Karate Champ | Arcade 1984| White (and/or Red)

Data East's Karate Champ was one of the earliest one-on-one fighting games as we know it--arguably the first, at least on US shores back in 1984 (followed by the addictive-but-single-player-only Yie-Ar Kung-Fu by Konami in 1985). It was a game of firsts--one of the first games to let two players challenge each other in one-on-one battles, one of the first fighting games to have bonus stages, one of the first games to hit the all-important milestone of letting you do battle with a hopping bull, and one of the first games to have one martial artist in a white gi and one in a red gi (Ryu's and Ken's respectively white and red karate gear isn't a coincidence, guys). Both characters were completely identical--the difference was mainly that white was the default character (starting a new game with no other players gave you the fighter in white). Regardless of whether you were wearing white or red, your job was to hit the almighty jump kick on your opponent as soon as possible to score a hit--the game didn't use Street Fighter's life meters, and instead worked on a tournament scoring system that would reward victorious rounds to the first fighter to score a hit…a hit that often took the form of the almighty jump kick. Karate Champ went on to influence a great many subsequent fighting games (most obviously the Commodore 64 classics Way of the Exploding Fist and the International Karate series) and, along with a certain martial arts movie from the same time period, it went on to influence yours truly to strike hard and strike fast. No mercy.

The King of Fighters '98: Dream Match Never Ends | Arcade 1998 | Terry Bogard (standard, not EX mode)

The original version of The King of Fighters '98 was known in Japan by the subtitle "Dream Match Never Ends" (and also known in the US by the subtitle "The Slugfest," and on the Dreamcast, confusingly enough, as "The King of Fighters: Dream Match 1999"). It's also considered by most Neo*Geo fans to be the single best fighting game on the platform, and as a card-carrying Neo*Geo fan and owner, I happen to share that opinion, though I do think very highly of Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves and I'll always have a soft spot for Samurai Shodown II and World Heroes Perfect. But KOF '98, as it turns out, was a culmination of the radical (but unfinished and unbalanced) changes made to the KOF formula in '96 and the improved-but-not-quite-there-yet gameplay of '97. At the time, KOF '98 offered the largest selection of playable characters in any KOF game to date (including alternate "EX" versions of certain characters you could select by pressing and holding the "start" button while choosing them), along with two very different and viable play modes ("Advanced," a more-aggressive fighting style that let your character perform forward and recovery rolls and charge multiple superattacks, and "Extra," a defense-focused fighting style that let you dodge incoming attacks and manually charge your superattack meter). And KOF '98 offered what I consider to be the best KOF version of one of my all-time favorite characters, the Lone Wolf Terry Bogard. Though he's been around since 1991's Fatal Fury, Terry has pretty much always been an offense-focused heavy-hitter, and in KOF '98, he had a sizeable arsenal of good, solid maneuvers that let him continuously move forward while constantly attacking (and constantly inching his opponent closer and closer to the corner, where the real pummeling could begin). I've always believed that fighting games are called "fighting games" for a reason. In other words, the idea is to get in there and mix it up, not cower in the corner and wait for your opponent to come to you (or "turtle," if you prefer). KOF '98 Terry's great variety of different attack moves, excellent normal attacks, powerful and quick combination attacks, and relentless ability to push forward made him a perfect fit for the way I play fighting games and usually earned him the cleanup spot on my three-man KOF '98 teams. (To clarify, I'm talking about "regular" KOF '98 Terry, not his EX version, which was also a powerful version of the character, but a lot less interesting.)

Tekken 3 (and Tag Tournament and 4 and 5 and 6) | Arcade 1996 onward | Bryan Fury (casual)

For the record, I originally chose the Tekken series for this entry because for some crazy reason, I thought no one else in these blogs was going to bother mentioning it. Anyway, this isn't even necessarily one of my best fighting games; I'm pretty much a casual Tekken player, and I have a couple of characters I find myself going back to more often than not. One of them is Bryan Fury, who I prefer for a couple of reasons--one, he was Tekken 3's replacement for Tekken 2's kickboxer Bruce Irvin (another character I messed with casually), and two, because he tends to smack his opponents around with short, impactful hits that make loud, smacking noises. I should explain. Though one of the things I really admire about the Tekken series is how offense-focused it is, primarily because the game's fast pace and multiple levels of blocking make it very difficult to "turtle" for long, one of the things I'm not as crazy about in Tekken is long, strung-out "juggles," which you start by launching your opponent skyward, then repeatedly punching and kicking your airborne foes as many times as possible before they land. Even though some of the longer juggles in some of the Tekken games are very challenging tests of timing and technical skill, I just don't care to watch people performing big, long, unblockable strings, even if I'm the one doing them. To me, the real meat of a fighting game is the strategy and skill involved in getting past an opponent's defenses, usually with a blistering offense. Exactly how you punish your opponent after crushing their guard or tricking them into making a mistake just isn't as important to me as opening them up to that opportunity first. Though it's always nice to do the most damage as possible, I don't really care all that much about the difference between a 7-hit juggle and a 9-hit juggle. (And I definitely don't have any interest in games that are all about delivering extra hits by desperately mashing away or by flapping the palm of your hand across the buttons like a washboard in a jug band.) This is why I'm not a big fan of long juggles, or of the Tekken series' wall-bounce juggles first introduced in Tekken 4. It's also why I'll probably continue to only be a casual fan of the series, and it's also probably why I keep coming back to Bryan Fury, since, although he does have some exceptionally long juggle strings, he also has several perfectly good, decently damaging follow-ups that are over in a couple of hits and usually end with a single, powerful blow that knocks my opponent into next week.

Sango Fighter | PC 1993 | Cao Cao

If you owned a game-capable PC in the 1990s and were exposed to the magic of shareware, there's a good chance you know and played this game. It's the one with the guy in the green robes fighting the muscle-man guy in the blue shirt and red scarf. At a glance, 1993's Sango Fighter for the PC seemed like it was supposed to be Taiwan-based Panda Entertainment's answer to Street Fighter II…minus any of the talent, technical skill, or art direction that went into that game. Specifically, Panda attempted to take the exciting, classic tale of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and turn it into a full-fledged fighting game where key figures of the era, such as the fabled Five Tiger Generals under the command of Prince Liu Bei, competed for control of ancient China with the nation of Cao Wei, led by the crafty warlord Cao Cao. What we got was an incredibly goofy, clunky, simplistic fighting game where historical figures such as the legendary Marquis of Min, the cunning General Xiahou Dun, were reduced to dumpy, cackling nimrods (with annoyingly good setups to throw you across the screen). Back in the 1990s, I was used to being spoiled by the luxury of getting PC games from actual computer game stores that sold row after row of boxed computer games, so Sango Fighter ended up being one of the few PC games I purchased by mail at the time. It arrived from Panda burned onto a suspicious-looking gold CD-R disc with a flimsy, photocopied label, but the game itself was the real deal. Meaning that it was just like the shareware version, but with more characters and a single-player campaign (which forced you to play with fewer characters). The full version was otherwise still slow, still clunky, and still full of the bulgy goofball characters that eventually grew on me. Especially Sango Fighter's interpretation of the wily warlord himself, Cao Cao, whose shrill laugh and borderline unfair throw setups were clearly intended to make him a much-hated final boss. But his amazing fashion sense (ragged cape, gigantic fists, teeny-tiny crown on top of an even teenier-tinier head) and dirty throwing game quickly won me over, and soon I wasn't laughing at him, but with him. And it turns out that if you'd like to try Sango Fighter, you can get the game for free.