Versus: Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat - Which fighter reigns supreme?

didnt watch the video but MK has pretty much always been the very definition of style over substance (only recently have they tried to change that)

SF2 and Older MK games at the arcades was such a great rivalry in the states lol. Both games were great for those with different preferences

Honestly I can't compare the 2. I love them both and for completely different reasons too. They're both great imo.

I gotta go with SF. It's the classic among classics. But I can't deny how awesome MK is either.

I'd say both. But I'm more concerned about the fact of an upcoming war between Capcom fanboys and MK fanboys starting over here... >.<

I would love to say SF just takes the cake. However they've really been lacking lately in terms of content and it leaves me kind of burned. This last MK has really redeemed itself in my eyes.

Street Fighter. It's the grand daddy of them all.Without it's success MK would not exist.Street Fighter games are all quality games (minus the SFxT hiccup). MK just recently put out something worth while again after so many years of failed 3D fighter attempts.

sf FTW...Mortal kombat was good back in trilogy and mk 4 they should hv stick to that path with the new mk9 graphics.now its pure gabage + its too bloody...st4 10.000 strong

mortal combat in terms of gameplay has absolutely nothing on any sf game, are you kidding me?

its a game of pure gimmicks... thats for casuals.. sf is classic and started the fg scene when it was made and revived it with sf4... headline evo every year, and isn't a sidegame like mk is...

nobody cares about mk outside of america just so everyone knows... its not appealing to anyone but kids who like gore and gimmicks.. japan knows when a game is crap and so does europeans..

can't really compare the 2, mk is not in its league at all...

STREE FIGHTUHHHH!!

As if there was any doubt......3D Ballz.

I grew up with MK. Games, movies, Halloween costumes, and that classic GET OVER HERE! I like Street Fighter but MK is one of the reasons for the ESRB. MK is the rock star of gaming.

Might be a bit biased, but there's not much of a comparison when it comes to gameplay. The gore was cool when I was a kid at the arcades, but it's hardly enough to keep my interest these days.

Nether's devotion to the Story mode and development of the mythology of the series should be commended, but gameplay will remain king at the end of the day.

If we're talking games, then SF all day. If we're talking them actually fighting each other...Idk. I do know that Akuma and Oni would body the entire mk cast FRAY.

Street Fighter hands down. MK's fighting is far too stiff for my liking.

KILLER INSTINCTS!!! Oh yeah and SF

@16
I just bought KI for my SNES. Black cartridge and all.

old mk was a simply so popular because of the gore and theme in a time where video games for adults were incredible rare. in particular the teens loved it.

now that mk lost that factor pretty much, the blandness of the mechanisms behind the game are showing. MK is cool, but can't be taken seriously imo. I do think that MK: Armageddon had the best fighting single player mode ever tho. the open world was so enjoyable to play through. I dunno why fighter don't do that more often. Like an RPG in every shape and form, but for battles.

SF was superior in every way in terms of playstyle.

In terms of character designs, MK wins no doubt. In terms of fighting mechanic, it depends on what part of MK do you compare to what part of SF. LOL at people talking sh*t about 3d MKs, those were the best MKs. MK9 was such a disappointment to me, the game felt again like those crappy arcade versions only with more gore, stupid re-designs of characters, and idiotic animations.

#9 said it well.

MK = united states , SF = international , without SF success and putting the fighting genre in the scene MK would not exist heck even other popular fighting games , yes MK put up the gore controversy and thus making ESRB but does it mean anything on how good the game is , throughout the years of playing video games i found MK to be dull, stiff, lame, except from the gore shenanigans , the only time i saw MK shine was with UMK3 and its latest installment , and if we are talking about community fanbase and tourny wise... MK is way out of league with SF , i still enjoy and have fun with the latest MK but in the end... if we gonna compare it against SF overall... its like heaven and earth, all to say (SF > MK) nuff' said!

None of the 3D MK games were all that. Ok for their time but cannot compare to SF's 3D.

mk sux. its always sucked.

Mortal Kombat kicks the ass of Street Fighter in terms of Story, Content, Characters and most important in bringing a game with more easy and adaptable mechanics that ANYONE, either a pro or a casual can get into an enjoy.

Steret Fighter maybe the ichonical fighting game that started it all but over the years it focused on a more complext and complicated game mechanics which is focused only to please the so called "pros" and "hradcore gamers", leaving casual gamers (or at leats the people who still play videogames for the only sake of fun and forgeting about life issues for a while) totally out of the franchside, not to mention tat Street Fighter totally dropped its story to a pit of sillyness and every game brings even less and less content to the players who enjoy playin' solo or who are not into competitive pvp gameplay.

There fore, MK totally wins this, it may not be loved outside its territory, but to be honets I don't care about what other people at the other side of the world thinks, I the title it's good for me, then for me it's a masterpiece.

Heres my OPINION on these 2 games.

STREET FIGHTER
-Better gameplay (More fluid, faster paced, no stupid block button)
-Better animations
-Better sound and music
-More beginner friendly (some may disagree but I think it's a lot easier to learn than MK)
-Better online modes

MORTAL KOMBAT
-Better storylines
-Better character design
-Better solo, offline options
-FATALITIES

The most important factor is the gameplay itself and Street Fighter wins this over MK. Overall, Street Fighter is the superior fighter.
Again, this is all just my opinion so dont start hatin on me.

yeah street fighter has generic characters, like 10 ninjas, and 10 ninja robots and 4 girls with exactly the same proportions, from wich 2 have exacctly the same costume and hair color.

And i really dont see what people like about MK's story, sure, its prbably the best story in any fighting game, but thats really not saying much.

Lol at #26, it's not like SF doesn't have Ryu/Ken/Akuma/Evil Ryu/Dan/Sean/ insert an "original" character with different hair and gi color. And you are talking like about what, MK 3 characters ? In later MKs they are all different, even in the 9 part, though their re-design sucks in reboot. In terms of character design SF is not even close to MK. That was the point.
#25, actually MK was always a noob friendly game. SF is much more complicated. Not saying there are no noobs in SF, but MK doesn't have any diagonal, charge, 360 and other weird motions. The "hardest" motion you'll ever see will probably involve 3 motions, max 4 ( Kano's cannonball in MK9).

@27
Yeah you're right about easier notations but overall I still find street fighter easier to learn due to its fluidness and it seems more responsive than MK. Sometimes the moves dont seem to come out for me.
This is just me though, it's probably different for everyone.

@27: I've always felt that special inputs in MK are extremely unintuitive and difficult to remember, imo it doesn't really matter that they're easier to perform when you can't remember them in the first place.

@31
One game being vastly better than another "shouldn't matter now"?

I choose Shoryuken rather than Finish him.
Seriously, when I was a kid, things that had made me interest with MK was only fatality and its gore.

Style = MK ( Although a matter a preference , the majority of people will go for realism and gore , mainstream-wise )
Substance = SF ( although some people just want to play games for fun I guess ... which might make MK the game for them )

#27 Yes but what is the difference between smoke, Reptile, Noob Saibot, Scorpion and Sub Zero? They are all angry Ninjas. If you watch the game, they have different moves and different colors, thats it. The shotos are very different in design and personality but have the same moves. And the rest of Mk all fit right into that american action cliche, Street Fighter characters are much more unique. Mortal Kombats illusion of good character design is simply because mortal kombats characters are all the same type, angry brutal beefcakes... and the same women with different clothes and haircolors.

I love both franchises equally so it really doesn't matter to me

@35
MK characters only looked the same back in the day, all the characters are different now and unique in appearance. The same can be said about street fighter with ken,ryu,dan,akuma,sean. The only difference is the colour and the hair. Both games now have changed each character for there own individual appearance and not just palette swaps. I gotta say though, MK's characters have a lot more detail and interesting character designs than the bland boring man in a karate outfit or the stereotypical schoolgirl outfit in street fighter.

Blood and gore may have been a gimmick. But we were all lovingly sucked in. Back in the day characters looked and played the same on MK's side. This is something Capcom does NOW (joke).

Street Fighter hands down. MK will forever be about fluff over gameplay. MK was never fun to me, with clunky controls and stiff animations how could it be? Lol.

Back then, Killer Instinct was where it was at for this style of game and it's too bad the series died off. I would have love to see how that mashfest series would have progressed. For all we know it could have ended up being a hype series like MvC. But nope, we got a dying game like MK9 instead.

for me, it's SF all the way.
1. mk's characters animation are very generic. I haven't played the latest version of mk. this is all based on the previous ones. For example, almost every mk character's standing punches looks the same. throws are very generic. even their walks look and feel the same.
2. game play =sf all the way(except sf3, THis part is purely my opinion, many ppl think sf3 is the best, but for me, it's the worse, again it's my opinion.)
3. block button, run button,= no good
4. generic characters= both games have quite a number,so that cancels out, tie on this one.
5. controls =sf
6. blood and gore fatalities, I don't really care about, they get boring after watching them a few times.
7. popularity= sf global, mk only US
8. superior game over all =sf, mk doesn't even come close.
9. sf's story is alittle on the weak side, mk wins on this.
10. for me, sf character designs are way better than mk. mk's character designs are just dark. more appealing to US audience but not global i think.
11... king of fighting games is SF all the way, FOR me even KOF beats mk.

Couldn't we just enjoy both games for the type of fun each one brings?

Street Fighter hands down. Mortal Kombat is a kids game.

#43

lol the irony of that comment. Otherwise it would not be a big part for ESRB

MK9 was an awesome game but Street Fighter has always had smoother gameplay to me, so SF takes it.

@ 44

That's not what I mean. Fatalities,.... kids like sh*t like that. Street Fighter is hardcore, it's very difficult to master and has much better gameplay.
SF & KOF is for hardcore fighting game fans and MK is for casual gamers and kids.

SF hands down.It's fluid and fast-paced gameplay beats MK's fluff and clunky gameplay anyday.

MK was, is and will always be a poor man's Street fighter!

To compare MK and SF is pointless IMO, especially at this point. I've always been a SF player but i admit MK had a huge impact in the fighting game scene. Every point of view is valid for me, except when it comes to character design.

Street fighter brought some of the most memorable characters ever in video game history. You can easily say zangief or blanka and 80% of the gamers in the world would be like "ooh that hairy wrestler" or "ooh that green dude". And those aren't even main characters in the game. Try to say Raiden and people will be like "eeer...you mean that weirdo from metal gear solid 4?". And not only that, but street fighter involved nationalities and fighting styles for each character, which made every single one of them very unique and relate able. Mix that with cool stages and timeless theme songs and you have a game with ton of super famous characters. Hey lets have a guy with ice powers, how do we call him? subzero........really.

So many SF nerds in the comments......so sad.

@46:Street Fighter is "hardcore" only because developers from Capcom only seek to please the so called "pros", they admitted they had failed to deliver thier games to casuals, detail that MK did very well, so yeah, MK is mostly for casuals, who are like A 80% of general gamers, you know? The pople who still play game sonly for fun.

And to be fair, watch your comments, you can offend people, play nice kid.

@49: Dude, Scorpion is more popular world media than Ryu, and your comment with Raiden fails terribly, pretty much everyone know who are Raiden, Scorpion and Sub-Zero, bring solid points, don't try to make-up stuff only to "back up" your arguments. Raiden from Metal Gear? Please, when people hear Metal Gear they immediatly think on Solid Snake and... that's it.

Q50 I know man, I don't know why SF fanboys hate MK so much, they never compare SF with game slike Soul Calibur, Dead or ALive or Baze Blue, it's always Mortal Kombat they have to compare with and prove at all cost that SF is far "superior", someone should tell them that they can actually play and enjoy both games. XD

Watch both of these games in slow motion and see which one has the stiffer animations lol.
SF is japanese and Americans Love anime, so street fighter is gonna have universal appeal. If MK was japanese and street fighter was american it'd be a diff story. Most people only remember Ryu (and call him (RAIYUU) Ken and blanka and guile. All of the characters who had memorable special move sfx
Hadoooooooooooouken, most people say Hayooouget
Shooooooooooooryuken, most people say AAAAAAAAYOUGET
Tatsukami Senpuuuuuukyaku, Most people don't remember how to say it at all
Sonic Boom, most people remember how fast the CPU pulled em off, Sonic boom Sonic Sonic Sonic Boom,
Ask most people about any other characters and they draw blanks except us people who are on srk and eventhubs, because we love fighting games.
Mk People Always remember Sub Zero and scorpion and Sonya and Liu Kang and Johnny Cage and Especially Raiden (BITING ON MY LEEEG, STOLE YO MAMA CAAAAAR) and all that jazz. Shang Tsung Shape Shifting and Shao Khan being broken as all get out, Baraka for his teeth, Mileena for her sexy body but baraka mouth, Kitana with those annoying fans, Jade and Smoke popping out of the trees in the forest, Goro, and Kintaro and Kung Lao, Most casual players Remember all of these characters from their childhood more so than street fighter. But Street fighter is just overall a deeper and more sophisticated game than MK but it's not as memorable I can tell you that much. Lets be realistic here.

@52 Sorry but I can't take your comment seriously with all that AAAAAAAAA stuff going on.

@50 I hear you man.

@51:

"Dude, Scorpion is more popular world media than Ryu"

Stopped reading.

@51
Nah, I'd say that Ryu is probably the most iconic video game fighting character. Scorpion would be close but definitely not more popular than Ryu.

@51
i knew ryu before scorpion...

people compare sf and mk because mk was a response to capcom's sf.

i started playing fighting games because of mk, then at one point i asked myself "why do people like sf? it doesn't have fun stuff like mk has fatalities." so i searched youtube for "best street fighter fight". the first result was "justin wong vs. daigo umehara". i watched it and... you get the idea: now i KNOW that SF > MK. the question is "which is better?", not "which appeals more to casuals?".

@52
for me and my friends, tatsumaki senpu-kyaku is "hambantambokak"

im more of a mortal kombat fan but i cant really compare them .they are both good in their own sense.hm wonder if there will be a mortal kombat vs street fighter since both boon and ono said they are interested in making such a game.though if it is made in the future i hope it has an M rating and nothing like mk vs dc.