Goals

 

 

Fighting game matches generally consist of several rounds; the player who wins the most rounds wins the match.^[25] Fighting games widely feature life bars, which are depleted as characters sustain blows.^[12][26] Each successful attack will deplete a character's health, and the game continues until a fighter's energy reaches zero.^[1] Hence, the main goal is to completely deplete the life bar of one's opponent, thus achieving a "knockout".^[15] Beginning with Midway's Mortal Kombat released in 1992, the Mortal Kombat series introduced "fatalities" in which the victor kills a knocked-out opponent in a gruesome manner.^[27] Games such as Virtua Fighter also allow a character to be defeated by forcing them outside of the fighting arena, awarding a "ring-out" to the victor.^[13] Round decisions can also be determined by time over (if a timer is present), which judges players based on remaining vitality to declare a winner.
Fighting games often include a single player campaign or tournament, where the player must defeat a sequence of several computer controlled opponents. Winning the tournament often reveals a special story–ending cutscene, and some games also grant access to hidden characters or special features upon victory.^[28]

[edit] Multiple characters and players

In most fighting games, players may select from a variety of characters who have unique fighting styles and special moves. This became a strong convention for the genre with the release of Street Fighter II, and these character choices have led to deeper game strategy and replay value.^[29] Although fighting games offer female characters, their image tends to be hyperfeminized, and they have even been featured as pin-up girls in game magazines.^[30] Male characters in fighting games also tend to be hypersexualized, with extra-broad chests and shoulders, huge muscles, and prominent jaws.^[1]
Custom creation, or "create–a–fighter", is a feature of some fighting games which allows a player to customize the appearance and move set of their own character. Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium was the first game to include such a feature,^[31] and later fighting games such as Fighter Maker,^[32] Soulcalibur III,^[33] Mortal Kombat: Armageddon,^[34] and Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 adopted the concept.^[35] Some fighting games allow the player to create other types of game content: Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for example, features the ability to create custom stages.^[36]
Fighting games may also offer a multiplayer mode in which players fight each other, sometimes by letting a second player challenge the first at any moment during a single player match.^[2] A few titles allow up to four players to compete simultaneously.^[37] Several games have also featured modes that involve teams of characters; players form "tag teams" to fight matches in which combat is one-on-one, but a character may leave the arena to be replaced by a team mate.^[38] Some fighting games have also offered the challenge of fighting against multiple opponents in succession, testing the player's endurance.^[28] Newer titles take advantage of online gaming services, although lag created by slow data transmission can disrupt the split-second timing involved in fighting games.^[28][39]