I loved the hell out of Mortal Kombat II and Street Fighter II Turbo (SNES edition) as a kid, and spent a lot of time playing the single player modes of games like Clayfighter, Mortal Kombat III and 4, that bad game with Frankenstein-like experiments that I keep wanting to call Bioshock right now but definitely wasn't called that, Killer Instinct and Killer Instinct Gold, Tekken II and III and Tag Tournament. I have fond memories of renting Dead or Alive 3, and I really enjoyed the versus mode from Turtles in Time. I'm probably forgetting quite a few.
That said, I had a moment with MK vs. DC, Mortal Kombat (9) and Street Fighter IV, it just so happened to coincide with having some friends that also enjoyed fighting games a lot and owned those fighting games, and I really do look back fondly on those times as well, but no, I can't say I care about fighting games anymore. Ranking of Fighters is one of the shows I routinely pass on, frequently while cursing the relative bounty of new episodes compared to Demo Derby or Game Tapes, and I really think it's pretty clear the genre has its dozen or so standout franchises and all the rest are just variations on a theme. But I do understand that it translates well to watching video games played competitively, better than really any genre other than maybe card-based games, so I get why there's such a fervor surrounding it, and I'm sure if I still had friends that liked fighting games I'd feel differently.
But right now, I don't care about them much at all.
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