whole new lvl - DoA2 & Soul Calibur were so much ahead of it's time graphically wise and I gotta say that I am rly impressed how much the graphics have improved in FGs these days. I wonder how far the developers can push next gen graphics - let me say in 10 years from now - SF8 and MK12. Thanks for sharing this and keep up the good work.

Hey, I'm one of those guys who, upon finding such a cool channel cannot believe how he didn't spot it earlier. I'm seriously impressed by the sheer amount of insight you provide in your videos. Fantastic job! Even though I grew up playing fighting games, especially SF and MK back in the 90's all the way to mid 00's, I cannot remember when was the last time I have played any of it, but in terms of visual features, I agree with you, SF3 is my favorite as well. The point I wanted to share here, and I hope I won't sound dubious, is next: beautiful graphics is more important than the high-end graphics. For example, comic book style, cartoony graphics can be much more appealing and can be hell of a lot more atmospheric and vivid than real life photo-realistic based graphics with ultra sharp details and realistic visual representation, because it offers more room for exaggeration, which is a major artistic element, hence it can conjure up things more expressively and most definitely make our imagination running wild. Cheers!

What if there was a fighting game with just box characters that were their exact hit boxes so there is no complaints

Back when fighting games and anime are made to perfection

Always find it weird how people argue graphics > gameplay as if we have to choose one over the other. Push for both to be advanced regardless if one is "more important"

I still play third strike as my main for a reason, and I do own 5, I'm getting into fighter z tho

I like how I watch a video about graphics with 144p quality 😂😂😂

As far as graphics in fighting games, I'm gonna call an obscure one and say Touhou Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (plus the Hisoutensoku expansion) probably have some of the best graphics in fighting games ever. The high-res energy projectiles plus the sort of pixel-y character designs just fuse so well for some reason.

Personally, I never had a problem with the way KOFXIV looked. In fact, I like the way it looks over XIII. Yeah, you heard that right. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!

My favourite graphics in fighting games are SF Alpha 3, GG Xrd Revelator and MK X.