by mocbucket62
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:
Showing 1-10 of 34 items
A classic. Heihachi's pet is already intimidating because its a freaking bear and the first Kuma was also Heihachi's bodyguard. Sadly he passed away in Tekken II. The current Kuma (Kuma II) is the one we see in the most recent Tekkens and while he's smarter than the first one, he's also lazier and has a crush on the next character on the list:
Panda is Xiaoyu's pet and bodyguard and Kuma always want to get a date with Panda, but she also rejects Kuma. She's much more focused on helping her friend Xiaoyu.
Yet another Tekken animal. Like I said, Tekken has a rich library of these. He's a kangaroo with Boxing gloves that was a geneitcally engineered animal from one of Dr. Boskonovitch's experiments as Kazuya forced him to engineer fighting animals. He debuted in Tekken 2 and was playable in 5, 6 and both Tag Tournaments. He's also a counter part of another Boxing animal:
Alex is another genetically modified animal for fighting, except he's a Raptor. He was basically a palette swap for Roger and appeared in tekken 2 and both Tag Tournaments.
For the longest time, this character was known as "Lizardman" in the Soul Calibur series, but he finally got a name in Aeon Calcos. Aeon was at one point a human Spartan who got a message from God Hephaestus to destory Soul Edge. After passing out in a desert and being rescued by villagers, Aeon was controlled by the Evil Seed and killed everybody in the village. He was then captured by an evil cult and soon was transformed into the Lizardman we all know and love.
Felicia apparently has two forms. One of which is a pretty standard cat form, and the other is the one where you are seeing a picture of her right now. She's of the Catwoman race, where around ages 1-3 they develop like human children, but around 4-6 they grow cat ears, fur and tails. Felicia also fights to pursue a dream of becoming a world famous singer.
A friendly werewolf. Jon was actually born a werewolf when his human mother died of labour and his father was a wolf man who was healed by Talbain's mother, but the father seems responsible for having Jon's mother dying of giving Jon birth. Jon seeks to eventually become human and is the primary catalyst for him participating in the Darkstalkers tournament.
Q-Bee is from Darkstalkers 3 in particular. Apparantly she's amongest a race of bee people who collect souls to feed the colony of their Queen.
The third Ninja of Mortal Kombat. Reptile started off as disguising himself as a human, but in MK2 his fatalities would reveal that he is a reptilian race called the Reptor race. Though later Mortal Kombat's he's looked more and more Reptilian and has lost any semblance of his human disguise.
Mortal Kombat's Q-Bee I guess. She's an insectoid fighter who can summon other bugs to fight under her command and see seems to carry attributes of other insects as well.