5 Weirdest Fighting Game Rosters Of All Time

The fighting game genre has always been a surprisingly experimental landscape for game designers. Over the years, some fighting games have included some very bizarre touches, whether that be Super Smash Bros. incorporating the 2D Mr. Game & Watch or Shaq-Fu throwing the Hall of Fame basketball star into a Mortal Kombat riff. However, there are some fighting games that stand out for their sheer commitment to their unique bizarreness.

Whether that be the sentient clay of a Street Fighter parody or a car that can engage in a fistfight against characters from a Sonic the Hedgehog spin-off, the oddest of oddball fighting games have some of the most memorable selections of selectable characters in all of gaming. One of the strangest even fully ignores international copyright law in the silliest way possible. Here are five of gaming’s weirdest fighting game rosters, and which characters really stand out from the rest.

Clay Fighter

Easily the most successful of gaming’s strangest fighting titles, the ClayFighter series from Interplay had four releases between 1993 and 1998. Released for the Super Nintendo and Genesis, ClayFighter imagines a world where a meteor made out of extraterrestrial clay lands on Earth and mutates a number of circus attractions into new forms. A parody of fighting games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, the series developed a cult following.

The most consistent characters in the franchise included a snowman with a bad attitude, an Elvis impersonator, an opera singer, and a blob known as a master of goojitsu. The game received two sequels and a Blockbuster Video exclusive expansion known as ClayFighter: Sculptor’s Cut. It says something when some of the more grounded characters in the franchise were oddball creations of the era, like guest fighter Earthworm Jim.

Ballz 3D

Released in 1994 for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, Ballz 3D was a uniquely bizarre title that had the standard 2D fighting mechanics — albeit all visually represented by a series of balls on top of one another, giving the game a quasi-3D visual style that helped it stand out from its peers. Mind you, that uniqueness largely came from the strange proportions and janky movements.

The game’s characters ranged from fairly straightforward ideas like a bodybuilder and a sumo wrestler to stranger concepts, such as a monkey that uses fart-based attacks and a rhino. Although the game was commended by critics at the time of release for its originality in terms of presentation, the standard gameplay undercut the unique qualities of the action.

Crab Fighters

Released in 2020, Crab Fight is a strange amalgamation of mechanics from other fighting games, with a weapons-based combat style influenced by the likes of Soul Calibur that also takes inspiration from counter-centric action games like Dark Souls. The game sees players pick one of 23 different kinds of crustacean, with the kaiju-sized creatures using the nearly 50 weapons at their disposal to take one another down.

The truly unique mechanic at the heart of the game is the act of flipping an opponent onto their back, exposing their belly for a final attack. It’s strangely compelling as a game, with a wide array of characters and gameplay options. Initially released on Steam before making the leap to the Nintendo Switch and mobile platforms, Fight Crab has even received a sequel, which launched into early access in 2024.

Fighters MegaMix

Developed by Sega AM2, Fighters Megamix is a crossover fighting game that brings together the rosters of Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighting Vipers. On the surface, it’s a fairly standard fighting game, along the lines of something like SNK vs. Capcom. Released on the Sega Saturn, what really makes this title stand out is the number of bizarre secret characters that can be unlocked.

This includes the likes of Bark and Bean from the Sonic the Hedgehog tie-in fighting game Sonic the Fighters, the chibi versions of Akira and Sarah from Virtua Fighter Kids, and even Hornet, the race car from Daytona USA. The game’s only original character is Deku, a Mexican green bean in a sombrero and with a maraca. Perhaps the strangest character players can unlock in the game is the AM2 Palm Tree, a reference to the developer’s logo

Dong Dong Never Die

Arguably the strangest fighting game ever made, Dong Dong Never Die was a passion project by a group of Chinese developers that ignores typical copyright laws to feature some of the most bizarre fighting cameos ever. Instead of traditional game animation, the fighters were created by the developers taking thousands of photographs and then stringing them together to make playable sprites.

The quasi-realistic characters have a number of strange attributes and move-sets, including unleashing Optimus Prime or using spray paint as a weapon. The game pulls liberally from other material, including making the Terminator the overarching villain and featuring Mario and Ken from Street Fighter as playable characters. Deliberately goofy in a way few other games could ever hope to match, Dong Dong Never Die has even gotten a fan-made re-release that amplifies the goofiness while refining the game mechanics for playability.