Evolution of Fighting Games 1985-2021

1985 Yie Ar Kung-Fu
1987 Street Fighter
1989 Street Smart
1991 Street Fighter II
1992 Mortal Kombat
1993 Virtua Fighter
1994 Killer Instinct
1995 Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
1996 X-Men vs. Street Fighter
1997 Tekken 3
1998 The King of Fighters ’98
1998 Soulcalibur
1999 Dead or Alive 2
2000 Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes
2001 Super Smash Bros. Melee
2002 The King of Fighters 2002
2003 Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2
2004 Def Jam: Fight for NY
2005 Soulcalibur III
2006 Virtua Fighter 5
2007 Tekken 6
2008 Street Fighter IV
2009 BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
2010 The King of Fighters XIII
2011 Mortal Kombat
2012 Skullgirls
2013 Injustice: Gods Among Us
2014 Guilty Gear Xrd
2015 Tekken 7
2016 Street Fighter V
2017 Injustice 2
2018 Dragon Ball FighterZ
2019 Mortal Kombat 11
2020 Granblue Fantasy Versus
2021 Guilty Gear Strive

Special thanks to World of Longplays () and Airton
() for providing the gameplay footage

Nixian Channel Description:

We’re lifelong video game enthusiasts with a passion for showing the world how our favorite hobby has grown with us, from individual series to industry-wide retrospectives.

We put significant time and creative effort into each one of our videos, including research, digging into archives, recording voiceovers, and editing. Every video takes as many as 10 hours to produce, because we strive to give our fans consistent, high-quality content.

Our popular “Evolution of…” series goes far beyond simply presenting gameplay footage. We take the time to show how a video game property — its gameplay, character designs, graphics, sound direction, etc. — have evolved over time. We include unique voiceover work on each video to enhance the viewing experience.

People have been playing video games for decades. In that time, we’ve gone from moving a white line up and down to block a moving pixel, to participating in full-fledged, painstakingly rendered real-time battles with people all over the world. We help older gamers look back on how these experiences have changed throughout their lives, and new gamers to understand the broader context of the series they’re playing for the first time today.
The video game medium never stops growing, and we’ll never stop chronicling its evolution.
Editing and voice-over were made by me.