When we talk about fighting games , Street Fighter is most likely the first title that comes to mind . It’s totally normal because, in the end, it’s probably the most popular within that genre, but you might be surprised to find out that it’s not the best seller of all time.
A report that Tweak Town has published, using data from developers, publishers and also information from Wikipedia , leaves us with an interesting list of the 8 best-selling fighting games in history, and the surprise we have received has been huge, because we did not expect Mortal Kombat to occupy the first position.
The attached graph is very clear, Mortal Kombat has accumulated a total of 80 million copies sold, a fact that has been confirmed by NetherRealm itself. It is closely followed by the Super Smash Bros. franchise with 72.39 million units sold, and the Tekken saga closes the top three with 54 million copies sold.
Street Fighter occupies the fourth place with 49 million units , and far from this are Soul Calibur with 17 million units, Dead or Alive with 11.7 million copies and Marvel vs. Capcom with 10 million units sold. I repeat, in case you have any doubts, that these data refer to the total sales of each franchise.
The data has been collected with special care, and has a reliable basis , but we must take into account that it may be partially incomplete or slightly out of date , and therefore it is possible that it is not totally accurate. All in all, taking into account the distance between the four best-selling franchises and the other four in this top eight, it is clear that they are still valid to get an idea of which are the most popular in terms of sales.
The truth is that NetherRealm has done a very good job with the Mortal Kombat franchise, and has managed to maintain the interest of the general public around this saga. We can’t say the same for Virtua Fighter or Dead or Alive , whose popularity dropped quite a bit years ago, and the same was true for Soul Calibur.
In my case, of all the franchises in this top eight , my favorites are Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, although I must admit that I really enjoyed Soul Calibur on Dreamcast, and Soul Calibur II on the first Xbox. Going off the list, my favorites are Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters. And you, what are the fighting game franchises that you like the most?