Street Fighter 6 caused some waves when Capcom revealed it would have two gameplay modes. Classic Mode is the familiar quarter-circle-forward, Shoryuken motion, 360° inputs, etc. While Modern Mode changes special moves to one or two button presses. Pressing Triangle will make Ryu do a Hadouken instead of a strong punch. Forward+Triangle a Shoryuken, etc. While this has got many purists up in a dander, other gamers felt it was inevitable.
Street Fighter, and fighting games in general, have always had a high skill ceiling. Even after gamers figure out the motions, they have to learn how to use them properly. How to buffer charges, how to tell a cancel from a link, and what ‘okizeme’ is, among other features. Luckily for everyone who found that jargon as confusing as Chinese algebra, here are some fighting games that are much simpler to pick up and play.
8 Skullgirls
Reverge Labs’ sumptuously animated ode to Guilty Gear, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and a host of other media is a treat for the fingers as well as the eyes. While it’s still more technical than the rest of this list, the characters stick to straightforward motion and charge-based moves. No half-circles or Triangle Motions here.
Anyone who only got as far as doing a Sonic Boom or Hurricane Kick in Street Fighter will find themselves more at home with Skullgirls. While it’s not the easiest game around, it comes with a handy tutorial mode that explains all its different functions and features. Anyone seeking to improve on their 2D fighting skills might find Skullgirls the perfect game to change them from a scrub to a lord.
7 The Marvel Vs Series
From their inception, Capcom’s Marvel games were always meant to be easier than the Street Fighter series. Super moves only required one motion and 2-3 button presses. Every normal attack could cancel into another, so combos were easy to pull off. Marvel Vs Capcom 2 brought the number of attack buttons down to 2 punches and 2 kicks. Then Marvel Vs Capcom 3 went further and changed it to 3 general attack buttons and a Special attack button.
However, if anyone wanted the closest equivalent to Street Fighter 6’s Modern Mode, they’d have to track down Marvel Super Heroes Vs Street Fighter. It’s essentially just X-Men Vs Street Fighter with most of the X-Men replaced with Spider-Man, Captain America, etc. But players could choose between a Normal Mode, and an Easy Mode that simplified the controls. Ryu could throw a fireball with Heavy Punch, Akuma could teleport with Down+Heavy Kick, and more. It’s worth checking out, if only as a curio.
6 Them’s Fightin’ Herds
Starting off as a My Little Pony fighting game, Them’s Fightin’ Herds became something more unique. Instead of being a cutesy pony-basher, it would feature all sorts of animals. A cow, reindeer, sheep, alpaca, and a somewhat ponyish unicorn would battle it out with other creatures to protect the land of Sum from the deadly Predators. MLP creator Lauren Faust gave the game her seal of approval, and the final product even shared some voice actors with the show.
The gameplay is similar to Marvel Vs Capcom 3 with Light, Medium, and Heavy attacks, alongside an extra button for Magic. Everyone has simple motion controls too, with nothing more complicated than a quarter motion or Shoryuken motion across its whole cast. Even intimidating functions like Pushblocks and Cross-Counters are as simple as pressing two attack buttons. While it still has things to learn, it won’t test the patience of ponies, Bronies, and other furry fighting fans.
5 Dragonball FighterZ
Back in a feature for Games™ magazine, Guilty Gear’s Daisuke Ishiwatari had said Smash Bros and Marvel were more party games than fighting games. He didn’t mean it as an insult, as he had tried to make his own takes on those games. While Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers and Guilty Gear Isuka failed at being Smash clones, Ishiwatari’s employers' Arc System Works did well with the Marvel-esque Dragonball FighterZ.
Like Capcom’s superheroic slugfest, FighterZ is a 3-on-3 team-based fighter with aerial juggles, snapbacks, and other features that are still rather technical. But the game standardized its controls across all characters. They’re all based on quarter motions too. If players can pull off Ryu’s Hadouken, they can do all of FighterZ’s moves. All they have to figure out is how to connect them together into enough effective combos to get those sweet Dramatic Finishes.
4 Super Smash Bros Series
Why bother going through the motions when a button press will do? The Super Smash Bros series is famous for being the fighter that’s easy to learn, hard to master. Though its platform-based gameplay and abundance of items sparked debate over whether it counted as a fighter. It was supposed to be about wacky characters throwing random items at each other from quirky, moving stages. Bouts could be won based on luck rather than how well players could spike floating opponents.
Then, in Super Smash for Wii U/3DS and Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Nintendo struck a balance between playing for fun and playing for glory. Fun players could still pick out their moving stages and select some or even all items to be enabled. While Glory players could finally pick anyone they wanted as each character was (reasonably) balanced for proper 1-vs-1 (or more) bouts on a variety of fair stages. So, as simple as the controls are, Smash Bros offers plenty of options for serious and party players alike.
3 Fantasy Strike
On the face of it, Fantasy Strike sounds tricky. It’s a six-button fighter this time. Except one is a normal attack button, two are special attacks, two others are set for throws and supers, and the last one jumps. Why does it have a jump button? Because it only has two directional inputs: forwards and backward.
The game’s moves consist of combining a motion and a button, or one button with another. Players can even reverse throws (Yomi Counter) by letting go of the controls and doing nothing. The only thing they have to worry about is learning which attacks combo into others, which is thankfully also simple with a little experimentation. Players will be getting ahead in Fantasy Strike in no time. It's even free to play!
2 Footsies
In fighting game terminology, a ‘footsie’ largely refers to when players dash back and forth and throw out jabs or kicks to control space. Street Fighter 3: Third Strike is famous (or infamous) for having many characters that rely on this technique. So, largely as a joke, HiFight made a simple fighting game for iOS and Android where that’s all the player does.
There’s only one attack button, which can produce 5 moves when combined with Forwards or Backwards, or whether the button is just tapped or held down to produce a Special Attack. There are no health bars either. The player can win or lose depending on whether they connect with or get hit by a Special Attack. They can only block up to 3 times before each attack breaks their defenses too. As simplistic as it is, Footsies teaches players fighting game fundamentals that can apply to its bigger brothers.
1 Divekick
This game is kind of an inside joke. Characters like Yun in Street Fighter 3 or Rufus in Street Fighter 4, tended to either have strong divekicks or have players that overused them. Thus, Iron Galaxy made a fighting game with just two buttons. One to ‘Dive’ (i.e., jump) and one to Kick. The first person to Dive, then connect with a Kick wins the round.
Most of the characters are also jokey versions of key figures in the Fighting Game Community, like Markman (former MadCatz Community manager Mark Julio) and Codename: S-Kill (former Capcom Community manager Seth Killian). But it also has a few random guest characters in Johnny Gat from Saints Row, the Fencer from Nidhogg, and The Baz from Shovel Knight, Indivisible, The TakeOver, etc. So, even if the jokes fly over players’ heads, there’s always another ready to deliver a divekick to the dome.