Everything in the archive on one continuous line, oldest first. Narrow it by period, platform, company,
region or category, or search for a word that appears anywhere in an entry.
Capcom's sequel gave players eight fighters with genuinely different move sets and a structure that rewarded study. Arcades rearranged their floors around it, and the community that formed became the foundation of organized competitive play.
Fighting games became a genre built on play against another person rather than against a machine, and the arcade business briefly recovered because of it. The competitive practices assembled around these cabinets, matchup study, ranking, tournament formats, are the direct ancestors of professional esports.
