Summary

• Capcom is hitting hard with Terry's inclusion in Street Fighter 6 and Marvel's upcoming collection.
• Hunter x Hunter Nen x Impact won't be for everyone, but players who enjoy classic tag based fighting games will have a great time.
• Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was the most impressive fighting game at Gamescom, with an outstanding art style and complex systems.

It has been a while since Capcom’s fall from grace in the early 2010s. Marvel vs Capcom Infinite’s gameplay might have been great, but its awful presentation and lack of historic characters due to Marvel licensing issues meant it was dead on arrival. Street Fighter 5 eventually ended up in a good spot, but it took years, many DLC characters, and overhauls to its main systems to overcome the disappointment in how restricted it originally was and its bare-bones content – we will never forget the ‘no arcade mode’ fiasco🐼. It was a low point for all concerned.

Other studios were doing much better. NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat was on a hot streak after its successful revival, Arcsys’ Guilty Gear Xrd subseries set the bar for character design in the genre, Bandai’s Tekken 7 became the biggest entry in the seജries, and SNK arguably gave us the last good looking 2D fighting game before entering the 2.5D and 3D territory. But with Capcom bleeding it felt like fighting games were facing a precarious future.

Jump to 2024 and things couldn’t be better. Most of the big names have had new and strong entries, the use of rollback netcode for smooth online battles has become a staplꦦe, and more and more games want to spend the time to teach you how to play them. Some titles have issues with monetization and microtransactions, but even that’s better than it was and not enough to cancel out all the good things we 🐎have.

At Gamescom, I was able to play more fighting games than I was expecting, and the futur🍨e keeps looking promising. In a call with Ken Miyauchi, a long-time producer in the Guilty Gear series, we went over the already confirmed four characters from Strive’s Season 4 (Dizzy, Venom, the brand-new Unika, and Cyberpunk Edgerunner’s Lucy) and the new 3v3 mode. Nothing new here, but Miyauchi didn’t deny that other less chaotic modes like a hypothetical 2v2 could arrive in the future, and it doesn’t seem like Season 4 will be the last for Strive.

We also got some new information about Guilty Gear Dual Rulers, the anime series that will work as a sequel to Strive. If you don’t know anything about the overcomplicated lore of the series, don’t worry: Miyauchi assured us that it will work as a point of entry for newcomers who want to le🀅arn more about its classic characters and universe.

Guilty Gear has always been a fantastic series for tight mechanicsꦆ and kickass art style and music, but it wasn’t until Strive that it evolved from its niche and started growing a more casual audience. It doesn’t seem like this will end anytime soon.

I got to play Hunter x Hunter Nen x Impac💜t, the up🔯coming title from Eighting (Marvel Vs Capcom 3’s devs) and published by Arc System Works. As soon as I started playing, it was exactly what I was expecting: a solid 3v3 that feels a lot like more classic fighting games due to its tight scheme and the precision you need to perform combos and use your assists effectively.

Unfortunately, I also expected the game wouldn’t appeal to a massive audience, and my thoughts haven’t changed. While it’s looking much smoother than when it was originally announced, with greater detail in the character models, its art style is nothing special. Next to the big titles like Street Fighter 6, which has captured the souls of thousands of players with its breathtaking arᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚt direction, it doesn’t seem like it can keep up. Its gameplay systems will have a rough time grabbing newcomers because it doesn’t seem to have much more than a standard auto-combo system.

When it comes to appealing t♏o casual audiences in fighting games, how the game looks and the amount of flashy things you can do with your characters tends to be the deal breaker. Even if the title has a tight control scheme, new players seem to invest the time to learn the ropes when they like what their character can do.

Regardless, Nen x Impact feels like a game of another time (in a good way). While it might be below smash hit level, it 🍷adds to the variety of the current games in the market, giving us more options to decid💛e where we want to spend hours in the lab or just kicking our friends’ asses.

One important issue in video games is their preservation, with hundreds of titles being unavailable to play on modern systems – at least legally. Capcom has been doing the Lord’s work with its different collections, especially when it comes to fighting games. While we can discuss the versions these compilations bring and other details, the fact that works like the Marvel vs Capcom collection is getting🍰 made is something invaluable.

After playing a few matches of the original Marvel vs Capcom, MvsC 2, and X-Men vs Street Fighter, what can I say? It’s Mahvel, baby, and Capcom seems to be respecting the original titles as much as possible. It feels great to play with very little input lag, you have a lovely amount of filters to experiment with to find the nostalgic style you want💧 or something more clean, and any veterans will love the gallery, with dozens of concept arts and

Not every game in the demo was available, so titles like The Punisher♛’๊s beat ‘em up still remain inaccessible.

Capcom also had a playable version of Terry for Street Fighter 6, and I think I already know which character will be on my🌜 road to Master rank. This is the first time that the iconic muscled blonde from Fatal Fury and King of Fighters is in any Street Fighter game, and you won’t be disappointed. All his special moves are here, mixed with SF 6’s unique style and using its unpredictable and engaging Drive System. Just be prepared for Terry’s Drive Rush from a crouching medium punch and how easily it will mess you up with its Power Waves.

I also played as Terry on home soil, in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. Almost an ho꧂ur with it left me a more positive impression that what I had in mind – this game is the sh**. I haven’t really liked what SNK games have looked like since KOF 13 (with the honorable exception of SamSho’s reboot), but the studio has finally nailed it. City of the Wolves exudes style in every little detail, from the HP bars to the impressive cinematic attacks you can perform. It was difficult to get the hang of it due to its myriad systems, offering many offensive and defensive tools, but I can’t just wait to have more time with it.

While I could only try five characters, the full roster will have 22, 🍸and its first season pass will be included with the purchase of the special 🌊edition, adding five more in the future.

However, what impressed me the m🔜ost about Fatal Fury wasn’t the game itself, but seeing the amount of people playing it. I spent some time in the puꩲblic booth, watching players of all ages were breaking each other’s bones, and with many more waiting in a long queue for their turn. It encapsulated what so many of my Gamescom previews proved: fighting games are having a great time.

It will alwaysܫ be a niche genre asking for a ridiculous amount of ti✱me if you want to be good at a single game and with only one or two characters, but they also offer some of the most rewarding experiences you could have. The future is looking brighter than ever, and with more promising titles like Riot’s 2XKO are on the way, makes you feel that its new golden age won’t stop anytime soon.