Just to make it crystal clear no I didn't play Tekken 8, Street Fighter VI and Mortal Kombat 1 prior to writing this.
I'm sure none of these means an introduction especially to fighting game fans. But those that barely or haven't play any fighting games. All three of them as a vastly different experience from each other. More recently you have to stick with one or two that's pushing it budget wise. Mostly due to a lot of dlcs that adding in more characters to play as or in two MK games' case more Story Mode.
This following comparison is mostly focusing on the main series for all three fighting game franchises. I may mention a few other modes. I wanna try keeping the focus on the general game play of all three franchises. Each one does have their own learning curve. Don't expect to ace them all from experience. I hope you enjoy reading my Big 3 Fighting Games comparison.
Street Fighter
The golden standard of tournament fighting games. Let's get this out the way, the original Street Fighter was amazingly terrible. The franchise became popular with Street Fighter II. Which forever changed the genre for years to come. Most of the roster are humans with some notable exceptions. Capcom may go a little too far with either more updated versions as well as the insane amount of dlcs.
Street Fighter usually has a nice sized character roster. A lot of stages you can play many matches on repeatedly. I actually felt all the versions of Street Fighter III was notably different from most the series. You got characters representing several countries around the world. Street Fighter took the world by storm since SFII.
Mortal Kombat
The original Mortal Kombat was the first real challenger Street Fighter II gotten. It also does plenty differently to stand out on it's own. In Street Fighter series, you or your opponent can get dizzy during matches. In Mortal Kombat series, you have a variety of finishing moves. Mostly brutally killing off your opponents with each newer entry further pushing the boundaries what's allowed in video games.
Mortal Kombat also known for having some well hidden secrets. You get some truly unique characters since a lot of them came from other realms. Some modes differs far more than you originally expected. Mortal Kombat is very true to it's name in every sense of the world. Some could even label it as Bleach of Fighting Games.
Tekken
Unlike SF and MK that's mostly an 2D fighting game franchises. Tekken offers some rather impressive 3D fighting game experience. For those not familiar with either term. 2D fighting game limits all characters to go back or forward during matches. But in 3D fighting games, you have more freedom to move around the stages.
Some stages has destroyable sections with some having more floors than you realized. Like SF series, tournaments is a recurring theme. The grand prize is becoming the person to run the Mishima Zaibatzu. One of the most powerful organizations in the world. There's a great variety of beings you can play as. Tekken is more about nailing the basics than special moves.
Big 3 Fighting Games comparison
Street Fighter had the worst beginning entry out of the Big 3. I mean even the bad ports of MK1 were better. Which isn't saying much but it's still technically something. I always felt Mortal Kombat told the stories the best. Although MK1 really made things confusing story wise. Most MK games are actually about these big events with a handful involving tournaments.
Both SF and MK are largely about the special moves. Tekken is considered the most difficult out of the three to master. This is due to having to nail the basics is critical. If you don't get that down, you have no chances in matches. Simply going by the characters, SF to me is the least interesting. I know a lot of people would heavily disagree with me.
It's kinda hard to compare em to both Mortal Kombat and Tekken. Story is a weird topic with Tekken series. At the same time, it's strangely works even in short endings. Tekken also represents a lot of the world within it's fighters. Mortal Kombat simply goes beyond by pulling characters from many realms. Realms are essentially treated as universes.
Therefore, realms are multiple plains of existence. Mortal Kombat is always been ridiculous about the fatalities. A concept a lot of games attempted to rip off but never came close. Bonus points to Shadow: War of Succession for not having the finishers programmed in lol. Tekken always had a huge character roster with Tekken 4 being a little smaller than expected.
By doing characters from multiple realms. You are more likely be surprise by the different species. You got Reptile's race that's on the verge of extinction or an Tarkata that are vicious creatures with long attachable blades coming from their arms. This counters how unexpected Tekken's character roster can be at times.
In SF series, you or your opponent can get dizzy a few times during matches. Tekken being an 3D fighting game franchise has more freedom to move around the stages. There's a few hidden surprises if you know which stages. MK series also known for well hidden secrets. Like fighting hidden opponents or some nice surprises you aren't expecting.
I mostly wanna focus on the main game play. I don't plan to focus much on the other modes. Tekken always done story somewhat differently. Mortal Kombat up to Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe had the story within the endings. After that, the crossover game to up had Story Mode. SF mostly doesn't do story modes until recently with Street Fighter VI.
Mortal Kombat would be the perfect in balance soundtrack wise. I actually felt Tekken delivers the finest fighting game music out of the Big 3. Obviously Mortal Kombat is the most epic for it's ambitious story concepts. Two of them are becoming causal gamer friendly just to one up Tekken. I confess I'm not the best fighting game player but I am a decent Tekken player.
Mortal Kombat has a variety of practice modes to help better your skills. I do like Tekken not only offers online ranking. It also has offline ranking too to help with several issues you would have with ranking up online. More recently, you can customize your characters in all three of them. I am going to be honest I haven't done this with SF yet.
I simply dislike how MK going about the concept. Especially when keeping real money out of it is a huge advantage Tekken has. Street Fighter recently reached number 6. Partly that's because of Street Fighter Alpha series I actually do enjoy them. Also because Capcom more focus on selling out Resident Evil!!!
I felt Tekken has the most reasonable dlc set up deals to help getting the dlcs you need much easier. Ever since MK!!, they kept making unnecessary decisions. I'll give an example to help paint a picture. One Christmas back when I still had my PS4. I bought the then big deal for MK11. Little did I know twice they up the bigger deals.
They came out with the same deal while adding more dlcs to it twice. Even the current biggest deal doesn't include every dlc. In Tekken's defense with Tekken 7 they later made the big deal including every dlc. It's also true most of them has updated versions. With the more recent updated versions coming with newer content as dlcs.
Two of them left the Arcade business a long time ago. It's kinda amusing only Tekken still in the Arcade business. This also came with a surprise advantage over the other two. Very true for the first three Tekken games on PS1. Those ports added so much from the Arcade versions it's mind blowing. Not only that, some Tekken games had slightly more characters too.
I'm more directly talking about Tekken 6. If I had to pick out of all the ones I played as the finest entries. Some of my choices might surprise people reading this. My favorite Mortal Kombat game was the reboot aka MK9, I loved everything about it. My favorite Street Fighter game was Street Fighter III: Third Strike.
My favorite Tekken game was Tekken 7, it's so damn good!!! Mortal Kombat does offer creativity while the other two are worthy competition since the 90s. Earlier MK games can be tough because of the AI opponents especially if you keep winning matches. In most versions of SFII I played, I usually struggled hard.
I should be mention both Tekken and Street Fighter crossed over a few times. Capcom really doesn't want to do MK vs SF. Although Ed Boon, the creator of Mortal Kombat series would love to. Two of them more recently allowed in some rather interesting guest characters. SF decided to add in Capcom reference outfits for a lot of them to make up for that.
Tekken was actually first to do guest characters in Tekken 3 with Gon. More recently, four guest characters with one having a canon story involvement got into Tekken 7. Akuma, Geese Howard, Noctis and Negan respectively. Now they had the guts to go for The Walking Dead character that's better suited for MK series.
Somehow Tekken 7 made Negan a rather fun guest character to play as. Mortal Kombat wise, they started that in MK with Freddy Krueger. Then in MKX, we had four more guest characters to boot. Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, Xenomorph and Predator respectively. All of them are in a few online multiplayer games with Leatherface being in two of them.
MK11 hits us with quite a surprising list of guest characters. We are talking Terminator, The Joker, Spawn, RoboCop and John Rambo!!! You can tell Warner Brothers busy selling out big on Mortal Kombat right? I do want to point out The Joker actually got pulled from the crossover game. A few references within the dialogue with a few characters confirms this.
Mortal Kombat does hide some funny easter eggs. More recently, character's intro dialogue has funny references to many things. They do reference some of Schwarzenegger and Stallone's films. A particular move in MKX by Erron Black has a funny Predator easter egg on a bullet. They also put some easter eggs in places you wouldn't even think to look like the character selection screen.
Either way you're getting some form of fan service. Both Tekken and Mortal Kombat kept swapping out features during the game play. This helps to differ each entry from each other. Yes it's also quite risky doing that. Some stages in Mortal Kombat could led to different sections. The most famous example being is to uppercut by your opponent sending em above the stage in most versions of MK3.
Mortal Kombat always offered a variety of finishers. Friendships being the non violent somewhat comical ones. You got Babalities that transforms your opponents into babies. They even went out of their way to directly insult players that quit before losing online matches with Quitalities. There's also Hara-Kiri essentially committing suicide among losing matches.
One of my favorites always been Animalities. Where your character transforms into a creature sometimes comical then kill your opponent. There's also Stage Fatalities that involves death traps or hazards from the stages killing off your opponent. I won't sugar coat how extreme finishers in Mortal Kombat series gets, you may not wanna watch some of these.
Although all three of them goes about it differently. They do also offer some humor to a degree. There's a large variety of moves every character can do. I don't think the main SF games has a famous mimic character. I know Tekken has two mimic characters with one being among my favorite characters. Mostly it's Shang Tsung, it depends on which MK games.
Shinnok in MK4 can swap out moves as well as other character's weapons. Shang Tsung in the games he can swap out move sets. Combot in Tekken 4 kinda sucks. He was notably better in Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Now Mokujin can change out move sets during matches. Sometimes he's one move set a few times in the same match, it depends on how many rounds.
Mokujin is essentially nearly every move programmed fighter in the ones he's in. Which also makes him among the toughest Tekken characters to master. Honestly that's rather impressive there's a character that may not appear to be that complex at first in the games. Some Mortal Kombat games has more weapon based combat.
Let's be honest, the best of them doesn't even compare to the better SoulCalibur games. Some characters has several weapons like Jax and Stryker to name a few. Most SF plots are what you expect of them. I can't say the same about the other two though. I felt some SF games offers a little too many dlcs to keep track of.
I been feeling the same towards the more recent MK games. I was actually fine how MKX went about it's dlcs in comparison. I guess Warner Brothers getting greedy again. I do still have a lot of respect for SF series. Obviously if SFII would've bombed. Chances are neither MK or Tekken would've existed. Then again Tekken's big competition being Dead or Alive & Virtua Fighter has different problems.
Dead or Alive is the very definition of way too many dlcs for a fighting game. I easily could do an entire rant how bad it actually is no joke. Virtua Fighter being missing the action for a long time now. Which kinda helped Tekken to get notice more within the fighting game community. Right now, all three of these franchises are going head to head.
They been getting serious for a couple years now. Up till that point it was mostly what's better Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Now you gotta add Tekken into the same discussion. I felt each one brings something different to the table. SF being overall the lightest in tone. Tekken and Mortal Kombat always taken themselves incredibly seriously.
Obviously Mortal Kombat being the darkest in tone. Tekken is right in the middle having just enough for both to fit in perfectly. Tekken just felt perfect in so many ways to me. Story wise it isn't the best at telling em. At the same time, most people rather just simply the damn games. Also because Tekken is an 3D fighting game franchises, it stands out more in the artwork department.
I'm not say either looks bad or anything. I actually felt Mortal Kombat has some truly sick artwork too. I am hit or miss depending on SF game truthfully. I was mostly mixed for both SFV and SFVI. I also felt the same exact way about MK1 too. Everyone has their own different taste in things. Topics like these usually comes down to the little things that ultimately determines your overall favorite.
I already made it clear awhile back, Tekken always been my favorite fighting game franchise. I still stand by that in every sense of the word. MK is so unique that you gotta play some of them at one point. SF you may have to be a little selective. I confess I kinda am towards SF series. Most main Tekken games are great games that's very replayable.
Mortal Kombat does have one of my absolute favorite fighting game characters Scorpion. I have to clarify since there's now two Scorpions. The original Scorpion, Hanzo Hasashi is such a great MK character. Ed Boon's favorite MK character as well. MK always been a controversial game franchise. In fact, the original Mortal Kombat with Doom and Night Trap started the video game rating system.
In my point of view Street Fighter is sandwich between the other two series. For me, it doesn't offer much to help keep my interest. Mortal Kombat always had some level of depth to the overall experience. Tekken always been such an unique fighting game experience in it's own right. One I can't even directly compare to many other fighting game series I played over the years.
I'm not trying to say Street Fighter is boring. It's hard to compete with how Mortal Kombat kept going epic with it's concepts. Not to mention, Tekken always had a more interesting character roster than that of Street Fighter. I also preferred how the endings are done in Tekken as well. There's just as many different fighting styles with some I haven't seen anywhere else.
Tekken always meant to be a difficult one to master. But when you get good at it, the real fun begins. I know some would think because of that, you should be killing it in fighting games lol. Majority of fighting games are vastly different. Some are even more unforgiving than Tekken no joke. Honestly Tekken truly does deliver what it brings to the table in a way you won't forget.
Tekken actually felt like you're fighting people in comparison. This is also why among winning difficult matches feels much more satisfying. MK does have mini games to a degree. So does Tekken but some of those are mostly single player that's non canon. In Tekken 6 console version, Scenario Campaign acts as the story mode that's canon.
In some MK games, you can swap out fight ladders. In later entries, this includes challenges to make some matches harder. At the same time, the more objectives you complete. The more additional in game money you earn. Tekken's answer to this is a few modes winning matches earns you in game money. Tekken 7 included most cut scenes from most Tekken games without it being dlc.
Unlike Tekken Tag Tournament 2 that previously done that. I haven't seen SF or MK do that before. The Krypt can differ in experience depending on which MK game you're playing. I always welcomed the feature to use in game money to unlock stuff. Especially when I get a nice surprise or two. Regardless, there's plenty reasons to like all three of them it's your choice which one your favorite.
Ranking the Best Entries
3. Street Fighter III: Third Strike
2. Mortal Kombat 9
1. Tekken 7
Ranking the Worst Entries
3. Tekken 4
2. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
1. Street Fighter 1
Favorite Hero Characters
3. Ken Masters
2. Jin Kazama
1. Liu Kang
Favorite Villain Characters
3. M. Bison
2. Shao Kahn
1. Bryan Fury
Favorite Neutral Characters
3. Guile
2. Armor King
1. Ermac
Ranking the Big 3
3. Street Fighter
2. Mortal Kombat
1. Tekken
Comparing their show and movie adaptations
I also wanted to quickly discuss the show and movie adaptations of the Big 3. Shows wise might actually be Street Fighter. There's a few SF shows that's gotten my attention. Tekken's solo show already got canned but I still liked it to a degree. MK can be rather mixed show wise. There isn't a solid MK show with each having major problems.
Movie wises it can easily differ. All three has animated movies as well as live action ones. I felt Mortal Kombat even with the disaster that is Mortal Kombat: Annihilation done the best live action movies. The other two surprisingly has even worst live action movies. Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-LI are amazingly terrible movies.
Now it's pretty much common knowledge that Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is one of the most hated video game movies in history. It's still high in my own Top 10 Worst Game Movies list to this day. If you haven't seen those bad movies. You simply can't even imagine them being so bad, it actually made this MK movie seem somewhat decent not quite an Oscars worthy film.
Speaking of MK, the original live action MK movie still one of my favorites. There are some things done better in the more recent live action MK movie. But I still felt some things the classic 90s MK movie done better too. It was the first major hit for a video game movie. Of course, there's some people looking back on it not caring for the film anymore.
There's also MK: The Journey Begins not great moving on. There's more SF shows than the other two combined. I haven't fully watched em neither lack the interest to do so. I will confirm the SF cartoon show is better than Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. If people were upset how toned down the crossover game was, this doesn't compare to this show.
I do wanna say I do enjoy the original live action SF movie. Sure it has a lot of problems, it was early adapting video games to movies at the time. There's a couple rememberable scenes including M. Bison. It was sadly the actor's last role before he passed. He sure gave new life to the character. Also compared to the later live action SF movie, this is way more SF.
Animated movie wise Tekken has two currently. Tekken: Blood Vengeance mostly gets great too late into the movie. Street Fighter movies can differ but I heard most of them are decent. Mortal Kombat has the best animated movies. I did question why give Johnny Cage his own movie? I also get why some people are rather mixed about some of those movies.
I personally am enjoying those MK movies. I just want Warner Brothers to slow down a bit with the MK movies. They are starting to come off being rush out. I felt the best advice is watch the ones worth watching don't kill yourself doing all of them. There's also the option to ignore em altogether. The games are way better than these adaptations by a long shot.
I felt Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat more likely eventually get adaptations worthy of it's legacy. Tekken could possibly work if they had the right people on board. All three of these game companies are guarantee to make money even if none of them had newer entries out. I do like knowing this became a three way showdown only one can stand supreme!!!
Ranking Best Adaptations
3. Tekken: Blood Vengeance
2. Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie
1. Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind
Ranking Worst Adaptations
3. Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm
2. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
1. Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge
Quick editor note, why I put Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm instead of a few obvious choices. At least in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was slightly more MK in a few areas. It's far from perfect with many problems. I did enjoy Mortal Kombat: Legacy Season 1 but rather mixed on it's Season 2. MK: The Journey Begins was on the short side, much shorter than that cartoon show.
It does slightly a few things better but not great. People obviously doesn't want MK to be tone down especially like this. The only real interesting fact is this show marks Quan Chi's debut in the franchise. Sadly, everything else about it drags right up to the end. It barely feels like MK at all a huge disappointment.
This was during the famous decline period for the franchise in the late 90s. Nearly everything MK during that era was a disappointment to the fans. I felt MK4 was easily the best of the worst in my opinion. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li really missed the mark. Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge isn't even Tekken at all, it originally wasn't going to be an Tekken movie.
Mortal Kombat: Conquest was a prequel that didn't work. Mortal Kombat struggled a long time getting origin stories to work. We even had a bad Sub-Zero game, I had it on PS1 as a kid. I can only imagine how much worst the N64 version is. Eventually Mortal Kombat bounced back with MK: Deadly Alliance.
I did place Tekken: Blood Vengeance higher than the canned animated Tekken show. It did have some notable problems, I actually felt Tekken OVA aka Tekken: The Motion Picture held up better. Which had some of the same problems. The one thing that saved Tekken: Blood Vengeance was all the final fights that's all.
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