https://www.retromags.com/files/file/4612-egm2-official-fighters-guide-1995/

"Shooters have come and gone... but the one on one fighter remains supreme!"

Oh, you poor soul.

Base +6, Elbowsmash -6, CptTagon +6

God, this some hella nostalgia of the 90s.

Base +5

So many fighters I've never even heard of. I love how hard they push that "BloodStorm" game, to the point they have an interview with one of the staff and even show you the button configuration, because this was SO CLEARLY a killer app, and not at all a MK clone that would be quickly forgotten with the release of MK 3 -- which rather prophetically gets teased at the end of the issue.

Base +6, jkezer +11, daipingan +8

Shooters as in Shoot em ups or FPS?

Base +8

"Survival of the Fittest" is quite right.

A bunch of the games mentioned in this upload I never heard of, or completely forgot they existed until this upload reminded me of it.

A lot of companies tried to get into the fighting game genre but it was brutally competitive with the likes of Street Fighter. Seriously man, I still remember from high school when SF2 came out, the arcades or some convenience store with Street Fighter II would have kids from all walks of life gathered around, being cool with each other, patiently waiting their turn to play. You had a line of quarters lined up at the top of the standup cabinet and the crowd somehow kept track of that shit, nobody got cheated. You had to put on a show when you were on, because lots of people were watching. Where I grew up around San Francisco Bay Area, that was the only arcade game that drew that kind of crowd. Winners stayed on of course, until someone beat them.

And kudos for Mortal Kombat. They made that thing so brutal and bloody (for the early 1990s) that it got a lot of news attention. Only thing it did was free publicity or the game. Just like SF2 had its mimics, so did MK, as you can see in this upload.

I personally also loved SNK's Samurai Shodown series, most especially later versions when I was stationed at Okinawa or did excursions to Japan.

1990s video gaming was some weird stuff sometimes. I still remember that Full Motion Video was supposed to be the new big thing that even Hollywood would jump aboard. That didn't go so well lol

Base +6

That Pong screenshot for MKII must have confused a lot of people who didn't know about the then-arcade-exclusive easter egg.

Base +8