The greatest fighter of all time!
The first fighting game I was ever exposed to was Tekken 3, since then I have become an avid fan of the fighting franchise. Some of my all time favorites are Tekken 5, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, King of Fighters '94 and '98, Samurai Showdown II, Marvel vs. Capcom, Darkstalker, and Dead or Alive Ultimate. I own a copy of Virtual Fighter and Mortal Kombat II, but I'm not a fan of either. Yet despite all these fantastic games only one, I believe, surpasses them all: SoulCalibur 2.
Even though SoulCalibur for the Sega Dreamcast received a perfect 10 from Gamespot, I believe SoulCalibur 2 topped it in every way. Sure, the core gameplay stayed the same; but the graphics and character roster are so much better than the predecessor. Plus each console version of SoulCalibur 2 included an additional character that really made each version special. I personally favored the GameCube version, because Link seemed to fit in seamlessly more than an of the other special characters. Plus I'd much rather see the faces of Heihachi Mishima, the comic book character Spawn, and Nintendo's Link rather than Darth Vader and Yoda (please spare me!). Soul Calibur 3 was a disappointment, since it neither had any of the previous characters mentioned nor was it released for multi-platforms.
One of the key factors that made SoulCalibur 2 so great was the fact that I had a little brother to share it with me. We've used the game as a way of settling disagreements and quarrels that we've had against each other (and a couple of times it got out of hand). But once our anger had subsided we were still left with a great game that we could continue to enjoy for years to come.