Fighting Game Animals, Or Animal like people
Today actually marks the Early Access release of a brand new indie fighting game called Thems' Fightin Herds. For those who don't know, this was actually a fan made My Little Pony themed fighter that tried to get a push for EVO in 2013, but Hasbro learned about the project and sent a Cease and Desist Letter to the dev team. Then the project got a second life when it was rebranded as its own IP but maintain this theme of a fighting game that stars four legged animals (more than just ponies in case you were wondering). It had a successful Indiegogo campaign and now will be out on Steam (PC) as an early access title. TFH will have a 1.0 release as soon as they complete their story mode, which they cited was at an unacceptable state if they launched it with the rest of the game.
Even if you take away the My Little Pony associations and history tied to this project, its actually kind of unique that somebody made a fighting game where quadaruple legged cartoon creatures face off each other. Though TFH is certainly not the first fighting game to having animal combatants as playable characters. Tekken has a library of playable animals. Darkstalkers has some monsters that have animal-ish features. Heck, a little known gem called Fighters Destiny had a fighting cow!
So to vaguely commenerate Thems' Fightin Herds' Early Access launch today, I'm going to make a list of playable fighting game animals (or animal like people) that had their share of brawls before TFH came out:
Comments have brought up some big omissions, so I'll add to the list: