The 10 Weirdest Fighting Games of All Time
Right now the gaming world is abuzz about the beta for Street Fighter 6, Capcom’s latest entry in the franchise that basically invented the fighting game. But also releasing in October is Them Fightin’ Herds, a one-on-one combat game starring…ponies (and other hooved animals). The fighting game genre has grown from the staid competitions of Karate Champ to something much more diverse—and way weirder. Here are 10 of the most bizarre fighting games ever released.
Fighting games take inspiration from all kinds of sources—kung fu movies, mythology, real boxers, and more—but this is the only one we know of based on a 19th-century French novel. Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables makes the jump to the screen in Arm Joe, a 1998 Windows fighting game from Japanese developer Takase. Jean Valjean, Inspector Javert, Cosette—your favorite characters are all here, along with a few odd extras (including “Robo-Valjean”). The developer took five years to make this thing, so it’s not just a joke—Arm Joe is a robust and competitive game with combos, super attacks, and more.
When you’re controlling a fighting game, you typically have a pretty intuitive handle on how your avatar will jump, kick, and otherwise move about the screen. But what if you were driving a crab instead of a karate master? That’s the premise of the 3D fighting game Fight Crab, where you choose a crustacean from a cast of 23 different crabs (and lobsters) and square off against an opponent. The physics-based action makes skirmishes a chaotic mess, especially if you manage to secure a weapon in one of your claws.
One of the most frequent criticisms made of fighting games is that their control schemes are too complex, requiring players to memorize joystick motions and button
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