Fighting Games You Can Dominate With One Move

Fighting games are always a good time, especially when you can get your friends feeling a little salty. If you really want to get your pals to high sodium levels of saltiness, might we suggest playing against them in games that feature really cheap ways for you to absolutely crush them? We have examples of one-move techniques (or at most, simple strategies that require minimal effort) that will get your buddies chucking their controllers across the room. You might want to make sure your friends bring their own controllers.

What list of cheap fighting game tactics would be complete without the King of Capoeira himself, Tekken's own Eddy Gordo. This character has become infamous for being a noob-friendly spam demon capable of taking down the most skilled of players in the hands of complete neophytes. While other players have spent years honing their craft, all a noobie has to do is button-mash with Eddy Gordo and he'll go into a series of spins, kicks, headstands, and windmills, all of which can be difficult to predict.

There have been many iterations of Street Fighter 4 with many different changes over the years, but one thing has remained the same: shoryuken spam. Most gamers know about the three big moves in Ryu and Ken's arsenal, the hadouken (fireball), the tatsumaki (hurricane kick), and last but not least, the deadly uppercut known as the shoryuken. If you've ever played online, you've more than likely come across Ryu users who like to close the gap with a series of short shoryukens, which can be performed one after the other. Try to cross them up? You'll get an uppercut. Try to attack with a leg sweep? Time it wrong and you get an uppercut. Look at the opponent wrong? You best believe you're getting an uppercut. The shoryuken spam is a great way to annoy unwitting opponents and easily claim victory.

Speaking of annoyances, have you met Astaroth, the axe-wielding behemoth from the Soul Calibur series? In Soul Calibur 4, this monstrous menace performs a simple two-hit combo that causes him to first sweep the ground in front of him with his axe, and then combo into an overhead slam to the ground. All you have to do to remain victorious online is choose the smallest stage possible, and then repeat the combo as many times as necessary. Because he's got reach, picking a small stage ensures that your opponent has to engage you somehow and, if they do, they run into the possibility of your axe swings knocking them up and causing them to fall out of the ring. Annoyance, thy name is Astaroth.

Let's turn away from horrifying fighters like Astaroth and lay our eyes on...well, even more terrifying fighters, but this time disguised as cute, family friendly characters from Nintendo's catalog of games. Some of these characters sport infinite combos that rain hell on others and cause their damage percentages to shoot up in a very short amount of time. One such character is King Dedede from the Kirby series. Dedede can use his mallet to start a jab combo that consists of two hits, but can suck a player back towards him with the first hit, resulting in a back and forth that can get an opponent's damage percentage above 100% in no time.

The Persona 4 Arena series is based on the acclaimed role-playing game that tasks players with living out the life of a high school student during the day, and battling monsters in a dungeon at night. In Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, players take control of their favorite characters (and their respective Personas), to do battle, 2D fighting game-style.

While there are plenty of combos and special moves to perform, each character also has an Instant Kill move that obliterates their opponent's health if executed correctly. Once you have a full SP gauge, you can perform your Instant Kill combo and, if it connects, an animation plays out and your opponent dies, even if they had a full HP bar.

Let's take it back a bit and look at Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2, a classic fighting game on Nintendo's GameCube. What makes this simple fighting game ridiculous is the fact that you can play it with one hand. The combos and special attacks are simple enough to perform that all you have to do is dock the GameCube's controller on your left thumb, and then use your right hand to perform attacks. While this doesn't count as a "one move" domination, it deserves special mention because you can just relax, let your opponent come to you, and then unload your combos and special attacks.

And now we've come to the mother of all one-move fighting games: Divekick. This title is a nifty little independent game that's built on the premise of the dive-kick being a really overpowered move in many 2D fighting games. The objective, which is almost mind-numbingly simple, is to be the first person to dive-kick your opponent. That's it. If your kick lands, then your opponent goes down automatically. There are five rounds to a match, so the first to reach five kicks wins. The only thing you have to master in this game is timing, since there are no complicated combos to learn, no special attacks to memorize, and no technical moves to perform. It's just you and your one move of doom.