Mortal Kombat does have cool fatalities and some memorable special moves, but it isn’t as smooth or as surprisingly complicated as Street Fighter. Earlier games in the franchise especially were often stiff and sluggish, compared to Street Fighter. Over time, Mortal Kombat’s controls have tightened up. Both are competitive fighting games with huge fandoms, but most fighting game fans can agree Street Fighter just controls better.

Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat both play very well. Mortal Kombat’s controls are significantly slower than Street Fighter’s smoother, more fluid gameplay. Combos and special moves are far easier when you play Street Fighter, resulting in gameplay that remains technically complex enough to merit competitive play. Street Fighter’s controls are responsive and intuitive.

The one area where Mortal Kombat’s controls excel is in the Fatalities. Street Fighter has no fatality system. When you end a round, that’s it. Mortal Kombat added the extra novelty of obliterating your opponent in a highly satisfying sequence where you just rip your enemies apart in unique, memorable fashions.

The stages in Street Fighter, on the other hand, are somewhat inferior to those in Mortal Kombat. Undeniably, stages throughout the franchise are cool, offering some really cool locales with tons of energetic and lively details. However, they lack something the Mortal Kombat stages, throughout the franchise’s history, possess sheer metal intensity.

Even ignoring stage fatalities, Mortal Kombat’s stages are intense dark fantasies full of twisted gore. Every single one looks like a metal album rendered in graphics. Be it the old school stages, the early attempts at 3D, or the modern stages, Mortal Kombat’s stages are consistently incredible and cool.

Undeniably, both Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter have some pretty iconic heroes and villains. Mortal Kombat’s heroes are fairly iconic, but it would be a mistake to say any of them are more memorable than the characters from Street Fighter. Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, Johnny Cage, Raiden – yeah, all iconic characters in their own right.

However, to say any of them compare to the iconic nature of Chun-Li, Ryu, or Ken is really misleading. Sure, the Mortal Kombat cast is iconic, but Street Fighters’ heroes are video game royalty. When you add characters like Guile, Cammy, or even Sakura into the mix, Street Fighter’s cast of heroes expands and only becomes greater.

Where Mortal Kombat’s cast truly excels are in its cast of villains. Perhaps due to the franchise’s brutal nature, its villains – and morally ambiguous characters – are far more iconic. In regards to moral ambiguity, Sub-Zero and Scorpion are undoubtedly the stand-outs from the cast, sometimes serving as heroes and other times as villains. However, with its villains, you have henchmen like Baraka, Goro, and Mileena, as well as big bads like Shang Tseng or Shao Kahn.

Street Fighter has great villains, like M Bison and Akuma, but they really don’t compare to Mortal Kombat’s expansive roster of antagonists. Akuma is undeniably a stand-out, being one of the most overwhelmingly powerful bad guys of all. But even then, the sheer number of standout MK villains overwhelms Street Fighter’s baddies. This becomes more true when you look at the henchmen. Are you gonna argue that Vega is more memorable than Goro? No comparison.

Another area where Mortal Kombat excels is that they have added in tons of guest characters from iconic franchises. Sure, Street Fighter sometimes does that by drawing from other Capcom series, but MK? You can pit the Xenomorphs against Leatherface, Rocky against the Joker, or Spawn against the Terminator. At this point, a whole MK game can be made using characters from other franchises. While these are novelties, when comparing the franchises, it’s unfair to compare universally beloved characters like the Predator to popular video game characters like Chun-Li. So we won’t.

In terms of the variety of games out there, Mortal Kombat again excels. Ignoring spin-offs, Mortal Kombat has eleven core games, while Street Fighter only has six – Street Fighter Alpha is the only one not to have a number. The reason why people think Street Fighter has more games is because Capcom keeps re-releasing the same games over and over with new additions. There are seven different versions of Street Fighter II, all with small additions and alterations. It’s like full-price DLC.

When Mortal Kombat makes a new game, it’s an entirely new game. On top of that, the release schedule between new games is far shorter. Each one has a new story, new characters, new style, new everything. There is never a sense that you’re being bombarded with a slight update of something you already own. Sure, they release versions of the game with all the DLC added in, but you don’t have to buy a new game to get that DLC. You can just download the DLC.

Of course, all this doesn’t count the tons of spin-off titles for each franchise, of which Street Fighter easily blows MK out of the water. Do I really need to explain why Marvel vs. Capcom is a better game than Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

On top of that, let’s look at the ratio of good to bad games. Mortal Kombat’s history is pretty rocky when you consider its games. For every great game – like the reboot series – you have less popular games. Most fans agree that Mortal Kombat 4 is a weak follow-up to the original trilogy. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is a fatal misstep. The PS2 era of games is uneven. While the classics and modern games are great, that’s not a truth held universal.

On the other hand, Street Fighter is pretty solid throughout. Sure, Street Fighter x Tekken isn’t well-remembered, but the core series is full of iconic games straight through. Not a bad one in the batch. It’s almost unfair to compare Street Fighter’s legacy to Mortal Kombat. Sure, MK is a great franchise, but...Street Fighter? In the hierarchy of fighting games, that’s the zenith.