The Overwatch fighting game mashup we needed

Mashing up Overwatch with other games and genres seems to be one of the community’s favorite things to do. Hot on the heels of Overwatch crossing over with Pokemon (and then again in this lovely Hanzo animation), YouTube collective TGN has created their vision of Overwatch as a fighting game.

While the gameplay is a little clunky, I can hardly blame TGN for that — some additional FX from After Effects aside, the video was still created in Overwatch itself, and obviously you won’t get a smooth fighting game experience out of that. It’s still a fun “what if” scenario and you can tell the creators have at least some background with actual fighting games. The Super/Ultimate abilities from SNK and Capcom fighting games (among others), Mortal Kombat Fatalities, and Street Fighter beat-up-a-car-for-no-reason bonus rounds were all a wonderful touch — not to mention Jeff Kaplan replacing Dan Forden’s Toasty popup.

Though when you consider engine constraints, those matchups were downright unfair. I’d be disappointed if Reinhardt and Doomfist didn’t win their bouts. Now, Reinhardt duking it out with Doomfist? That’s a matchup I want to see. Zarya didn’t stand a chance in a brawl where she had to lug around an ion cannon she wasn’t able to use properly. Genji getting punched in the face was satisfying, though.

In addition to this fighting game mashup and the aforementioned Pokemon mashups, we’ve seen Overwatch mixed with other titles and genres, too. Back in June 2017, we saw a glimpse of Overwatch as a turn-based RPG and some great Hanamura pixel art. And, all the way back in June 2016, players were having a blast turning their favorite Game of Thrones moments into Overwatch Play of the Game clips.