Many fighting games, from Street Fighter to Super Smash Bros, have both humor and comic relief characters in their rosters. The following fighting games, however, are built around premises that outright parody the melodrama of fighting games, and in the process, tinker with the fighting game formula using surprisingly original mechanics.
Since the runaway success of Street Fighter II, most fighting games have stuck to a rigid formula; combat takes place on a side-scrolling 2D arena, players select from a roster of martial artists with different moves, then engage each other in rock-paper-scissors games of punch vs. block vs. grapple. Franchises such as Tekken or Mortal Kombat stick to this old formula into order to minimize the learning curve for new players and let veteran gamers transfer their competitive skills over from older games. As a consequence, though, newer fighting games focus more on visual design, personality-filled martial artists, and special moves over transforming a tried-and-true style of gameplay.
The charm of the following fighting games, besides their absurd premises, lies in how they thoroughly break the Street Fighter mold, using the license of parody to go wild with new ideas and models of gameplay. The humorous nature of these titles also make them good competitive party games, as even the experience of losing can be fun.
Gang Beasts
An indie title developed by Boneloaf Studios and published by Double Fine, Gang Beasts took the frantic melees of old-school beat-em-ups such as Final Fight and Streets of Rage, then combined them with slapstick, ragdoll physics, and a deliberately finicky control scheme. Up to four players take control of a doll-like "gang beast," decorating them with a variety of hairstyles, colors and costumes. They then try to throw each other to their doom in hazardous arenas ranging from construction sites and speeding trucks to the top of blimps. The finicky control scheme, if mastered, lets an adroit player pick up objects as bludgeons, climb walls, and pin players into submission. They'll still look silly while doing it.
Divekick
If Gang Beasts is an over-complicated beat'em'up game, Divekick is a fighting game boiled down to its bare essentials... plus a parody of people who spam one move over and over again in fighting games. There's only two controls in Divekick – a button for jumping and a button for kicking – and the first person to get nicked by the enemy's shoe gets K.O.ed. As a result, players of Divekick must shun combos in favor of reading their opponent and timing their attacks correctly. The character roster includes parodies of famous fighting game characters from Mortal Kombat, parodies of fighting game competitors from EVO, and cameo characters such as the Fencer from...
Nidhogg I and II
The premise of Nidhogg I and II is at times both gruesomely hilarious and eerily confounding. Like Divekick, players in Nidhogg will die upon being struck by a single attack. Unlike Divekick, Nidhogg is centered on the premise of swordfights; pixelated characters skewer each other with rapiers as they race across the map, with the winner hurling themselves into the maw of a giant toothy worm (no, it's not supposed to make sense). The 8-bit graphics conceal a great amount of depth in Nidhogg's controls, letting players parry sword strikes with well-timed attacks, throw their swords, slide under opponents, and hop across treacherous platforms. The sequel Nidhogg 2 added more elaborate graphics and introduced new medieval weapons ranging from bows to broadswords.
Fight Crab
This game was likely inspired by that one YouTube video. Yes, the one with the crab who stole a kitchen knife. Fight Crab, set to come out on July 30th, 2020, essentially takes this video's premise to its logical conclusion. Upon release, players will assume control of different species of Crab who are dropped into a battlefield filled with a vast array of weapons to use against each other, including, but not limited to: ninjas sais, lightsabers, battleaxes, and laser cannons. The crab who knocks all their opponents onto their back wins.
There are lots of different kinds of fighting games, but the ones listed above are some of the weirdest (but still entertaining) around.