I think this is something that should be handled at the platform level, Steam and consoles should just let you freely roll back to any version of the game. Keep every revision archived for preservation's sake.
Do you know how many Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat games we had in the 90s?
Yes, and I remember that Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Street Fighter Alpha: Warrior's Dreams, and Street Fighter III: New Generation all sucked. Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 2/3, and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike were the good ones.
It was always expected that the first revision would have growing pains. Now we don't have to pay full price for the polished and improved version. That's way better than the old model.
This is a woefully bad take. The best fighting games got to where they are after a lot of iteration and refinement. The final version of Skullgirls is my favorite game of all time, but 1.0 was straight up broken.
Since we're specifically talking about fighting games, that very much wasn't true. This is the genre that brought you Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Street Fighter II': Champion Edition, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, and Super Street Fighter II Turbo. And the final product is much better off for it - World Warrior may have been revolutionary for its time but the game also had a lot of serious problems that have aged like mud.
One and done makes sense for single-player titles. But for a competitive multiplayer scene to last, developers can't just hope that 1.0 is perfect on the first try - it never is. Just putting the game out in the hands of players who will break it to pieces is the best way to get data on what needs to be tweaked and refined for the next patch.
In fairness, spectacle has been a key part of the series' identity ever since Summons were trying to show off as many particle effects as the SNES could handle. And then FF7 was designed around being a tech showcase for everything the Playstation could do, it looks quaint today but at the time that was cutting-edge eye candy and it's how the game was marketed.
Nobody cares about Marvel movies anymore. Nobody cares about Star Wars anymore.
I want to agree with a lot of what you're saying, but this is very much not true. Regardless of whether you or I like the new stuff, those franchises are still making tons of money, and that does include younger generations.
The article mentions asking kids which is more popular, Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, and all the kids answered Pokemon. That's a franchise that's slightly younger than FF and DQ, but not by much, it's still much older than all those kids playing it. So the real question that needs to be unpacked here is: why are some franchises able to continue appealing to new audiences, while others get reduced to nostalgiabait for those that grew up on them?
Regardless of what you or I think of quality, the median consumer is consuming them. Star Wars is still making a hell of a lot of money, it has not faded from cultural relevance in the slightest.
Games that are intended to be long-term projects with big updates and expansions over time have to monetize those expansions somehow. Character DLC still feels like the most equitable way to do it, I'd rather periodically toss a few bucks at actual content than be milked for empty calorie gacha, battle passes, FOMO rotating shops, or whatever else actual live service games are doing these days to try and exploit whales.
I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding.
Honestly, what I miss most are the low budget straight-to-handheld spinoffs that used to flourish in that space. Handhelds especially felt like a space where developers weren't afraid to go wild with experiments, because development cycles were cheap and quick. But that attribute started to show cracks in the 3DS era, it was inevitable that this would no longer be sustainable when all of the budget had to go into bigger and bigger and bigger console games, while next generation handhelds also got more expensive to develop for too. There wasn't room for these quick and dirty side projects anymore.
Street Fighter II was $80, and then they asked you to buy the game again for each updated revision.
The real difference between then and now is that when games were on cartridges, every game was expensive. No exceptions. Now, the real reason why paying $70 for the latest AAA feels like a ripoff is because sitting right next to it is Balatro for $15 and Marvel Rivals for free.
As an outsider the reason i domt bother with these is you have to know every damn iframe and move flow timing perfectly to even know what the game is.
No you don't. There are very few moves I remember exact numbers for. I know my fastest button, I know what's unsafe on block, and that's really all that's needed. And it's something that can easily be learned by feel too.
Wikis exist as a reference point, but no one is expected to memorize them.
The article acknowledges the fact that the most fondly remembered singleplayer modes are the ones with unique twists... then proceeds to write off everyone asking to see more of that.
Singleplayer can never be a substitute for a human opponent. CPUs are just never going to play the way humans do, and they're never going to adequately prepare you for them.
But that's precisely why people loved the modes that didn't try to take it seriously and instead offered something unusual and different. Lean into things singleplayer can do well, instead of trying to chase after things it can't.
Fighting games in 2026 are floundering, with everything not called Street Fighter 6 relegated to the trash bin of history.
You lost me on the first sentence. Are we pretending Guilty Gear didn't just go from being an extremely niche IP to a household name last generation? While there are issues worth talking about, fighting games have been steadily growing year-over-year with no sign of slowing down.
Anime is a medium, not a genre. It's a medium that's very prone to Sturgeon's Law, but there's so much more out there than just the tropey stuff. No matter what your tastes are I guarantee you can find something you'll like somewhere.
But it's hard to really know for sure what you'll like without knowing more about your tastes. If I have to squint real hard to compare it to Cowboy Bebop, it does share some themes in having a ragtag group of misfits that slowly becomes a found family, and it starts off lighthearted before slowly transitioning into more serious character-driven drama.
I still love Puyo Puyo, but I don't love Sega's decision to rehash the same bad crossover again and again and again. It's been nearly a decade since the last main series game and I'm convinced we're never getting another. And queue times have gotten rather sad whenever I relapse and try to play Champions ranked again, Sega's mismanagement has hurt the playerbase pretty badly.
I'm less concerned about the iPad than I am about the world they're growing up into. The wealth gap keeps getting wider, the job market has made many fields into a catch 22 where you can't get experience if you don't have experience, the planet is buring, and fascism is happening.
People born in different eras will lead very different lives. Where we choose to draw the line in order to give names to these generations is arbitrary, but the underlying concept is meaningful and we kind of have to just pick somewhere to draw those lines in order to be able to talk about it.
I think this is something that should be handled at the platform level, Steam and consoles should just let you freely roll back to any version of the game. Keep every revision archived for preservation's sake.