Fighting games can be scary for people who have never played them before, but they are known for being easy to learn and play.
When Capcom said that Street Fighter 6 would have two ways to play, it made a lot of noise. Classic Mode has the familiar quarter-circle-forward, Shoryuken motion, 360° inputs, etc. In Modern Mode, special moves are changed to be done with one or two button presses. When Ryu presses Triangle, instead of a strong punch, he will do a Hadouken. Forward+Triangle for a Shoryuken, etc. Many purists are upset about this, but other gamers thought it was bound to happen.
Fighting games in general, and Street Fighter in particular, have always had a high skill ceiling. Even if a player knows how to move, they still need to learn how to do it right. How to buffer charges, tell the difference between a cancel and a link, and what “okizeme” means, among other things. Here are some fighting games that are much easier to learn and play if you found all that jargon as hard to understand as Chinese algebra.
Skullgirls
Reverge Labs’ tribute to Guilty Gear, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and many other media is beautifully animated and fun to play with your fingers as well as your eyes. Even though it’s still more complicated than the rest of this list, the characters’ moves are simple and based on charges. There are no half circles or triangles here.
If all you could do in Street Fighter was a Sonic Boom or Hurricane Kick, you’ll feel more at home with Skullgirls. Even though it’s not the easiest game out there, it has a helpful tutorial mode that shows you how everything works. If you want to get better at fighting in 2D, Skullgirls might be the perfect game to turn you from a scrub to a lord.
The Marvel Vs Series
Capcom’s Marvel games have always been made to be easier than its Street Fighter games. For super moves, you only had to make one move and press two or three buttons. Because every normal attack could be turned into another, it was easy to do combos. In Marvel vs. Capcom 2, there are only two punch buttons and two kick buttons. Then Marvel vs. Capcom 3 went even further and changed it to have 3 general attack buttons and 1 special attack button.
But if someone wanted a game that was most like Street Fighter 6’s Modern Mode, they would have to find Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. It’s pretty much just X-Men vs. Street Fighter with Spider-Man, Captain America, etc. replacing most of the X-Men. But players could choose between Normal Mode and Easy Mode, which made controlling the game easier. Ryu could use Heavy Punch to throw a fireball, and Akuma could teleport with Down+Heavy Kick, among other moves. Even if it’s just a curiosity, it’s worth a look.
Them’s Fightin’ Herds
Them’s Fightin’ Herds began as a My Little Pony fighting game, but it changed into something else. Instead of being a cutesy pony-basher, it would have all kinds of animals. To protect the land of Sum from the dangerous Predators, a cow, reindeer, sheep, alpaca, and a unicorn that looked a bit like a pony would fight with other animals. MLP creator Lauren Faust gave the game her stamp of approval, and some of the voice actors from the show were used in the game as well.
The game is like Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in that you can use light, medium, and heavy attacks, and there is an extra button for magic. All of the characters have easy-to-use motion controls, with nothing more complicated than a quarter motion or a Shoryuken motion. Even scary moves like Pushblocks and Cross-Counters are easy to use. All you have to do is press two attack buttons. Even though it still needs to learn some things, it won’t test the patience of fans of ponies, Bronies, and other furry fighting games.
Dragonball FighterZ
Guilty Gear’s Daisuke Ishiwatari had said in an article for GamesTM magazine that Smash Bros and Marvel were more like party games than fighting games. He wasn’t trying to be mean, because he had tried to make his own versions of those games. Even though Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers and Guilty Gear Isuka tried to be like Smash, they failed, Ishiwatari’s employer, Arc System Works, did a good job with Dragonball FighterZ, which looks like a Marvel game.
FighterZ is a 3-on-3 team-based fighter, just like Capcom’s superhero brawler. It has juggles in the air, snapbacks, and other features that are still pretty technical. But the game made all of the characters’ controls the same. All of them are based on quarter steps. If players can do Ryu’s Hadouken, they can do everything else in FighterZ. All they have to do is figure out how to put enough of them together in good combos to get those sweet Dramatic Finishes.
Super Smash Bros Series
Why go through all the steps when you can just push a button? The Super Smash Bros series is known for being an easy-to-learn but hard-to-master fighting game. Though it was debated whether or not it was a fighter because it was played on platforms and had a lot of items. It was supposed to be about crazy characters throwing random things at each other from strange, moving stages. Bouts could be won by luck instead of how well players could spike their opponents who were floating.
Then, in Super Smash for Wii U/3DS and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Nintendo found a good balance between playing for fun and playing for glory. Fun players could still choose their moving stages and choose to turn on some or all of the items. While playing Glory, players could finally choose anyone they wanted because each character was (reasonably) balanced for fair 1-vs-1 (or more) fights on a variety of fair stages. So, even though the controls are easy, Smash Bros has a lot to offer both serious gamers and people who just want to have fun.
Fantasy Strike
At first glance, Fantasy Strike seems hard. This time, it’s a six-button fight. Except that one is for a regular attack, two are for special attacks, two are for throws and supers, and the last one is for jumping. What’s the jump button for? Because there are only two ways to move it: forward and backward.
Moves in the game are made by combining a motion with a button or a button with another button. Throws can even be turned around (called a “Yomi Counter”) if the player lets go of the controls and does nothing. The only thing they have to worry about is learning how to make their attacks work together. Luckily, this is easy to do with a little practice. In Fantasy Strike, it won’t take long for people to get ahead. Even better, it’s free to play!
Footsies
A “footsie” is a term used in fighting games to describe when players dash back and forth and jab or kick to control space. Street Fighter 3: Third Strike is known for having a lot of characters who use this technique. So, HiFight made a simple fighting game for iOS and Android where the only thing you do is fight.
There is only one attack button, but it can be used with Forwards or Backwards or just tapped or held down for a Special Attack to make 5 different moves. Also, there are no health bars. Whether the player wins or loses depends on whether they use a Special Attack or get hit by one. They can only block up to three times before each attack also breaks their defenses. Slope Game is a simple running game, but it teaches the basics of fighting games that can be used in its bigger brothers.
Divekick
This game is sort of a joke between friends. In Street Fighter 3 and 4, characters like Yun and Rufus had strong divekicks or had players who used them too much. Iron Galaxy made a fighting game with only two buttons because of this. One to jump, or “dive,” and one to kick. The round goes to the first person to Dive and then Kick.
Most of the characters, like Markman (former MadCatz Community manager Mark Julio) and Codename: S-Kill, are also joke versions of important people in the Fighting Game Community (former Capcom Community manager Seth Killian). But it also has a few random guest characters, like Johnny Gat from Saints Row, the Fencer from Nidhogg, and The Baz from Shovel Knight, Indivisible, The TakeOver, etc. So even if a player doesn’t get the joke, there’s always someone else ready to divekick him in the head.
