Ah fighting games. A pillar of the vidjama game industry known for being the way to settle things like men.

However, one problem seems to pop up with fighting games: Button mashing.

So, in what game is it the biggest problem?

There is room for one more series on the list so if anyone has any suggestions toss em up.

Also other threads related to this one
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.70535

I'd say fight night was button mashtastic.

Tough call. Tekken is the king of "dial a combo" but you can get further in Soul Calibur by mashing buttons.

I went with DOA. I think they define button mashing.

Hmm check out the Facebreaker demo thats pretty button mashy. Also maybe Killer Insinst I don't remember doing anything but button mash on that :)

unholy vagrant:
I went with DOA. I think they define button mashing.

I totally diasgree. If anything, DOA is the only one that doesn't ecnourage it, because with good timing you can win a fight with nothing but counters.
Well, the old DOA games anyway. Haven't played the current gen ones.

I personally found street fighter to be the least button mashey, or at least street fighter 3.
Is there a way to have multiple polls in one topic so wwe can also see what is the most skill reliant.

Virtua Fighter is the most skill reliant . You can hand it the crown now.

Soul Calibur by absolute miles. Especially 2 + 3 (I haven't played 4 yet for this very reason).

Virtua Fighter is by far the least and DOA has a bad rep for this that is undeserved - DOA4 in particular was almost in Virtua Fighter territory.

Tekken has a horrible engine but not a particularly button mashy one.

SF is still the daddy of fighters though!

Soul Calibur

I use 'THROW' button!

Remember people it can be either basic school of button mashing. The lil' button style or the high roller technique or various mixes of the two.

poleboy:

unholy vagrant:
I went with DOA. I think they define button mashing.

I totally diasgree. If anything, DOA is the only one that doesn't ecnourage it, because with good timing you can win a fight with nothing but counters.
Well, the old DOA games anyway. Haven't played the current gen ones.

The last one was the same way. If you button mash with anybody, you will get your ass handed to you. The only way to make it through is learn a character, learn their combos, and mix them up. Oh, and learn where a button masher will hit you so you wipe the floor with them.

Soul Calibur...

Number 4:
Just mashed random buttons, and my character flung the other guy into the air, then smacked him one, he fell on the ground, i hit him back up again :S
then hit him with sword, then punched and then kicked, then did some sort of awesome as attack in which i went red and glowy and hit him off the edge of the level.
Then repeated, in a slightly different order.

Then i won, with no idea what the hell i was even pressing :S

Soul Calibur. I love the series, and it's great fun to play with non-mashers, but playing with mashers sucks.

You probably won't win buton mashing if the person you're fighting is good enough, but at least you can get through the singleplayer and beat less skilled people.

The least button-mashey is obviously Guilty Gear. Considering two hits do about 5% of someone's health and a proper combo of anywhere from 6 to 16 does, often, more than half someone's health...

You likely won't get away mashing against a pro in SF, I admit, but you're even less likely to get away with it in GG. You can't even special spam like a masher can in SF because mashing = roman cancels. I ALWAYS see mashers accidently use RC's.

Also button mashing isn't the worst thing in fighting games, tourney players are. (I say that because it encompasses everything wrong with fighters: infinites, crossups, cheap mixup combos, unblockable setups, and projectile lockdowns.)

Totally agree with Shinkada. It's painful to watch a Guilty Gear button-masher.

It's painful to watch ANY button-masher, for that matter.

Soul Calibur, which is one of the reasons I like playing it because I can't remember all those damn moves if my life depened on it.

I opted for Soul Calibur, especially number 2 which I had on Xbox with it's handy "instant combo" button. Either that or Tekken.

Shinkada:

You can't even special spam like a masher can in SF because mashing = roman cancels. I ALWAYS see mashers accidently use RC's.

100% Agreed.

But the best is when they accidentally enter Instant Kill mode and then frantically try to get out of it before they get punished. XD

Roman cancel?
Please elaborate.

Roman Cancelling is a technique in Guilty Gear. You press three face buttons during a move and you flash red. It uses half of your tension (special) gauge, and immediately cancels what you're doing. Mainly used for either getting out of missed, long-cooldown moves to stop people from punishing you for them (like a whiffed shoryken ripoff) or extending combos.

Watching a button masher roman cancel a light punch = hilarious.

Edit: Shinkada beat me to it.

I've never understood the accusation of Soul Calibur's button-mashiness. I've never lost games to people who were just randomly pressing buttons. You just block then counter attack, or keep your distance and then don't give them a chance to mash buttons by keeping up the pressure. Weird.

Anyways, how the hell is Super Smash Brother not on here? I came second with a bunch of friends in my second game and they own the damn thing. Utterly stupid.

Smash is not on here cause I have yet to ever see someone Button mash in it and win.
Also smash is a much less traditional fighting game, some people would argue over wether or not it is actually a fighting game at all.

Correction: Smash is not here because it would be off-topic.

"Poll: Most buttonmashey fighting game series."

That is debatable, but that is neither here nor there.

Yeah, I know, I just thought it'd be funny. If I'm gunna be non-bias and say Smash is a fighting game, I have to agree that it should be in the poll, DEPENDING on your definition of button mashing.

If your definition of button mashing is:
-Pressing random buttons on the control for the entire match

Then it shouldn't be. But if it's:
-Pressing random buttons and getting some idea of what they do over the course of just one match

Then it should definitely be up there and may even rival Soul Calibur.

Also I've never seen someone win with button mashing in Guilty Gear so I don't see how that effects it being on the poll or not.

Uh...

All of them?

lol i'm not the best in beat em ups, me thinks Dial a Combo games lend themselves more for button mashing.
I like A lot of fighting games and most of the time I kinda know how a combo works but never know the whole array of moves, not out the top of my head that is. but it's not like I bash buttons in the hopes I will pull op something cool.

Soul calibur is quite a basher. has lots of combos makes it easy to mix em up
Tekken well.. after tekken 3 I barely played any tekken game.
Dead or alive requires quite some timing when countering of performing moves.
Mortal kombat don't never played any after 3 :P
Street fighter can't be bashed because you have to do the half circles and stuff.
Killer instinct nevergot the hang of that game. (but the arcade version sure looks pretty.

Mortal Kombat, i think it was number one or two, i got up to the last boss without learning a single combo or looking at the attack guide.

Does anyone remember power stone? I cannot remember wether it was mashey or not. I do remember it being the first fun 3d fighter I can think of.

Well, if you count holding down and mashing light kick for the entire match as button mashing, I think we can all agree MK2 has already won...

Powerstone is only a masher if Smash is. Like Smash, if you press anything at anytime, you'll lose. And like Smash, if you take 3 seconds to figure out what the buttons do, you have a good chance of winning.

Soul Calibur is exceedingly masher friendly.
Super Smash Bros is supremely masher friendly.

JaguarWong:
DoA was originally based on VF3. Tecmo apparently paid Sega for using it's basic system. They combined VF3's move and guard button and made a single free button out of it.

DoA 4 even took a lot of the depth of DoA out of the game by removing features, causing many veterans to leave. Wake-up? Foot Stance? Dodge? Spacing? Sabaki's? Weight dependencies? All are of no consequence in DoA and part of basic knowledge in VF. In comparison to VF DoA 4 is simplicity incarnate. Note that having to take account of all this stuff is the very reason many people are turned away from VF, so saying 'depth = better game' is bs, rather, it's better catered for a certain audience.

Shinkada:
Put a masher against a competitive player in their fighter of choice and the competitive one will win. If not, the game is completely broken. I've yet to see a fighting game that is completely broken by this definition. Even MK Armageddon holds up here.

Souplex:
Roman cancel is pressing any three buttons (except Dust) at the same time during the execution of a move. This will cancel the move and leave you free to follow it up. Costs a bit of the tension guage, depending on the move you cancelled I believe.

Soul Calibur by a long way. I know I don't get it and there is a way to play properly, but it's so conducive to button-mashing that I just lose interest after five minutes. I couldn't believe so many people shelled out £40 for SC IV on its release date when so many of them were just going to mash buttons all night.

The thing about mashing in smash bros is you could easily kill yourself without your opponent even moving.

Vortigar: Ivy + Masher + Luck = Everyone Beaten. Mashers have no rhythm, no pattern, and it's impossible to predict when they're going to start randomly smacking the buttons that just happen to be ranged attacks, or when they'll decide to hold down while mashing.

Also, when you say 'depending on the move' you're probably thinking of Force Roman Cancels. Some moves have very small frame periods where the game allows you to do a FRC. It's usually in moves that leave you more vulnerable; some characters rely on them for good combos (I-no). They're identical to RC's except can only be done, as I said, in small windows during specific moves, and take 25% tension rather than 50%.

Mmm. Trivia.