Trigger Happy
motion-capture techniques mean that once an animation has started, it must finish before the next one can start. You can’t change tactics mid-move. That rules out true feints, which are critical in real fighting sports such as fencing. Oddly, beat-’em-ups such as the Tekken series have extremely complex input methods, but threaten to offer the player far less creative freedom than almost any other kind of game with a much simpler interface. Robotron gives you two joysticks: one to move, one to fire. Simple. But with those tools, there is a huge tactical potential of feints, misdirections and apocalyptic vengeance.
The excessively deterministic, combinatorial template, however, seems to be happily on the wane, overtaken by newer versions such as Power Stone for the Sega Dreamcast (1999), where the controls are very simple and the tactical gameplay is transferred to use of objects (benches, lampposts) and hilariously magical power-ups (guided missiles and the like) in the fighting arena itself; or Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, which mixes pleasingly simple controls with beautifully judged tactics. The fighting game, like fighting itself, will always be popular.
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