A particular form of Fighting Game which brings together pre-established characters to have them fight each other. This is a common type of Licensed Game, especially for anime series. Most instances of these games also double as a Massively Multiplayer Crossover, featuring characters not only from a single franchise, but also any properties that the company owns (or doesn't own).
Mascot Fighters, by their very nature, are targeted more towards fans of the base universes from where the characters originate moreso than traditional fighting game fans. For this reason, it isn't uncommon for many of these games to boast simplified controls and more casual gameplay compared to other titles within the genre in order to make them easy to pick up by fans who don't have much experience with fighting games or even video games in general. However, this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, as one of the most prolific mascot fighter series out there (Capcom vs.) can attest.
Sister Trope to Mascot Racer and Mascot RPG. See also Platform Fighter, as since the most successful and popular mascot fighting game series is Super Smash Bros., many mascot fighters tend to be within that Sub-Genre.
Games of this genre include:
- Blade Strangers is a 2D fighting game for the Nintendo Switch featuring characters from various indie games such as Cave Story, The Binding of Isaac, Umihara Kawase, Code of Princess, Shovel Knight and Azure Striker Gunvolt, with later updates adding characters from 1001 Spikes and Doki Doki Poyacchio.
- BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is combination of four franchises: BlazBlue, Persona 4 Arena, Under Night In-Birth, and RWBY. The first three had some involvement by Arc System Works, though BlazBlue was the only one fully created by them; Persona 4 is an RPG by Atlus that ArcSys developed the fighting game spin-off Arena for, while Under Night In-Birth was developed by French Bread and published by ArcSys in Japan. RWBY sticks out as the overall guest franchise, though it also fits in a sense as the creators of the two franchises (Toshimichi Mori and Monty Oum) were each fans of each others' work. Later updates would include characters from Arcana Heart, Senran Kagura and Akatsuki Blitzkampf.
- Blizzard Entertainment parodied this in their 2014 April Fool's prank Blizzard Outcasts
, which casts various minor characters, units and mooks from their various series. They also have a MOBA, named Heroes of the Storm, featuring everyone from A-listers like Arthas to old classics like the Lost Vikings and key RTS units like the the Protoss Probe, here named Probius.
- Capcom:
- Capcom All Stars! a Japan-only social fighter featuring characters from many Capcom series, from Street Fighter to Darkstalkers and Monster Hunter to Asura's Wrath.
- The Capcom vs. franchise is the Trope Maker, being a series of 2D crossover "tag battle" fighting games featuring established characters from Capcom and pretty much any other company duking it out. The most well-known installments within the franchise, the Marvel vs. Capcom sub-series, themselves began as a series of fighting games starring various Marvel Comics characters, beginning with X-Men: Children of the Atom.
- Street Fighter X Tekken, which crosses over Capcom's Street Fighter franchise and Bandai Namco's Tekken franchise.
- Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion is a platform fighter featuring characters from several 1990s and 2000s Cartoon Network shows, from Dexter's Laboratory to Chowder to even Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
- Castlevania Judgment is a 3D Castlevania fighting game for the Wii featuring 13 heroes and villains from across the series.
- Digimon Rumble Arena, Digimon Battle Spirit, and their sequels are this for the anime installments of the Digimon franchise. The Rumble titles are Free-Floor Fighting games, while the Battle Spirit games are more traditional 2D fighters.
- Dissidia Final Fantasy is a Final Fantasy spin-off series. While primarly a fighting game, its core mechanics make heavy use of RPG elements, with characters gaining levels and learning new abilities through battling.
- DreamMix TV World Fighters, which focused on characters from Konami, Hudson Soft, and Takara: from Solid Snake and Simon Belmont to Bomberman and Optimus Prime.
- Ehrgeiz, an otherwise original fighting game, has several Final Fantasy VII characters appear as Guest Fighters and is mostly remembered for that alone, being considered a precursor to the aforementioned Dissidia series.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Dream Carnival for that franchise.
- Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee and its sequels/related games do this for Toho's many Kaiju.
- The The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy video game.
- Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers
- The Gundam vs Series was originally a Mecha Game, but the action got more fast-paced as time went on to the point where the crossover games (Gundam Vs. Gundam, its Updated Re-release Gundam Vs. Gundam Next Plus, and sequel Gundam Extreme Vs. onwards) are effectively a hybrid Mecha Game/Mascot Fighter.
- Homestrife is a fan-made fighter with the characters of Homestuck. It can be found here.
- There was this doujin game based on Haruhi Suzumiya called Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekitou. It even had Konata Izumi and Akira Kogami as Guest Fighters.
- Indie Brawl
- Jump Super Stars, based on several manga series found in Shonen Jump, from Dragon Ball and One Piece to Yu-Gi-Oh! and Naruto.
- Battle Stadium D.O.N. is quite similar, albeit with a character selection limited to DragonBall, One Piece and Naruto.
- J-Stars Victory VS is essentially like a free roaming, next-gen version of Jump Super Stars.
- Jump Force is the new and improved version of J-Stars.
- Marvel Contest of Champions features fighters from throughout the Marvel Universe, including characters from the comics, cinematic universe and a few original characters.
- MultiVersus is a 2-vs-2 take on the Smash-style Platform Fighter featuring characters owned by Warner Bros., ranging from classic cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny, Shaggy and Tom and Jerry, to modern Cartoon Network stars like Finn and Jake, Samurai Jack and The Powerpuff Girls, to The DCU superheroes like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, to live-action characters such as Arya Stark, Jason Voorhes and Beetlejuice.
- The Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series of games.
- Mahou Sensei Negima: Neo Pactio Fight!!
- Nekketsu Kakutō Densetsu, predating Super Smash Bros., offered two-on-two battles in story mode and a four-player free-for-all battle mode environmental hazards, with the Kunio-kun cast. The mechanics were loosely similar to River City Ransom—no insane Jump Physics, but there were stage hazards to spice the fighting up.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Battle Orchestra obviously enough does this with the Evangelion mechas, Jet Alone, Crossover Cameos from GunBuster, and various Angels.
- Newgrounds Rumble (Seen here), which does this for the site Newgrounds, including characters such as Pico and Nene, the P-Bot, Salad Fingers, Hank from Madness Combat, the Tankman, the Alien Hominid, Fancy Pants Pan and other characters who were featured on the site.
- Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a Smash-style Platform Fighter featuring various Nicktoons as playable characters.
- Before that, the Nickelodeon Super Brawl series of Adobe Flash games on the Nick website crossed over multiple characters from various shows aired on the Nickelodeon networks.
- Several One Piece games, such as the One Piece: Grand Battle series and the One Piece: Gigant Battle series, all made by Ganbarion, the same guys who made Jump Super Stars and its sequel.
- Onimusha Blade Warriors
- PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is a franchise crossover between many different PlayStation franchises, like God of War, LittleBigPlanet, Ratchet & Clank, PaRappa the Rapper, and Uncharted; however, it infamously received criticism for lacking representatives from several other iconic Sony-associated franchises, such as Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and Final Fantasy.
- Project: Axis is a planned fan-made game that is, essentially, Super Smash Bros. VS. PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.
- Shrek SuperSlam
- Sonic Battle is a Mascot Fighter for the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Before that, there was Sonic the Fighters.
- Sugoi Hebereke, a Super Famicom Mascot Fighter based on the Ufouria series.
- Super Smash Bros. popularized and codified this genre, and also popularized the Platform Fighter genre. The games feature many Nintendo characters (and third-party video game characters starting with Super Smash Bros. Brawl) duking it out. However, contrary to popular belief, it is not the first game of its kind.
- There are also various fanmade Smash Bros. clones, the most notable example being the Super Smash Flash series for its inclusion of more third-party characters and anime characters.
- Super Smash Ponies, a fangame based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
- Tales Of Versus for the Tales Series.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up. It's even helmed by one of the multiple developers of Super Smash Bros. Brawl to boot.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Melee. The series also provides the Ur-Example of this trope with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters.
- Two Tom and Jerry games: Fists of Furry and War of the Whiskers.
- Touhou Project's fighting game installments are developed in collaboration with another circle, and are described as "festival games", focused more on bringing together and expanding characters from old games rather than introducing new ones. Their mechanics are also rather odd - fitting their origins, characters have an extreme emphasis on projectile attacks compared to most fighting games, combined with strong and easy-to-use air dashes that block projectiles in exchange for temporarily draining their Spirit Meter and thus leaving them vulnerable in melee if overused. A number of other odd subsystems show up from game to game, like drawing cards during a match to upgrade your abilities.
- Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble
- Yū Yū Hakusho: Makyō Tōitsusen, a game developed by Treasure way back on the Sega Mega Drive, has elements of this type of gameplay. The game lacks both stage hazards and items and special moves are performed by using traditional fighter inputs, but it features frantic four-player battles, and character movement is more similar to that of a Mascot Fighter (ex: turning left or right turns your character around, double-jumping, etc.). Treasure later reused this same gameplay style in Bleach: The Blade of Fate and its sequel.