Projectiles in fighting games have come a long way since the early days of Ryu’s Hadoken or Terry Bogard’s Power Wave. Long-range characters, known as zoners in fighting game parlance, have evolved into one of the genre’s most creative archetypes, and as these games 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:have gotten more complex, the strategic, technical, and even outright wacky ways characters control space have only become more elaborate as we♋ll.
There are a lot of factors that go into what makes a great projectile character — historical significance, competitive viability, or simply how fun it is to throw or shoot whatever they have at the opponent — and plenty of characters could’ve made this list. But here are som🐼e of the best at coming in guns,ꦡ booms, and boomerangs blazing.
10 Darkseid
DC’s Darkseid might be a nigh-invincible entity with a range of godlike powers, but in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Injustice 2, he’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:all about the Omega Beams. A terrific tool for mixups and mind games, his beams’ wild trajectories make them d𝄹ifficult to predict, and he can even meter burn them to change their angles and fake his foes out. And if his opponent does get too close, he can teleport away with a Boom Tube, or use one to mount a surpr༒ise attack.
For added support, his character trait lets him summon a Parademon, because even someone as❀ evil as Darkseid needs a friend sometimes.
9 Bridget
The playful bounty hunter-turned-street performer Bridget is among 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Guilty Gear’s most popular characters, especially given her long-awaited return in Guilty Gear Strive. Armed with yo-yos and accompanied by her ghost-possessed teddy bear Roger, Bridget has incredible tools for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:long-range setplay.
One of her best tricks is her ability to toss a yo-yo onstage that either hits her foe on the way forward or instead passes through them to hit them on the way back. She can also propel herself to wherever a yo-yo is placed onscreen, giving her extremely flexible options for combos. Guilty Gear is fullꦉ of memorable characters, but with her infectious personality and deep mechanics, Bridge꧅t is one of the best.
8 Ness
Earthbound’s Ness was a hidden character in the original 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Smash Bros., and he was an early exa൩mple of just how creative Masahiro Sakurai and his team could get in adapting more abstract ♍characters into Smash Bros.’s platform fighter formula.
PK Fire is an effective (and joyously spammable) straight projectile, and PK Thunder ingeniously works as both an attack you can control on the screen or as a possible recovery mov🔜e, as hitting Ness with it will cause him to blast forward in a surge of electricity. Smash Bros. has plenty of long-range fighters, but having to return to the stage by hitting yourself with your own projectile remains a unique and classic Smash Bros. ex🎶perience.
7 Link
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Soul Calibur 2 pulled off a clever marketing coup when they gave each console edition its own guest character. The Xbox had Spawn, the Playstation 2 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:had Tekken’s Heihachi, but the most e꧒xciting was the GameCube getting Niಞntendo’s own Link to enter the fray.
Despite Namco’s tale of souls and swords being a bit more serious than Zelda games tend to be, Link fits in surprisingly well. Getting to take his arrows, boome🔯rangs, and even bombs into battle against SC’s classic blade wielders was a hoot. Commercially successful and with , SC2 is among the most critically💞-lauded fighting games of all time, in part because of Link’s inclusion.
6 Nu-13
BlazB♋lue’s Nu-13 is one of the series’ chief zoners, and if projectiles are what you want, Nu can fill the screen with them. Her ability to shoot swords at the opponent from different angles, and fire multiple at a time, makes commanding her almost like playing 🐻a musical instrument, as you time your hits for perfect juggles and combos.
She was top-tier in the original BlazBlue — so much so that her matchup with the slow grappler Tager is remembered as one of 🍌the most lopsided matchups in fighting game history. While she’s been toned down in more recent games, she’s still a great choice for anyone who favors a keep-out style of play with overwhelming ranged pressure.
5 Sentinel
Sentinel in the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Marvel Vs. Capcom games is a powerhouse 🍷at any range, especiall🧸y in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Not only does it get a massive beam as one of its normal attacks, it can also summon fleets of small sentinel missiles to target the opponent directly or rain bombs from above.
Combinꦅed with an excellent rushdown game, made possible by its fast fli🔯ght mechanic (and a few convenient recovery glitches), the mighty Sentinel , and only a few other characters can reasonably compete with it.
4 ▨ 🌌Elphelt Valentine
Guil✃ty Gear Xrd’s Elphelt has one of the most inspired arsenals of any fighting game character. She can toss timed pineberry grenades, snipe her opponent anywhere with a visible reticle you control onscreen, and even gets far-reaching gunshots from some of her normal attacks. Once she gets in close, she can also pull out a shotgun to be equally effective at looping corner pressure.
She hasn’t returned for Guilty Gear Str༺ive yet, w𒅌here Happy Chaos is the new gunslinger in town, but , so here’s hoping we see her on the roster again soon.
3 🎀 Mai Natsume
Mai’s spear is one of the single most interesting projectiles in any fighting game. After she throws it, she can change its trajectory in the air to direct it at her opponꦏent, bounce it off the floor, and even call it back in from offscreen. With the right angles, she can hit someone more than once with the same shot, and if she has time to charge up the spear, she can make it unblockable, forcing her opponent into all sorts of mind games over whether they should advance or retreat.
There’s more to the spear than can be explained here, and on Dustloop, the go-to database for Arc System Works’s fighting games. But neeꦑdless to say, the well of strategy for it runs deep, and it’s a blast to use.
2 Guile
A core part of the Street Fighter roster since the early days, Guile basically invented the defensive-zoner archetype, using his Sonic Booms to keep his opponent at bay and his Flash Kick to swipe them if they get too close. Over the years, Capcom has also found smart ways to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:expand his movelist🔴, keeping his core gameplan while giving him more options with how to charge his booms or even assault his opponent with a flurry of them at once.
Guile doesn’t have the most creative mechanics compared to other characters on this list, but it’s hard not to rank him highly for how iconic he is and how much of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a template he’s been for 𒉰other character designs. Thank you for your service, Guile.
1 Kirby
Perhaps this is cheating, since the only default projectile Kirby has in Smash Bros. is the wave from his final cutter, but with his copy ability, he gets access to dozens of other powerful, cute, and hilarious moves dependi🍸ng on whom he inhales.
In the early Smash games, it was novel just to see Kirby using Mario’s fireballs or Samus’s Charge Beam (always fashioned, of course🌃, with an adorable costume to go with them). But these days in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, you can find Kirby wielding Sephiroth’s Flare, shooting bullets from his heels as Bayonetta, or even copying Banjo and somehow getting his own Kazooie to shoot eggs from. And hearing him shout the names of his new powers (Hadoken! Power Wave!) is undeniably charming. With decades of some of video games’ most famous moves at his disposal, nobody has a more fun and versatile proje𝐆ctile game than Kirby.