As of right now, the list of Xbox 360 games that people want to be playable via the Xbox One's backwards compatibility boils down to a popularity contest. 'Letting the fans decide' is one of the easiest ways to make a gigantic corporation like Microsoft feel more personable, and thousands of gamers have jumped at the chance to vote on the .

But then there are the games sitting at the bottom of the colossal totem pole that is the Xbox 360's library, all of which are sitting at 115 or fewer votes at the time of this writing. According to the vote tallies, these are essentially the least-wanted games ever made for the Xbox 360 - or perhaps just the least-known. In fact, there is absolutely no way you've heard of all of the following games. And in some cases, that's a damn shame, because a few of these oddities aren't half bad, or are even legitimately great. The rest, well... at least 100 or so people in the world would be happy to see them make a backwards-compatible return.

Considering Yo-Ho Kablammo was universally panned and has what is perhaps the in existence, you have to wonder if its few votes didn't all come from just one person. The game itself looks like a 99-cent shovelware mobile game that took a wrong turn on its way to the iTunes storefront and ended up on Xbox. There it plagued unsuspecting consumers - who were seduced by the monkey on the cover and its axe-murderer-esque eyes - with a banal, ship-to-ship combat game that makes you want to throw yourself overboard.

When the best part about your football game is the halftime marching band minigame, you have a serious problem. Such is the fate of Black College Football Xperience: The Doug Williams Edition for Xbox 360. This is less of a football game and more of a train wreck happening in slow motion. As our own Richard Grisham noted in his review, "There are missteps galore, including magically teleporting footballs, brain-dead blockers and tacklers, even obvious mathematical errors in the stats. Sadly, BCFX simply isn’t anywhere near ready for the big time."

If you've never seen professional badminton, it's pretty amazing. It's sort of like watching professional ping pong, except the 'ball' - or rather, shuttlecock - is constantly 10-feet up in the air. Then you have two people down on the ground swinging their rackets around as though a swarm of angry bees just broke into the arena. It's hard to see how you could improve upon this already amazing sport, but Blazing Birds gives it the old college try by replacing the players with what appear to be robot eagle heads mounted on unicycles. This is a great idea to be sure, but ultimately wasn't enough to mask another mediocre sports game.

Before we dive into the rules of Wits Wagers, take a look at for the game. Why did Hidden Path make the characters look absolutely horrifying? Just look at those all-too-realistic heads on top of those cartoon bodies. And that one with the clown face, it's the stuff of nightmares. Wits Wagers is a trivia game in which every question can be answered with a number - for example, "How many feet wide is an NFL football field?" Players take an educated guess, and the one who's closest to the actual answer without going over <(i>Price is Right style) is awarded points. If you don't know the answer, you can bet on someone else's answer with the hopes of sharing in their windfall. Just make sure you don't bet on the clown.

Petanque is an extremely French-sounding name for an extremely French-sounding sport where you throw balls at other balls from really far away. To my uncultured, American sensibilities, it reminds me of horseshoes, except you want your horseshoe to land as close to the stake as possible without touching it. So it's a really passive-aggressive form of horseshoes. This may sound simple enough, but Obut Petanque 2 fills the screen with so many gauges, meters, and other graphs, you'd think you were flying a fighter jet instead of throwing metal balls at the ground.

If you've seen the 1997 horror flick Cube, then you already know how lethal these shapes can be. Death by Cube is filled with killer cubes that shuffle around on four legs and explode into giant puddles of blood when you shoot them - because video games. You control a tiny, laser-shooting android who can collect various power-ups to change between spread shot, homing shot, and other weapon types. But the most exciting weapon has to be the reflector shield, which soaks up enemy fire and returns it in a giant, glorious shotgun blast of bullets. Think Robotron: 2084, but the robots bleed all over the place.

Holy Hell, based on that title alone how was this NOT the most amazing game on the Xbox 360? Let's break this down: 'CellFactor' could mean anything, but 'Psychokinetic Wars' screams giant battlefields with wacky powers. And that's what this Unreal Tournament-inspired FPS was going for, complete with a female robot named Bishop who can throw objects with her mind. Oddly enough, this is the third game in the CellFactor series, the first two being glorified tech demos designed to showcase Ageia's physics processors.

Planets Under Attack brings all of the joys of planet-on-planet violence without the hours-long complexity of, say, Planetary Annihilation. In this real-time strategy game, you control a cluster of planets and construct swarms of ships to go forth and colonize other planets in your glorious name. Of course, the other players are trying to do the same thing, which means occasionally building giant, world-cracking death rays on your planets to keep others at bay. Giant lasers aside, each of the game's three races - humans, robots, and aliens - has its own unique abilities to fit your playstyle. And while this game almost certainly won't find a new home on Xbox One, you can check it out on Steam.

Everyone who voted for this game is a hero, because 2009's Tornado Outbreak was shuttled into obscurity as soon as it left the assembly line. You control Zephyr, a wind elemental who takes the form of a teeny, tiny baby tornado (seriously, it's like the size of a chicken). Growing in size means sucking up rocks, feathers, fences, trees, houses, and everything else in sight until you're a rampaging twister leveling entire city blocks. There's also a fully voiced and surprisingly fleshed out backstory establishing Zephyr, his wind warriors, and how he's actually on a quest to save the Earth (by knocking your house over).

This game's Wikipedia entry matter-of-factly states "Marlow Briggs, a smokejumper who wields ancient Mayan powers, must prevent an industrialist from becoming a primeval Mesoamerican deity and destroying the world." Whow! Hold on there, cowboy, that's a lot to unpack. Smokejumper? Mayan powers? Ancient Mesoamerican deity? Solid Snake on his best day couldn't puzzle this one out. Thankfully, Marlow Briggs is terested in being a fun, B-movie action game than, you know, making sense. The guy runs around wailing on people with a double-bladed scythe and sweet tribal tattoos. Who needs logic?

Blood Drive takes the opening to Dead Rising 2, switches out motorcycles for cars, and makes a surprisingly well-realized vehicular combat game out of it. Had this game been released circa 1999 for, say, the original PlayStation - featuring the hit single Dragula - developer Sidhe would've been king of the world (instead of moving on to Rugby League 3 on Wii). It mixes car-on-car violence with an endless horde of zombies shuffling around the arena, which supplies the blood part of the Blood Drive equation. Think Mad Max in the post-zombie apocalypse.

When you sit down to make a first-person shooter involving the President, the secret service, and terrorists, that's a responsibility. From Metal Gear Solid 2 to Metal Wolf Chaos, video games have a time-honored tradition of building fun and/or crazy experiences around the commander-in-chief. But Secret Service doesn't come close. Despite playing a secret service agent for the President - which, in video games, could potentially be the most exciting job ever - the most secret service-y thing you do is shoot people while wearing a suit. And that's not even fun, because this game plays like a bad Call of Duty knockoff.

If you never had the pleasure of owning one, Madballs are among the quintessential 'gross-out toys' that were all the rage in the '90s: spherical, freaky foam faces that really don't do much besides sit there and look weird. In a moment of bizarre serendipity, someone on the Madballs marketing team saw a perfect opportunity to incorporate the toyline into a sequel to Babo Violent 2, a freeware twin-stick shooter populated by globes with guns. Shockingly, Madballs: Babo Invasion isn't half bad for a budget arcade shoot-'em-up, especially in four-player co-op. And the XBLA version lets you do something that the Steam port never could: let you roll around as the disembodied, weapon-wielding head of your Xbox 360 Avatar.

In some parallel universe, .

When it comes to peculiar first-person shooters with outlandish character designs and off-the-wall aesthetics, Xotic is right up there with Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath and Zeno Clash. Your primary weapon resembles a gigantic fly's head, and each level evokes the feeling that you've just dropped acid at a black-light bowling alley. Rather than shooting up everything that moves, your primary objective is to score points by popping colored orbs with your icky bug-gun. You do eventually get to take potshots at some incredibly freakish enemies, including deranged cyborgs and metallic-skinned mutants. There's a lot more style here than substance, but Xotic's trippy take on the FPS archetype is certainly unique.

Virtual billiards is nothing new, and most people can appreciate the simple satisfaction of lining up a geometrical shot to sink a ball in a pocket. But Inferno Pool needed something to really set it apart - so it tossed out the smooth felt of a pool table for the grit and grime of industrial metal. For reasons unknown, you've decided to enjoy a game of eight-ball in the break room of the local foundry, which is just as dingy and rusted-over as you might imagine. The attempt at making Inferno Pool feel like regular billiards' older, edgier, street-smart cousin is rounded out by some generic techno and a ridiculous announcer with gravelly, Unreal Tournament-style callouts like "BANK SHOT!" or simply "INFERNO!" to pump you up for all the intense pool action.

If you're a fan of Japanese arcade obscurities - and really, who isn't - then you might've heard of Magical Beat, a competitive puzzle game that's like Tetris, Lumines, and Beatmania combined in one. By dropping colored blocks in time to the music, you can rain down trash blocks on your opponent while enjoying some incredibly dope beats. All that is to say: Magical Beat is amazing, and you should absolutely pick up the PS Vita port. Alternatively, you could seek out 0D Beat Drop, which is pretty much the exact same game with Avatars instead of pixelated caricatures. There's a reason these games are so similar: they're both made by Arc System Works, who you probably know as the maker of Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. In either case, you're going to have a good time - I guarantee it.

While we're on the ever-popular topic of Japanese rhythm games (see: previous slide), here's Beat'n Groovy, the Westernized version of Pop'n Music. If you've never had the pleasure of plunking some change into a colorful, cartoony Pop'n Music arcade cabinet, it's essentially the kid-friendly version of the rhythmic button-tapping from Konami's own Beatmania series. Problem is, those games are only available in Japan, and Beat'n Groovy is a poor stand-in for the genuine article. At a glance, the cutesy visuals and screen layout look the same, but upon closer inspection, you'll find all the ugliness of a Western artist trying to imitate the anime style and coming up short, landing somewhere in Bratz territory. Also, playing with a standard 360 pad just can't replicate the magic of Pop'n Music's nine-button, Fisher-Price-looking controller.

To round out this trifecta of forgotten Xbox 360 rhythm games, we've got Go! Go! Break Steady. This oddity adapts the smooth, physically demanding moves of breakdancing into a juxtaposition of simple rhythm gaming in the vein of Gitaroo Man (where inputs randomly fly in from off-screen towards a central node) and the colored-ball-blasting of Zuma. It's a strange mix, to be sure, but the gameplay's perfectly satisfactory, and it's hard not to appreciate the hand-drawn animations and funky art style. Plus, you can play as a breakdancing grandma wearing Bruce Lee's iconic yellow tracksuit.

But wait... HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER! It wouldn't be a proper XBLA music-game-hybrid fracas without this absolutely absurd rhythm-fighter. As you might've guessed from the title, all the action revolves around Snoop Dogg, legendary West Coast rapper and master of all things marijuana-related. It's likely that Snoop wasn't the only one who was high out of his mind when this game idea got greenlit, seeing as its blend of one-on-one brawls and a confusing knock-off of Elite Beat Agents is laughably abysmal. Oh, and at the time this game was released, its star was actually going by Snoop Lion, which kind of - that is, completely - diminishes the point of having 'Dogg' in the title.

Game developer James 'DJames' Goddard (not to be confused with the Olympic swimmer of the same name) has some legendary projects under his belt. The man's intimately familiar with fighting games, given how he currently works on the new Killer Instinct, had a hand in developing combat for a bunch of classic Capcom beat-'em-ups and modern Blizzard games, and even created Jamaican kickboxer Dee Jay while working as co-lead designer on Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting. But he's also got an Asteroids-style space shooter on his resume, courtesy of Shred Nebula. This is an incredibly colorful, hectic, 360-degree shmup that was sadly ignored, given that it was released just after Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2. If you're enjoying the recent indie standout Galak-Z, Shred Nebula might be right up your asteroid-blasting alley.

Not to be confused with the excellent bloodsucker RPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, this Masquerade may or may not actually exist. The Xbox Marketplace claims that this cel-shaded beat-'em-up was released on June 30th, 2015, yet there's next to zero information and not a millisecond of footage of the game to be found across the great plains of the Internet. From the look of what few screenshots are out there, you play as either a blue jester dude or a thief dudette (seemingly ripping off the equally obscure Pandemonium! on PS1), beating back the burly, make-up-caked legions of the evil Clown Army. This game has vaporware written all over it, yet Microsoft's site shows that 103 people have voted to give it life on Xbox One. And frankly, I find that hard to believe.

Here's another example of 'fans' 'voting' for a game they never even got to play. If you search for "sledge hammer xbox" on YouTube, you're going to find way, way too many videos of smarmy, privileged white kids smashing video game consoles. But you might also stumble across for this eccentric combat-racing game, which is chock-full of big rigs outfitted with missile launchers and rocket thrusters. Despite your instincts telling you otherwise, there's an inherent, kitschy charm to Sledge Hammer's grimy, low-budget visuals, goofy arsenal of arcade weaponry, grunge-tastic soundtrack, and the animated portrait of your burly driver in the upper left at all times. Alas, it was never released, and you can't exactly resurrect something on Xbox One when it never truly lived in the first place.

"Point-and-click detective adventure" is probably one of the last things you might think of when mulling over a name like Red Johnson's Chronicles. Unfortunate title aside, this is an intriguing (albeit mediocre) puzzle game starring Red, a ginger, trenchcoat-wearing private eye, in a modern noir take on Professor Layton. The game itself is rather clunky, but it's got a unique art style, what with the grandiose scale of the generic Metropolis city and frequent switches to a black-and-white aesthetic. If nothing else, it's one of the few games in existence to have a QTE for a high-five-to-fist-bump transition, which surely must count for something.

I know we've had some fun perusing these long-forgotten 360 games, but listen... . There is, in the world right now, a kart-racing console game that lets you race as everyone's favorite pop culture icon: Shrek. And if, for some unfathomable reason, you'd want to be anyone but Shrek, you've got plenty of DreamWorks-themed options, including the lively animals of Madagascar, the Seth Rogen-voiced blue blob B.O.B. from Monsters vs. Aliens, and the adorable Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon (who looks ridiculous when jammed into the driver's seat of a go-kart). The drab course layouts and generic power-ups can't hold a candle to anything in Mario Kart, mind you... but then again, Shrek.

What do Hollywood blockbusters have in common with the number 35 bus? Why, that's easy - you wait an absolute age for one, only for two to turn up at once. Take Armageddon for instance - aka the movie in which Steve Buscemi was exposed to the harsh vacuum of space... no wait, I'm now being told that he looked like that already. Sorry Steve… Simply put, Armageddon was all about asteroids crashing into the earth. So, a lot like that other movie from 1998 - Deep Impact. Coincidence? Guess again chums, because these two twins were far from unique. Consider 2014's Hercules vs The Legend of Hercules or Iron Eagle vs Top Gun. How about Olympus Has Fallen vs White House Down? The list goes on.

Indeed, cinematic history is packed tight with examples of oddly analogous movies. But what about gaming? Does the interactive medium boast its fair share of twinned features too? Well let's bloody well hope so - It's going to be an awfully short feature otherwise…

Criteria check - To avoid unnecessary confusion over release dates I'm only going to including US release dates.

Superheroes and sandbox games go together like Gwen Stacy and gravity. When a major player opts to drop one, you'd better believe it's going to be memorable. One part urban strife, six parts spandex - a winning combo by any estimation. Sadly, precious few of these titles actually exist - something to do with the inherent difficulty of coding up 'two' titles at once. A solid superhero game and a sprawling cityscape? One alone should be enough to drive most developers to drink.

Then there's Infamous and Prototype, two games that dared to make good on the promise of that premise. Both titles starred reluctant everymen receiving outrageous new abilities. From there players were encouraged to either go good or be bad - to fight crime or to fuel it. Though broadly similar, both efforts remained different enough to warrant a double dip. That is until they made the mistake of launching some two weeks apart. Perhaps it's only proper that these two superheroes duked it out directly, though it couldn't have done either game's sales a world of good.

I'll wager there were more groans than at a disappointing orgy the day these two titles first caught wind of one another. Just think of it - one second you're riding high, confident of a unique concept, the next you're reading up on some accidental doppelganger. I suppose it's faintly absurd that two titles based around psychic powers couldn't perceive the other one coming. So much for their vaunted foresight...

With scarcely 10 weeks between releases, Psi-Ops and Second Sight effectively trod on one another's toes. Both had attempted to inject some much-needed variety into the veritable scrum of 3rd person shooters. Sadly, their too-close proximity would quickly put paid to that - making both efforts seem now newly unoriginal.

Attempting to differentiate your game is a tough old ask even at the best of times. Fans and critics alike essentially crave a good frame of reference, be it a basic genre tag or a more specific comparison. "It's a bit like this", or "a whole lot of that" can express in mere seconds what might otherwise take aeons to describe. Now imagine that you're marketing a driving title. Real cars on realistic tracks, all bombing it around at ridiculous speeds. Fun yes, though not exactly varied.

Wisely, both Blur and Split/Second attempted to surmount these issues through the use of nifty gimmicks. The former went all RL Mario Kart - boasting 'car-based combat for grownups', while the latter prized raceway destruction on an enormous scale. Good start. Now if only they hadn't released one week apart and stolen each other's thunder. Every last forking bit of it.

Talk about a pair of heavy hitters. In the red corner, one hotly anticipated sequel to the biggest MMO going. And in the blue, all the might of the Warcraft franchise brought to bear on a burgeoning genre. If ever there was a time to stop WoW from achieving its world domination, then this surely was it. Killed in its infancy, like some sort of mad sci-fi plot to assassinate the Baby Hitler.

The biggest name in MMOs vs the genre's heir apparent. Going toe to toe, with barely two weeks between them. You might say that the stakes were even higher than a spectator at a Columbian forest fire, and you’d be right. Both games were good - damn good in fact, each one deserving its fair share of the MMO userbase. The fact that Warcraft was able to not only best its rival in 'single combat', but also claim the vast share of subscribers only adds to considerable legend.

Mooching off the movies is a well-established pattern amongst video game developers. Just look at the likes of Contra, a game that disguised its obvious nods/ bloody-minded plagiarism about as well as a knock-off Chinese Disneyland. Oftentimes, tracing the root of these trends is easy enough. After all, Contra appeared just 8 months later than Jim Cameron's Aliens. Coincidence? I think not.

Then there are games like Arabian Magic and Arabian Fight, a pair of solid arcade brawlers bearing eerily similar settings. So, where on earth did their developers get the idea to look to the Middle East - a largely untapped creative avenue, outside of the modern military shooter? Why, that's simple, you say - Disney's Aladdin appeared in the very same year! Except of course that Aladdin hit cinemas after both titles had already debuted. So, either someone smelled money in those early trailers, or three independent studios (including Disney) all decided 1992 was to be the year of Turkish trousers.

Not a release date this time, but a shared announcement phase. Both Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen opted to take their projects public within just seven weeks of one another. So far, so standard - or so you may think - but what exactly do these intrepid explorers have in common? Well for starters, both games have taken a long dormant genre, i.e. the spaceflight sim and recreated it in MMO form. On top of that, both titles were successfully kickstarted into being, all whilst handily exceeding their original funding targets.

Then there are the creative minds involved. Star Citizen's Chris Roberts created the much-loved Wing Commander series, while Elite's David Braben is practically responsible for the entire genre. So, to recap - that's two giants of the genre, two big-time comebacks and two parallel crowd funding campaigns all unveiled within two months of one another. Too sweet.

Much like the aforementioned Blur and Split/Second, both of these titles bet big on a flashy new gimmick. Call it 'car driving for the social networking age'. Sadly, neither title could quite outdistance the other, running so close together as to create a veritable car crash of confused gamers. In addition, both titles suffered from various network-related glitches, issues that would eventually contribute to a lukewarm critical appraisal.

Despite all this, both games would go on to sell some 2 million copies apiece, not bad at all, especially when you consider that Drive Club only appeared on the PlayStation 4 format.

Two major players both launching within a month of each other? Sounds like franchise suicide. After all, somebody's got to lose. "I know - you'll be Betamax and I'll be VHS. No no no, you be HD DVD and I'll be Blu Ray". At least, that's how you might expect events to unravel. In the case of Unreal Tournament vs. Quake III Arena, neither party saw fit to suffer such a mortal injury. Instead, both games would go on to receive a slew of successful sequels.

It's a bit like that one movie Twins, except in this instance both men grew up to be the Arnold Schwarzanegger variety. So, it's actually a lot like The 6th Day, in which Arnie grows himself a clone. No wait, it's might be more like Junior, wherein the Austrian Oak births himself an Arnie baby. Wait… what was I talking about? Oh right, madcap multiplayer shooters. I suppose it's rather ironic that of all the entries on this list, the genre with the most gun happy patrons should agree to live and let live. I guess this town really is big enough for the both of us.

Now, here's an entry you couldn’t have seen coming… I'll bet it really snuck up on you… You might even say that it quietly approached in the dead of night before violently opening your throat. No, wait - that last one doesn't work. But enough hilarity for one moment, let's get back to business. What is it exactly that makes these two titles - set some 500-odd years apart - so similar as to be counted as 'twin releases'?

Well, if we're talking broad strokes here, then plenty. Both Tenchu and Metal Gear Solid marked a brave new foray into the world of 3D stealth-em-ups. Sure, the latter title may have had a solid 2D pedigree behind it, but the genre itself had never really gained any mainstream attention. These are the games that helped change that, debuting within a mere two months of one another. Moreover, the equally important Thief series also launched at around this time, solidifying a whole new genre in the space of around 12 weeks. Not bad.

It's not every day that an uber violent homage to the 1980s appears. Well, unless that day just so happened to occur within the month of October, 2012. Released within two weeks of one another, Retro City Rampage and Hotline Miami might well have contended for the crown of most 'pixellated blood bath'. Instead Hotline met with enthusiastic reviews, whilst Rampage could only muster up a string of middling appraisals.

A more fitting scrap might've seen the two titles donning animal masks, nabbing a pair of DeLoreans and jousting it out on the sunset strip. A man can dream, cant he? *sigh*

Last generation saw a lot of excellent fighting games, from the genre-revitalizing Street Fighter 4 to the bone-crushing brutality of Mortal Kombat. But as the dust settles on those bygone bouts - and developers flock to current-generation hardware - I thought it was as good a time as any to look back and see what we can learn from the past 10 years of fighting.

I've pinpointed a few trends from the limited data we have available. This is by no means a scientifically sound analysis. All I've done is collect trophy completion data from the PS4 for 10 last-generation fighting games - , it should offer a glimpse into what could - and should - define the next generation of fighting games.

In a genre about eccentric characters coming together and punching each other, you'd think a coherent story would be the least of our concerns. And yet, narrative-based trophies have some of the . In Mortal Kombat, 40 percent of players made it halfway through the campaign. In Soulcalibur 5 and Dead or Alive 5, roughly 70 percent initiated story mode. And even in games without story mode - such as Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 - over half cleared arcade mode and saw an ending.

I've seen plenty of fourmgoers decry narrative-based modes as a waste of resources. But the data shows that these modes clearly resonate with the greater fighting game audience. I believe players - especially those don't play at a tournament level - appreciate the sense of progression and accomplishment that story modes (or arcade endings) provide. Fighting games take a lot of time and practice to reach proficiency, which can fly by if you have plenty of local, skilled competition. But for the rest of us, seeing how a story unfolds can be the carrot-on-a-stick needed to stay invested in learning our prefered characters.

Playing another human over the internet is for most fighting game players. In King of Fighters 13, only 21 percent of people bothered to play a ranked or player match. MvC3 didn't fare much better, with 38 percent of people participating in ANY online mode. Meanwhile, Street Fighter 4 lists only 17 percent of people as having won a single ranked match. If playing online against others is the end game of any fighter, this trend needs to change.

There are several reasons why someone wouldn't play online: a poor connection, an abundance of local competition, or a genuine lack of interest. However, I believe the biggest detractor is intimidation. Dueling another person is a very emotionally intense experience, because whether you win or lose, you have no one to blame but yourself. Victory and defeat are not shared among teammates; they fall on your shoulders alone. And fighting games traditionally do a very poor job of preparing players for online play, which leads me to my next point...

many people will start a tutorial, only to abandon it. In both Street Fighter X Tekken and TTT2, around 40 percent of players started the tutorial - but only around 13 percent finished it. Mortal Kombat and KOF13 show similar completion statistics, with 17 and 15 percent respectively. Honestly, this doesn't surprise me one bit, as most fighting game tutorials have the creativity and teaching method of an Algebra textbook. Between the cluttered checklists and clinical presentation, they feel like homework.

James Chen, long-time fighting game commentator and enthusiast, for the way it handles its tutorial modes: they're disguised as mini-games. Break the Targets is an exercise in learning your character's moveset, Home Run Contest is about dealing as much damage as possible in a short amount of time, and so on. Part of getting people engaged in a fighting game is arming them with the skills necessary for success. There's a need here that's not currently being met - at least, not in a way that makes new players follow through on their efforts to improve.

What all this data says to me is that fighting games have a motivation problem. I imagine most people reading this article understand that, when you're proficient at a particular fighting game and have the chance to face someone of similar skill, it's a rush like no other. But reaching that point takes a lot of honest-to-goodness work. Unless you already know that your investment is going to have some concrete payoff - be it satisfaction or bragging rights - there's little reason to make such a commitment. You're simply not motivated.

Fighting games in the current generation need to do a better job of using what they have to incentivize their audience. One simple way to lure players in is with more costumes, stages, gems, additional fighters, backstory, and other extras to unlock within the game itself rather than locking them behind a bunch of intrusive microtransactions. It means using the story mode to guide players from their first fireball to defeating the hardest-level AI in a way that feels natural.

A while back, I ran a story about the system coming to Killer Instinct. In brief, the Shadow Brain is an AI you spar against and send out into the internet to do battle in your name. Meanwhile, you can fight against other player's custom-made AIs. This is a really smart way to help acclimate players to the online arena. It creates a bridge between the tough-but-exploitable challenge of a traditional CPU opponent and the instinctual quirks of an actual person.

With any luck, Shadow Brain will be just the first in a long line of innovations that'll encourage players to get more out of their fighting games. This genre offers some of the most intense and gratifying experiences in all of gaming; it just needs to make you want it.