The Ultimate Fighting Games Collection: Play the Best Fighters for Free
Pick your favorite fighter in one of our free online fighting games! Whether you prefer a punch up, sword fights or gun battles, there are plenty of exciting titles to choose from. Sort by most played and newest using the filters.
fighting games
Hand-to-hand combat is what many people think of when it comes to fighting games. These fighting games often involve a 1-on-1 fight between two experienced fighters. Street Fighter 2 is an influential classic from this genre.
If you like these 1-on-1 style sparring matches, Fight Arena Online is a great online game to test your fist-fighting skills against others. Stickman Fighting 3D is another great fighting game with a classic style.
Beat Em' Up games also fall into this category with influential classics like Super Smash Flash. For a game like the classic Streets of Rage, check out Cyber Rage Retribution for a cyberpunk twist on the Beat Em' Up genre. You can fight endless waves of opponents in Spider Hero Street Fight too!
There are funny fighting games like Kuja, where you have to swing the fists of a drunken guy in a club. The ragdoll physics make the game endlessly entertaining. Get in your preferred fighting stance and find a fighting game that suits you!
Fighting games involve close-quarters battles between characters. Some of these battles involve the use of weapons, martial arts, and street fighting techniques. Many fighting games are multiplayer, so you can play with your friends offline or online!
Battles in fighting games usually take place in a fixed-size arena along a two-dimensional plane, to which the characters' movement is restricted. Characters can navigate this plane horizontally by walking or dashing, and vertically by jumping. Some games, such as Tekken, also allow limited movement in 3D space.
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The first video game to feature fist fighting was Heavyweight Champ in 1976,[1] but it was Karate Champ that popularized the one-on-one fighting game genre in arcades in 1984. Released later the same year, Yie Ar Kung-Fu featured antagonists with differing fighting styles and introduced health meters, while The Way of the Exploding Fist, which was released the following year, further popularized the genre on home systems. In 1987, Capcom's Street Fighter introduced special attacks, and in 1991, its highly successful sequel Street Fighter II refined and popularized many of the conventions of the genre, including combos. Fighting games subsequently became the preeminent genre for video gaming in the early to mid-1990s, particularly in arcades. This period spawned dozens of other popular fighting games, including franchises like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Super Smash Bros., Tekken, and Virtua Fighter.
Fighting games are a type of action game where two (in one-on-one fighting games) or more (in platform fighters) on-screen characters fight each other.[2][3][4][5] These games typically feature special moves that are triggered using rapid sequences of carefully timed button presses and joystick movements. Games traditionally show fighters from a side view, even as the genre has progressed from two-dimensional (2D) to three-dimensional (3D) graphics.[3] Street Fighter II, though not the first fighting game, is considered to have standardized the genre,[6] and similar games released prior to Street Fighter II have since been more explicitly classified as fighting games.[5][6] Fighting games typically involve hand-to-hand combat, though many games also feature characters with melee weapons.[7]
This genre is related to but distinct from beat 'em ups, another action genre involving combat, where the player character must fight many enemies at the same time. Beat 'em ups, like traditional fighting games, display player and enemy health in a bar, generally located at the top of the screen. However, beat 'em ups generally do not feature combat divided into separate "rounds".[5] During the 1980s to 1990s, publications used the terms "fighting game" and "beat 'em up" interchangeably, along with other terms such as "martial arts simulation" (or more specific terms such as "judo simulator")[8][9][10] and "punch-kick" games.[11] Fighting games were still being called "beat 'em up" games in video game magazines up until the end of the 1990s.[12] With hindsight, critics have argued that the two types of game gradually became dichotomous as they evolved, though the two terms may still be conflated.[5][13]
Sports-based combat games are games that feature boxing, mixed martial arts (MMA), or wrestling.[7][13] Serious boxing games belong more to the sports game genre than the action game genre, as they aim for a more realistic model of boxing techniques, whereas moves in fighting games tend to be either highly exaggerated or outright fantastical models of Asian martial arts techniques.[3] As such, boxing games, mixed martial arts games, and wrestling games are often described as distinct genres, without comparison to fighting games, and belong more in the sports game genre.[14][15]
Fighting games involve combat between pairs of fighters using highly exaggerated martial arts moves.[3] They typically revolve primarily around brawling or combat sport,[4][7] though some variations feature weaponry.[7] Games usually display on-screen fighters from a side view, and even 3D fighting games play largely within a 2D plane of motion.[3] Games usually confine characters to moving left and right and jumping, although some games such as Fatal Fury: King of Fighters allow players to move between parallel planes of movement.[3][16] Recent games tend to be rendered in three dimensions, making it easier for developers to add a greater number of animations, but otherwise play like those rendered in two dimensions.[7]
Aside from moving around a restricted space, fighting games limit the player's actions to different offensive and defensive maneuvers. Players must learn which attacks and defenses are effective against each other, either through trial and error or communication with other players outside of the game.[3] Blocking is a basic technique that allows a player to defend against basic attacks.[17] Some games feature more advanced blocking techniques: for example, Capcom's Street Fighter III features a move termed "parrying", which causes the parried attacker to become momentarily incapacitated (a similar state is termed "just defended" in SNK's Garou: Mark of the Wolves).[18][19]
An integral feature of fighting games is the use of "special attacks", also called "secret moves",[20] that employ combinations of directional inputs and button presses to perform a particular move beyond basic punching and kicking.[21] Some special moves, which play an animation portraying an aspect of the character's personality, are referred to as taunts. Originally introduced by Japanese company SNK in their game Art of Fighting,[22][23] these are used to add humor, but also have an effect on gameplay in certain games, such as improving the strength of other attacks.[24] Sometimes, a character can even be noted especially for taunting (for example, Dan Hibiki from Street Fighter Alpha).[25][26] Super Smash Bros. Brawl introduced a new special attack that is exclusive to the Super Smash Bros. series, known as a Final Smash.
Combos, in which several attacks are chained together, are another common feature in fighting games and have been fundamental to the genre since the release of Street Fighter II.[27] Most fighting games display a "combo meter" that displays the player's progress through a combo. The effectiveness of such moves often relates to the difficulty of execution and the degree of risk. These moves are often challenging to perform and require a player to have both a strong memory and excellent timing.[3]
In addition to blows such as punches and kicks, players can utilize throwing or grappling to circumvent blocks. Most fighting games give the player the ability to execute a grapple move by pressing two or more buttons together, or simply by pressing punch or kick while being directly adjacent to the opponent. Other fighting games, like Dead or Alive, have a unique button for throws and takedowns.
Used primarily in 2D fighting games, projectiles are objects that a fighter can launch at another fighter to attack from a distance. While they can be used to simply inflict damage, projectiles are also often used to maneuver opponents into disadvantageous positions. The most notable projectile is Ryu and Ken's Hadouken from Street Fighter.
In the world of fighting games, especially those of the 2D variety, zoning refers to defensive play that focuses on using relatively risk-free attacks to keep the opposing player away. The desired outcome of zoning is to force an opponent to take significant risks to approach the zoning player's character, or to stall out the in-game timer, which causes the player with more health (typically the one doing the zoning) to win. The effectiveness of the latter strategy varies from game to game, based on the effectiveness of zoning tools as well as the length of the in-game timer and the rewards characters can receive for successfully landing a hit when countering zoning.
The opposite of turtling, rushdown refers to a number of specific aggressive strategies, philosophies, and play styles across all fighting games. The general goal of a rushdown play style is to overwhelm the opponent and force costly mistakes, either by using fast, confusing setups or by taking advantage of an impatient opponent as they are forced to play defense for prolonged periods of time. Rushdown players often favor attacking opponents in the corner of a stage or as they get up from a knockdown; both situations severely limit the options of the opponent and often allow the attacking player to force high-risk guessing scenarios.