| S.T.A.G.E. said: Final Fight is classified as a 2D beat em up or side scrolling brawler. SSMB is a competitive brawler. It cannot take credit in revitalizing the fighting genre. |
A "competitive brawler" *is* a fighting game. The genres are inherently linked, with some pretty direct crossover back and forth.
Smash Bros. may not be a traditional fighter, it definitely doesn't fall into the SF or VF molds (which the rest of the genre mainly take after) but it's still closer to those games than anything else. Same for Powerstone. Same for Virtual On.
Ad no, Smash Bros. can't take credit for revitalizing the lagging fighting genre... mainly because the genre at large hasn't been revitalized. Street Fighter has, but everything else (Tekken, Soulcalibur, KOF, VF, Samurai Showdown, etc, etc) has pretty much nosedived this gen. Blazblue successfully established itself off Guilty Gear's corpse, Smash Brawl was huge as usual, and that's about it.
