Does super smash bros. count as a 3-d fighter in your book? Collectively, me and my playgroup of 6 friends have clocked at least 200 hours on it. It certainly gets my vote, despite that it might not be in the same vein as virtua fighter. Anyway, guilty gear isuka might grab my heart away from it, with its team and four player free for all battles. I suppose we may just need to see what the future heralds.

A sidenote to yesterday's topic, Suikoden is pronounced see-koh-den, as near as I can tell. The u after s in Japanese is often silent, and it is probably the case here too. They couldn't just write sikoden either, because there is no hiragana for 'si', only 'shi.'

3D fighters all the way. There's so much more tactical depth when you have the ability to sidestep and when games differentiate from your left and right hands and feet. What's more, I dare you and your pirate ass to name a 2D sprite-based fighting game with throw and grip moves that look better and/or more painful than 3D fighter of the same generation. Comparing 2D fighter throws with 3D fighter throws is like comparing getting oral pleasure from a hot woman whom you love and cherish (who also loves and cherishes you) and getting a mouthful of Africanized Honeybees from a complete stranger who gets off on that kind of thing.

And plus, in all the Soul Edge/Character games, you get to recreate the epic battle of Pirates vs. Ninjas by allowing the Dread Captain Cervantes whip that latex-covered Ninja b*tch Taki! And if you think about all those kick-ass throws you can do with Cervantes and his buck-swashling blades (and even Taki has some moves, to her credit), 3D fighters rule you. And your parents. And Bangladesh. And the act of stabbing.

Well I'm just biased against 2D fighters because I get borderline-carpal-tunnel whenever I even THINK about playing Guilty Gear XX. I like Millia. GG = Creativity.

Yup.

In the fighting genre, as in every other (and really as in EVERYTHING), there is never an absolute standard by which to measure games. Even when, say, many argued that Soul Caliber was the game to which all other 3D fighters should be compared - it wasn't. All that happens when you measure games by other games is that you get an extra level or removal, and extra level of opinion.

Since there is no standard, there can be no final blanket relative comparison - no better. Individuals obviously have preferences, and although few, if any, will argue in favor of The Ring and Shaq-Fu (both for SNES and both of which I have played, unhappily, within the last week), the general top-tier fighter population has sides: SNK fans, Capcom groupies, Tecmo harems and so on. While the group I run with often banters about which series or style is better, the most serious debate is rightfully over which installment in a line is the best for competitive play. These types of comparisons lend themselves more readily to argument, because the spirit of the series generally remains constant, leaving only more concrete variables like movesets and graphics up to debate.

I'm kind of getting off track.

Essentially, 2D and 3D fighters do not have the same spirit. If you were to say to me, divide up the spirits of fighting games into categories, this is what I'd do: I would go to a mom-and-pops fishing gear store and buy two identical tackleboxes. Into one box I would put the souls of 3D fighters, and into the other would go those of the 2D ones. The tackleboxes have the same subdivisions. Think about what that means.

Of course, if you were to ask me to do that, and I did, I would still have one game left over.

Project Justice. Rival Schools 3. Moero! Justice Gakuen.

The 3D 2D fighter. The 2D 3D fighter. Genius after being put through a GD-shaped cookie-cutter. Whatever you want to call it, this game proves that the two types of games are not so different as to be incomperable. Were they incomperable they would also be incompatible, and, obviously, they are not! For the uninitiated, Project Justice is a 3D fighter that plays like a 2D fighter, a 2D fighter in 3D. It is not my task to describe the feel of the gameplay here; just trust me. Ask your friends. If they're cool enough, they'll tell you the same.

So if they can be combined, they can most likely compared. I'm not sure how, yet. Hopefully, it will take several more games like Rival Schools 3 for us to find out.

Until then, the point is moot. Everyone knows what the best game is. Everyone knows the magic number for Ds. Everyone knows that Momo is the devil in disguise. What not everyone knows is that he's just going to have to sit back and enjoy them all while we wait to find out how we should be comparing them, and, if we find out, whether or not we should.

thatbox starts with t which ryhmes with p which stands for pool, right here in River City.