I decided to start this thread because one of my favorite fighting games is about to come back as a soft reboot and god does it need it.
The first fighting game I ever received was in 1995 and went by the name of Battle Arena Toshinden.
By todays standards this fighter is a bit slow and clunky, but back in 95' this was the shit. This was one of the first fully 3d fighters with weapon combat. The game also had some flashy special moves to boot.
My main in this game was known as Eiji. Some young, katana wielding punk with a over confidence issue.
In my family we'd often play tournaments and sometimes it would degrade down to just cheesing certain moves and then learning to counter them. It was all a good time.
Not to long after this I pretty much stayed out of the fighting game scene, Played a little tekken 2 on an old demo I had, besides that I wouldn't play another fighting game until Tekken 5.
This is where I was introduced to the glory known as team battles and loved every minute of it. Because I mostly team battled I can't really say I had a main, but some of my best characters where Jin, Kazuya, and Bruce. Kazuya being one of my favorites.
Go figure another character with an even worse attitude.
During this time, I was introduced to what would become my favorite 3d fighter.
Soul Calibur II
This was the shit. Kinda took me back to Arena Toshinden. Faster Pace, Smooth Gameplay and an "adventure mode" just made this the best to me. Not to mention the Team Battle mode. Something sadly missed in new fighting games.
I couldn't tell you how many hours I put into this game, but even after unlocking all of the characters and goodies it still got playtime, even until Soul Cailbur 3 came around.
This was another game where I played almost all of the cast, so again, I didn't necessarily have a main.
Often in the team battles between me and my Cousin it would come down to who ever's Nightmare won. After than it was a clean sweep. So we started putting nightmare as our last characters until we got much better with the rest of the cast.
From here on in I pretty much stuck with Soul Calibur as my only fighting game. Dabling in a little Tekken when they came out, but something happen.
With Soul Calibur IV, the gameplay was great, but the game itself was slim on modes and content. I stuck around with it despite this because I loved the gameplay. Not to mention the shoehorned Algol character that had no reason to be there, much like guest characters, but they are easily ignored.
At this point the game got a bit strange and started to break its own rules. Then we come to Soul Calibur 5
Gameplay wise there is nothing wrong with this game at all. A few things where changed and the addition of a gaurd impact gauge was added. Some find it an improvement, while others don't. I don't really care for it myself.
But in this was the return of a full fledged story mode, but unfortunately it was a hobbled mess. The main character was terrible. The plot was terrible and the whole thing stunk of incest jokes.
So right then I spent the least amount of time with soul cailbur 5. I wasn't happy with the direction it took and put it down and so did Namco Bandai and for the best I believe. The direction of the game was kind of spiraling out of control and you could tell the writers backed themselves in a corner.
With all that said, we are finally getting a new Soul Calibur and it is going back to the original Soul Calibur as a soft reboot and restarting the franchise. Like I said before, it needs it.