So Many Fighting Games
Anime has a stranglehold on the fighting game genre. It makes sense. You already have these battle shonen with cool movesets and crazy finishing moves already baked into the story. The anime already provides things like character designs, soundtrack music and locations for fighting. It takes way less work than making a whole world, characters and movesets from the ground up with series like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear. And there’s an already existing customer base ready and waiting to play as characters they’ve grown attached to.
That’s why most popular battle shonen have at least one fighting game. You have Dragon Ball with Dragon Ball Fighters Z, One Piece with One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4, even Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle. But the anime with the most successful fighting game has to be Naruto.
There’s the Naruto: Clash of Ninja series. It’s a 3D cel shaded fighting game series where the camera is locked to the side. It focused on multiplayer and more grounded attacks so that players could easily follow and react to their opponents. However, there’s an even larger series of fighting games that started at the same time and is still going on to this day – Naruto: Ultimate Ninja. It’s an arena fighter. Unlike traditional 3D fighters, arena fighters feature a third person camera, enormous arenas and moves that prioritize spectacle and going over the top. And it’s perfect for Naruto, which featured more flashy, set piece battles the longer the story went on. The peak of the series was Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4, which sold over 12 million copies due to it covering the finale of the anime’s story, with some incredible visuals to match.
The Injection of Party Games
Thankfully, there are games that manage to branch out and do something different. For example, there’s a Spy X Family video game called Spy X Anya:Operation Memories. In this game, you play as the main character Anya Forger. You visit locations from the anime like the Forger’s house and Anya’s school to take pictures and play minigames like Peanut Bowling and dodgeball. The game capitalizes on the cute and wholesome parts of the series to make something that everyone can enjoy.
Following this more relaxed game trend, Demon Slayer released a Mario Party inspired game called Demon Slayer: Sweep The Board. You can play and fight against characters from the anime and travel around game boards inspired by locations from the anime. You can even play minigames that take inspiration from the Demon Slayer world. These minigames include feeding Mitsuri as much food as fast as possible, or figuring out what box Nezuko is hidden in.
A Wave of RPGs
Then there’s RPGs set in the worlds of these anime. There’s an action RPG for Sand Land, which was a manga and anime created by Dragon Ball author Akira Toriyama. You play as the demon Beelzebub to find an oasis hidden in a desert world, where you fight enemies and use powers taken directly from the anime. You can even control a tank and use it to destroy anything in your path! Fairy Tail has a turn based RPG where you play through the anime’s story and play as members of the main cast. Each character retains their unique abilities from the anime, and it’s fun to try and combine moves together to take down enemies. The game even features scenes from the anime reworked in 3D in the game’s engine!
Future anime games are also looking to cash in on the RPG trend. The anime Gachiakuta is getting an open world survival action RPG where you can play as the main cast from the series and explore the trash infested world. The game features the usual locations from the anime, but it’s allowing the player to explore some of these areas more in depth, fleshing out locations like Canvas Town. Video games based on actual anime are branching out for mainstream titles, and it’s exciting to see where they’ll go next.
