I think this is a tough topic to bring up because I believe most of you guys don't like fighting games, or any games that are "competitive" But Fighting games are more fun than Competitive RTSes, Online Shooters, and MMO PVPs combined imo, awesome to play and watching people play.

The best fighting games to me are 2D side scrollers like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct.

For me I like all 2D-Side Scrollers but my favorite is Mortal Kombat which the its 2011 game is the best.

This :D

When you say side-scrolling fighting game, I think of something like Knights of the Round or Streets of Rage which I think are pretty good.

My favorite is Killer Instinct for 2D fighting games

Hehe yeah, nothing like throwing your best friend down a pit full off spikes. My favorite is MK2, I have that Mortal Kombat Kollection thing on steam but I dont have anyone to play it with :(

If you count beat'em ups, then it would be River City Ransom EX. :)

Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu (NES)
Not really a sidescroller, more of an arena based fighting game, but it is so freaking awesome. So many moves that you can achieve, it even has different fighting classes and different stats for each character, then you can make your own character based on your date of birth, name and bloodtype. It really bugs me that this game is not usually listed in top best NES games.

Have you ever played 4? There are the spikes, then there is a fan, then there is the screen itself which may actually technically make it 3D rather than 2D but I'm not picky.

I thought the new Mortal Kombat was fun but I absolutely hated the preceding 3D games. I guess those don't count as side-scrolling, though, huh?

My favorite fighter is BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger hands-down, as soon as I started playing that game I could feel just how finely tuned those games were. After that it would probably go Tekken 6 even though it's technically a 3D fighter, Marvel vs, Capcom 2 haven't played 3, and I like King of Fighters 2002 as well.

Playing the old Mortal Kombat games after all that showed me just how awful those games stacked up as fighting games. The newest one was definitely an improvement but if I'm looking for a great fighting game I usually look elsewhere.

Side note, and not to hog the thread, if you are inclined to play ROMS ( I know this is a sticky subject) MAME puts out a really nice MK 1 that is an ARCADE rom NOT a Sega rom. The difference? It looks way better and sounds WAY WAY better.

Yeah I would suggest most of these games from the SNES/Genesis era to be played with MAME since most of the console games back in the day were inferior ports of arcade games.

I like Mortal Kombat games a lot but MK 1 is a really awful, censored port with terrible sound.

If it's the 3d one where you can use weapons and stuff yeah I played it, only I remember being really confused because of the weapons and the 3d.

Out of the few that I've played.. I'd have to pick One Must Fall 2097 or Super Smash Bros. :p

I was amused by Terrordrome especially before they started removing characters for copyright reasons.

I.. Don't think Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, etc are side scrollers? Things like Karateka, R-Type etc are "side Scrollers". Things like Final Fight, Golden axe are also side scrollers, but they have that horrid "2.5D" thing that made them all terrible to play. Games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter I believe are usually considered Tournament Fighters, or just "fighting games".

i don't like Tournament Fighters. The last one I played that I actually enjoyed for the game in the game was International Karate plus. Me and my mates would play that one for days on end Just to see how far we could get. If there really was an end to it, we must have sucked too hard to ever reach it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDko0WVJUr0

in the 3d era, I also have all the Dead or Alive games except the most recent. I don't have those because I like tournament Fighters. I have them for other reasons. Also, the Beach Volleyball games are far and away my favorite of the bunch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUY7PzkRkGs

Oh I just remembered there is one from the simple series called "the Cat Fight" which is bloody hilarious! I went through a stage for a few months where if it was from the simple series I pretty much just bought it due to imo them almost always turning out to be the gaming equivalent of"Plan 9 from outer space" is for movies. I just love crap, and those simple series games were some of the crappiest, but in the most wonderfully entertaining way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afLJf7z0RVc

There was another one I bought once because it has Link from the Zelda games in it. I can't remember what it was called and I think I only played it in total for less than an hour, which was long enough to play Links "story" a few times. Only bought it because it was in a dump bin for a few bucks, and I like Link.