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Wednesday, August 26th, 2020
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AKIMAN, Akira Nishitani & John Tobias Talk Fighting Games in Netflix's High Score Episode 5
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 Netflix's new limited series High Score retells the colorful history of video games, spanning the genre's major evolutions during the '80s and early '90s. In
Episode 5, iconic Street Fighter 2 Director & Designer Akira Nishitani is joined by legendary designer Akira "AKIMAN" Yasuda to talk about the humble beginnings of fighting games and the Street Fighter series. Later in the episode, Mortal Kombat creator / designer John Tobias shares his memories
during the rise of the fighting genre. Episode 5 also features an interview with Street Fighter II Turbo champion, Takahiro Nakano, who reminisces on SF2's rise to popularity in arcades. Nakano goes on to talk about his life-changing win at Japan's national SF2 Turbo tournament in 1993, and how he became a mentor and active
member of professional eSports team, Kyoto Susanoo.
While High Score is a superb documentary and a must-watch... one of my only complaints is that the latter half of the "fighting game episode" heavily segways into video game violence and controversy. Since Episode 6 covers FPS games, the drifting off-topic sort of makes sense, but I can't help but feel they missed opportunities in
telling the story of the fighting genre's important evolutions.
Instead of diving into how Virtua Fighter revolutionized 3D graphics for video games (for example), the end of Episode 5 spends a bit too long on the controversial title, Night Trap - which along with the violence and gore of Mortal Kombat, was the reason the ESRB was created. Watch the official trailer for the series, below.
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High Score Episodes 1-6 are currently available on Netflix.
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