The Best Fighting Games for the Xbox and Xbox 360 Consoles

The fighting game genre has been around since the earliest days of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Mike Tyson's punchout. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter brought it into the limelight in arcades and then to our homes on the SNES and Sega Genesis. The genre has evolved over time and yet still there sits a substantial percentage of us that find the greatest joy in the simple 2D fighters of days' past. Whatever your favorites, the fighting genre is a classic and long standing tradition among gamers that brings them together to swear, drink, and break things in frustration because "he's being cheap!"

The Xbox was marketed to a certain audience and in doing so was expected to have certain kinds of games, the fighting genre prominent among them. For a first time around, Microsoft did pretty well for itself, landing the Dead or Alive franchise through its technical superiority and other classics like Capcom vs SNK 2, with online features enabled. The Xbox live addition to many of these games took them to new places that fighting games had never seen; you can fight against people across the globe.

Dead or Alive Series
The Dead or Alive series first debuted on the Playstation console, a 3D fighter with an emphasis on its female lead characters'....abilities. It met with favorable reviews, but it was the sequel Dead or Alive 2 released for the Dreamcast that truly demonstrated the ability of the Tecmo team. The series was thereafter known as one in which graphical output and quality were the most important factors, Tecmo only releasing their trademark 3D fighter for the most powerful machine on the market, which in the case of Dead or Alive 3 and 4 were the Xbox and Xbox 360. As launch titles for both platforms, each game pushed the limits of graphical output, crafting some of the most amazing looking fight scenes in video gaming. And with the inclusion of Xbox Live play in Dead or Alive 4 and the remakes of Dead or Alive 1 and 2, the series has a solid home on Microsoft's powerhouse.