With the reveals this year of Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, it feels like the future of fighting games is in an incredibly bright spot. Both IPs have sorely needed a brand new entry into their respective franchises, and both look to improve massively on any feedback and issues that players might have had with the last games. Sure, we might have only seen 90 seconds of Tekken 8 at this point, but what’s been shown looks great.
However, there’s much more for fighting game fans to be excited about. SNK are in the midst of updating The King Of Fighters XV, with more DLC planned heading into 2023. They’re also working on a new Garou/Fatal Fury title, which is awesome to see. In addition, Riot Games are also planning their foray into fighting games with the League of Legends spin-off Project L, which could be a surprise winner.
Even on the smaller side of things, there’s plenty of fighting games to be excited about. Skullgirls is still going strong, with the never-ending launch party still raging on over a decade after launch thanks to new characters and DLC. 3goo and Dimps are bringing the previously arcade exclusive The Rumble Fish 2 to PC and consoles for the first time ever, while Mane6’s Them’s Fightin’ Herds is finally ready to launch across all platforms.
On every side, there’s fighting games coming from some of the biggest and brightest out there, and yet it seems like NetherRealm Studios are sitting on the sidelines right now. After the launch of Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate in 2019, many were expecting a 2021 release of Injustice 3, continuing the four year cycle that Injustice and Mortal Kombat have been in since 2011’s Mortal Kombat reboot.
2021 came, and 2021 went without any sort of announcement from NetherRealm Studios, and while that could easily be chalked up to COVID, it also seems like NetherRealm are breaking tradition by focusing on Mortal Kombat 12. Due to uncertainty with Warner Bros. as a whole over the past year, NetherRealm have reportedly made the choice to create MK 12 instead of Injustice 3, as a new Mortal Kombat game would be a guaranteed unit shifter.
It’s not hard to see their logic, especially with how well Mortal Kombat 11 sold, but that uncertainty makes it feel like NetherRealm Studios are now left out in the cold. There’s new games and announcements coming from two of the biggest fighting game franchises of all time, and it only feels like right that Mortal Kombat shares some of that spotlight too. Tekken, SF and MK practically all grew up together, and personally it would just be nice to see the big three of fighting games whip the entire community into a frenzy all at once.
Again, the fighting game community is about more than just one game, and there’s still so much good stuff on the way that the announcement of Mortal Kombat 12 wouldn’t mean much to some people. However, it’s hard not to romanticise the idea of the three biggest fighting games not named Super Smash Bros. Ultimate leading the charge for a stellar fighting game era.
READ MORE:Â The Best PS5 Fighting Games You Should Play
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