Top 5 Strangest Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat Clones

After games like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat came and revolutionized the fighting game genre, video game publishers around the world saw one thing: money. In an attempt to jump onto the cash-filled bandwagon, just about every video game developer made a fighting game. Some were great. Some of the industry's most popular fighting games were created even as clones. Unfortunately, most of these were horrible, and some of them were just downright weird.

In a genre filled with cheap imitators and horrible controls, it was difficult to narrow down the top strangest fighting games to just five. But after hours of debate and decades of painful memories of these games, somehow, we made it. The following are the top five strangest Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat clones.

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5. 3D Ballz: The Battle of the Balls (Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Super NES, 3DO, 1994)

The transition into three dimensional gaming wasn't a very pretty one for some game development companies, and 3D Ballz is the perfect example to prove it. The only thing more comically bad than the game's title are the graphics. I mean, seriously, the game looks like a bunch of 3D balls stacked on top of one another, engaged in combat.

As you can guess, the game didn't sell all too well. However, that can be blamed on the poor marketing that was given to the game. One ad even had a Christmas tree made up of balls that are similar to the ones in the game, which read: “Tell your mom you want Ballz for Christmas.” Now that's awkward.

4. Kasumi Ninja (Atari Jaguar, 1994)

If you wanted a shameless rip off of Mortal Kombat, look no further. Kasumi Ninja for the Jaguar had everything MK had: Digitaized actors that play fighters, blood, violence, and lots and lots of Ninjas.

However, the greatest thing that came out of Kasumi Ninja is the “kilt guy,” Angus MacGreggor. The character is stylishly violent. One of his moves involves him rapidly punching his opponent's head, decapitating him with a kick, and headbutting his head while it's airborne. However, the most impressive move of his involves him shooting a fireball from beneath his kilt. That's right. He can perform a crotch fireball, making Ken and Ryu's Hadouken look lame in comparison.

3. Strip Fighter II (Turbo Grafix 16)

What is Strip Fighter II? Imagine Street Fighter II, but instead of playable warriors from varied backgrounds and cultures, you have half-naked women from varied backgrounds and cultures. Unlike most fighting games that involve fighters competing for the glory of victory, these warriors fight in order to collect naked pictures of your defeated opponent.

2. Way of the Warrior (3DO, 1995)

Before they made masterpiece video games such as the Uncharted series, developer Naughty Dog (who at the time was just made up of studio heads Jason Rubin and Andrew Gavin) developed Way of the Warrior using whatever little they could afford.

Friends played the roles of the fighters, costumes were made with whatever they could find, and all the character footage was filmed in Rubin's apartment. It's amazing to see that Naughty Dog has gone such a long way, and is now one of the greatest modern-day game development studios. It's also funny that Way of the Warrior is nowhere to be seen on Naughty Dog's official site.

1. Tattoo Assassins (unreleased, 1994)


Tattoo Assassins is the now-defunct Data East's answer to Mortal Kombat.
Spearheaded by Bob Gale (who you may know as the screenwriter for Back
to the Future) and partner Joe Kaminkow. In order to topple Mortal
Kombat off of its throne, Tattoo Assassins tired to 1-up its competition
in any way conceivable. Heck, the title screen for the game claimed
that it had over 2,196 fatalities. And believe me, some of these
fatalities are ridiculous. Heck, ridiculous is an understatement
here. For example, you can morph your enemies into geishas or cats, drop
a Delorean on top of your opponent's head, burn your opponent with a
stream of fire coming from your ass, nudalities, and even shit out
plates of roasted turkey that'll knock out your opponent. Yeah,
seriously.

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Check out other video game posts by Peter Mai here: 

• Ten Things You Didn't Know About Super Mario Bros.
• Ten Signs You're An Aging Gamer
• “Sorry, I'm Dead”: 30 Most Memorable Video Game Quotes
• Vaporware: 5 Video Games That Should Be Released By Now
• Five Video Games to Convince Non-Gamers They Can Play Video Games
• Ten Unique Ways to Perform the 'Legend of Zelda' Soundtrack