Fighting games experienced a resurgence in the late 2000s, and they’ve been on a roll ever since, growing more popular with almost each passing year. Tournaments like EVO bring the excitement even to those who don’t play fighting games, as getting to see the top players in tournament settings is exhilarating whether one is good at the genre or not.
Of course, as there happen to be more and more fighting games, they all have to have different methods to help them stand out. And while the actual gameplay is always first and foremost in a developer’s minds, some of them aren’t above using things like fanservice to get a little more attention from the fanbase. Sometimes it’s done in tasteful doses, while other times it goes way too far.
10 Overdoes It: Street Fighter V Gets A Bit Out Of Control With Its Alternate Costumes
The Street Fighter series has always had some of the most colorful characters in fighting game history, but with its latest incarnation it has also had some of the most fan-service. Between Cammy not knowing what pants are, to R. Mika being a wrestler who specializes in “hip attacks,” and just Laura in general, the game can be a bit much.
It was so much in fact, that at the 2017 EVO tournament an ESPN representative asked a player to change Cammy’s costume in the middle of Street Fighter V’s finals. Yes, that’s correct— in the middle of the actual finals, a player had to change a video game character’s costume because it was too gratuitous even for a cable network that shows women’s beach volleyball.
9 DOESN’T Overdo It: Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers – Battle for the Grid Keeps All Its Characters In Their Classic Costumes
If it’s not obvious, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers isn’t the place one should go for fanservice. In 2019, nWay published “Battle for the Grid,” a fighting game that everyone assumed was just an easy cash grab initially. But when people got into the title, they quickly found something that was much deeper mechanically than anyone could have expected.
Thus far, they’ve added 11 characters to the initial roster, nearly doubling the available characters. And among the roster up to this point, there haven’t been any characters that even approach being described as fanservice-y. It makes sense though, as this is a kid-friendly franchise, even in its Super Sentai form.
8 Overdoes It: Mortal Kombat 9 Wasn’t Afraid To Put Its Lady Ninja In Skimpy Outfits
In 2011’s soft reboot title Mortal Kombat— often referred to as Mortal Kombat 9— fanservice wasn’t even thought about when it first released, but whether people want to agree with it or not, 2011 was a long time ago. Mortal Kombat has always had a palette swap thing with their character designs, and while Mortal Kombat 9 goes a long way towards changing that, it wasn’t quite enough.
All of the ninja women like Kitana, Mileena, and Jade were in incredibly skimpy outfits. And while that’s something of the point for a character like Mileena, when it’s someone like Sonya Blade who is supposedly a hard-nosed soldier but is wearing an outfit with a ridiculously deep neckline that barely contains her chest, it comes across as more than a little silly.
7 DOESN’T Overdo It: Samurai Shodown Sticks With More Reserved Costumes
Samurai Shodown is one of SNK’s oldest franchises, and the last installment happened all the way back in 2009. A decade later, SNK decided to reboot the series entirely with a game that took place before the first game.
Samurai Shodown’s roster consists of a number of eclectic characters, but few of them could be counted as especially fanservice-y. On the contrary, the designs are generally more reserved and in line with what characters might have looked like back then…mostly.
6 Overdoes It: SNK Heroines’ Story Literally Revolves Around Female Fighters Being Forced To Dress Sexy
Because SNK just couldn’t think of anything else to do with their King of Fighters characters than take all the women and toss them into a fanservice game. This game is so ridiculous, they even decided to transform Terry Bogard into a woman just to get their flagship character into the title but keep the all-girl theme.
And while there’s nothing wrong with the time honored tradition of anime and gaming gender-swapping characters, it’s a little more noteworthy when they take Terry’s outfit and get rid of as much fabric as possible to show off the character’s new curves. Even the concept of it is fanservice-y, with the main villain having kidnapped a bunch of women and placing them into sexy outfits for his own amusement.
5 DOESN’T Overdo It: Mortal Kombat 11 Managed To Find Less Questionable Outfits For Its Characters
As much as Mortal Kombat 9 was known for skimpy outfits, Mortal Kombat 11 was known for toning it all down. It was a process that began in Mortal Kombat X, but MK11 managed to roll everything back to such an extent that it caused an argument amongst the fans of the Mortal Kombat franchise who accused the game of bowing to pressure from “SJWs” just because the game dared to let the female characters cover up a bit.
Some believed that it was fine to have characters showing a bit of skin, while others were glad the franchise was learning to reign in its more questionable aspects. Granted, what’s questionable in a universe where the entire point is finding the most gruesome ways to take out the opponent is debatable, but that doesn’t mean that women need to be wearing what amounts to lingerie while they do it.
4 Overdoes It: Dead or Alive Is The Original Fanservice Fighting Game Series
This isn’t about a specific game in the franchise, because with Dead or Alive, the fanservice is kind of the point. There’s a reason why there’s an entire spin-off series that features the women rolling around on the beach in their bikinis, after all— even though that series did start off as a surprisingly well-made volleyball game. The roster of a typical DOA game is largely made up of women, which is cool to an extent, but it would be disingenuous to pretend like the reason for that is especially feministic.
Dead or Alive kind of beat everyone to the punch with waifus in fighting games, as it’s got a waifu for every type of fan. Moreover, most of them have a fanservice-y outfit for players who are willing to look for them, some so skimpy that the games have to be rated M as a result of how much skin they show.
3 DOESN’T Overdo It: Injustice 2 Places All Its Characters In Complex Armor
NetherRealm Studios not only managed to completely revitalize Mortal Kombat in the 2010s, but they also figured out a way to create an awesome new franchise in the form of Injustice.
A version of the DC Universe where Superman snapped because of the Joker and turned into a fascist dictator, it’s not surprising the game isn’t exactly dripping with fanservice. It’s even less surprising considering Injustice 2’s gimmick was a new Armor System, where characters could be customized by wearing different kinds of armor that enhanced various abilities and gave them different move sets. It’s commendable that a fighting game featuring characters like Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, and Starfire resists the urge to under-dress them.
2 Overdoes It: Guilty Gear Xrd’s Wandering Samurai Baiken Is A Lot To Deal With
Guilty Gear as a franchise isn’t heavily thought of as fanservice focused, to be sure. Certainly with the most recent Guilty Gear Strive, one of the bigger selling points of the game is that they successfully toned down what fanservice was there in the first place. But for its predecessor, Guilty Gear Xrd, Baiken alone is enough to land it on this list.
The wandering samurai is a cool character to be sure, but being well-endowed and wearing a loosely fitting kimono that leaves little to the imagination and looks to be in constant danger of a wardrobe malfunction feels like the entire point to her design in Xrd. And that’s without getting into some of the other designs in the game, which are pretty in your face too.
1 DOESN’T Overdo It: Fighting EX Layer Puts Fanservice Aside For More Measured Designs
Older fighting game fans might be aware of the Street Fighter EX series, a spin-off series that released in the ’90s. Developer Arika brought back the franchise for the PlayStation 4 in 2018, after initially pretending like it was an April Fool’s joke.
The game featured thirteen characters, most of which came directly from the Street Fighter EX series but weren’t created by Capcom. And while Capcom is quite fond of the fanservice, Arika didn’t seem to be, with most of the characters in the game designed to be more low-key. Well, as low-key as possible for fighting game characters, at least.
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