Rizky Syahputra Personal Favorite Fighting Games

This time we had the honour of having one of our best friends, Rizky Syahputra filling in our Courtside Countdown programme. For those you have not heard about this programme, basically Courtside Countdown covers the ultimate top tens of whatever of our contributor’s liking. This time Rizky will share his top ten personal favorite fighting game. Hope you enjoy it!

Fact: at one point, Rizky is among the Mortal Kombat Mobile top 10 leaderboard in the world on his faction: Lin Kuei. Please note that Mr. President, we got a potential E-Sport sportsman here.

#10 Virtua Fighter 3 (Sega AM2, 1996) Spent most of my time playing VF3 on my local arcade back in the days. One of my main motivation to purchase Sega Dreamcast aside from Soulcalibur is definitely this one. Straight up classic. Sadly despite all the greatness in it, they never expand the game with proper storyline even on the home console. Looking forward for the revival of the VF series.

“With all due respect to current fighting games charging money to unlock certain characters or DLC, the real deal is when we could simply finish the game with all fighters to play those unlockable characters”

#9 Project Justice (Capcom, 2000) Bashing out our PS1 controller in the 90s with my sister playing Rival Schools, and when the sequel came out, it was a touch of perfection. This Dreamcast exclusive by Capcom definitely one of the greatest ever made and surely not to be missed. Sadly the extremely fun minigame from the previous title was removed from the game.

#8 Injustice 2 (NetherRealm Studios, 2017) Had low expectation about a fighting game that incorporate characters from comic book, but this one definitely exceeded my expectation. They keep all the good things from the previous game and perfected it with this one. I’m a Marvel fans but surely i have to be clear here, Injustice was over the top. The guys at NetherRealm surely did a great job on this one and also on the MK series. Great graphics accompanied by even greater storyline, Injustice 2 rules.

#7 Power Stone (Capcom, 1999) Power Stone was innovative in it’s own way and such a fun game to play until today. Using our environment as weapons and free to move 3D fighting game, this is one of a kind and one of the funnest fighting game to play. Many years later, i’m still having fun running around collecting those 3 diamonds and goes full berserk as Wang-Tang or Galuda.

#6 Tobal 2 (DreamFactory, 1997) The Japanese release only sequel Tobal 2 had tons of fun, from the fluid fighting movement to the exciting quest mode they offered. I’m wondering how can a PS1 game graphics could be that smooth? Turns out Ken Kutaragi of Sony said that Sony engineers tested the game with some kind of performance analyzer and the result says that Tobal 2 was shown to use 90% of PS1 potential power/software capabilities. Such a beast. I am still craving for the revival of this potential Toriyama-verse.

#5 Mortal Kombat X (NetherRealm Studios, 2015) Continuing the extremely successful reboot of the franchise on Mortal Kombat 9, MKX is a perfect blend between realistic graphics, gore combo, and great storylines. This is a fighting game that no one should miss. Really happy with the directions of the Netherrealm days of MK franchise. The success would carry on to the also explosive MK11 couple years later. So excited to see what’s next in store for this MK franchise.

#4 Street Fighter Zero 3 (Capcom, 1998) X-Men vs Street Fighter, Darkstalkers 3, and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, are easily some of my favorite Capcom 2D fighting games. But if i have to choose one from all those greats, it should be Street Fighter Zero 3. All 16 characters from Super Street Fighter 2 are included in this game with more new characters introduced. It was everything i loved from the previous SF Zero series and more. Most importantly, they included characters from my favorite beat ’em up game of all time: Final Fight. What more could i ask?

#3 Tekken 5 (Namco, 2004) We surely can’t talk about fighting games without mentioning Tekken. As much as i love Tekken 3 in their glory days and Tekken 7 (IMHO) perfect combat system, Tekken 5 was the one for me. 32 playable characters with almost all recurring and newly introduced fighters, i am happy to revisit my PS2 until today, on a daily or at least weekly basis for this game, simply practicing my Marshall Law’s combo or going nuts with Bryan Fury.

“A good fighting game for me is the one that we could enjoy battling with our family or friends but also enjoyable while we’re finishing those game by ourself”

#2 Soulcalibur (Project Soul – Namco, 1998) Being a big fan of Soul Edge game on the PS1, me and my sister surely looking forward for the sequel, which turns out only available on the Dreamcast. Alongside Virtua Fighter 3 TB, Rival Schools 2 aka Project Justice, and Virtua Striker 2, this is our main motivation to get the Dreamcast back in the day. Definitely not a mistake since turns out we are playing one of the best if not the best fighting games of all time. Soulcalibur takes the world of weaponized fighting games or fighting games in general to the next level. I’m so glad that my best friend at Detlef Schrempf help me to get the Japanese version of this game almost 21 years later after the first time i’m firing up the VMU and hitting those buttons beating up Inferno and Astaroth 😀

#1 Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Midway, 1995) My cousin introduced me to Mortal Kombat 2 on Mega Drive back in 1994, and the rest is history for me. I became invested in Mortal Kombat-verse until this day. Since he had a Sega, i need to find another console system so we can both play games that is exclusive to each systems. A year later, i bought my first console in the name of Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and my first game would be the Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, which perfectly captures the first 3 games with wide variation of character to choose from. Some fan favorite characters that are not included in the original released of MK3 such as Scorpion, Kitana, and Reptile are making their return to the game. Toasty!