Mortal Kombat vs Street Fighter: Which Is the Ultimate Fighting Game?

The world of fighting video games has offered us a lot of interesting titles, but only several of them have turned into multi-game franchises that we loved playing for generations and generations. Two of them are most certainly the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter franchises. But which is better between the two?

Mortal Kombat is the better franchise overall. Modern times require a modern take on the genre, and this is where Mortal Kombat not only delivered but also helped evolve fighting video games, adding more in terms of character development, plot, and world-building, which is why it is the better franchise.

The rest of this article is going to be divided into three sections. The first two sections are going to bring you an overview of the two series, respectively, so you know all the necessary information. Finally, we’re going to bring you a detailed analysis of the two shows to determine which one is the better of the two iterations.

Mortal Kombat: An Overview

Mortal Kombat is a fighting video game series. The series is intended to compete with Capcom’s Street Fighter franchise. The first game was sold in 1992 on arcade machines, a year after the release of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior.

It is followed by fourteen games (eleven main games and three spin-offs), the latest of which, Mortal Kombat 11, is released in 2019. The series is characterized by realistic graphics and brutal and bloody violence, the hallmark of which are the Fatalities, bloody sequences of torture of the defeated opponent.

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Street Fighter: An Overview

Street Fighter is a 1-on-1 fighting video game series developed by Capcom, the first game of which was released in 1987. The series is one of the most popular of its kind, claiming a large community of players, and whose number of games sold exceeds sixty million copies, in particular thanks to its flagship title Street Fighter II, which sold several million ‘copies and was released on an impressive number of platforms.

Mortal Kombat vs Street Fighter: Which Is the Ultimate Fighting Game?

Now that we’ve given you all the necessary information, we can also give our final verdict. For us, the decision wasn’t all that difficult, as one show has several clear advantages when compared to the other.

Number of Games

In the world of video games, where the commercial success of a game is quite important in terms of sequels and franchise development, the number of games in a series is certainly indicative of the games’ success.

This is why we have decided to give you a list of all the games in both franchises, so that we can determine the more successful one in this category, starting with Mortal Kombat:

And now for Street Fighter:

As you can see, as of 2019, there are 23 Mortal Kombat games, and a total of seven Street Fighter games (excluding the crossovers). This means that the points go to Mortal Kombat.

Ratings

The ratings of video games, although important, aren’t usually that big of a deal like movie reviews and ratings. In this section, we are going to give you the known ratings of the games by GameRankings and Metacritic. We’ll start with Mortal Kombat:

And these are the ratings for Street Fighter:

Street Fighter has, for the most part, received good reviews and we think that, despite the little information we have about the franchise, we can give this point to Street Fighter, seeing how the games have consistently received the highest scores.

Sales and Revenue

For Mortal Kombat, Ed Boon has confirmed a 26 million games sold in 2007. The figure rose to 35 million sales for the franchise in April 2015, after the release of Mortal Kombat X.

The most popular game is Mortal Kombat II, which beats all records in the video game industry during the week of its release, and which is the first game in history to sell more copies than the films of the time sold admissions. Franchising generated more than $ 4 billion in sales by the end of the 1990s, and $ 5 billion in June 2000.

With all the games combined, the Street Fighter series is one of the most popular fighting game series of all time with more than 27 million copies sold in 2009. Street Fighter II accounts for 6.3 million units sold to him alone, comes next Super Street Fighter II Turbo with 4.1 million copies sold, Street Fighter IV has 2.5 million copies, the latter is placed 8th best selling Capcom in an individual title ranking.

Based on the number of copies sold, we have to give this point to Mortal Kombat.

Impact

The cultural impact of these two games is somewhat difficult to compare, as they were played in different periods. Street Fighter is, despite some newer iterations, a classic, and its peak popularity was achieved during its early releases; new players, even those who like fighting games, don’t really play Street Fighter, not anymore.

On the other hand, Mortal Kombat is a modern classic that has influenced the genre and millions of players around the world. It also became a successful multimedia franchise, with several movies and animated works, among others, developed and created over the years. Mortal Kombat is the Street Fighter of the modern generation, but with a more lasting impact on modern games.

This is why this point goes to Mortal Kombat.

• RELATED: Mortal Kombat vs Tekken: Which Is the Ultimate Fighting Game?

Verdict

And there you have it – it is not absolutely clear that Mortal Kombat is the better franchise. Sure, Street Fighter does have historical importance and it has helped us along the way to getting Mortal Kombat, but the latter franchise has evolved the whole genre so much that it is undoubtedly better when compared to the classic.