10 Fighting Game characters that had to be BANNED in tournament

I love how all the most OP characters are secrets or bosses that aren’t actually meant to be played. And then there’s Meta Knight. You don’t even have to unlock him

Couple interesting notes on Brawl Meta Knight: -tier lists are infamously structured around how other characters perform against MK -MK is the reason stages like delfino plaza were banned in some regions. his aerial ability was so strong he could travel under the stage from ledge to ledge while swinging up airs through the stage the entire time

In case anyone is interested, Pet Shop is now not the only character banned in JoJo's HFTF. Kakyoin is now generally banned from high level play, and is often considered to be BETTER than Pet Shop by some players. Kak had hard knockdowns from near full screen, airdashes, excellent mix, huge combo damage and potential for TODs, and his nets in particular can invalidate a large portion of the cast.

For a while, Marie was banned in Skullgirls, because someone found that picking random actually gave the player a miniscule chance to get the boss Marie, which was obviously broken. That person also hacked the game to be able to pick her all the time and made a video about it. So she became officially banned before a fix.

The thing with the Metaknight ban, he did get banned at a major tournament but since most pros played MK, they didn't go to that tournament. Other TO's saw that and decided it wasn't worth it to ban MK and risk losing top players and potential viewership. It mostly came down to some local scenes would ban him, but he remained legal in the big tournaments.

Characters that totally shouldn’t be banned: my character Character that should be banned: your character

Meta Knight actually was never permanently banned across the board, there were some tourneys that banned him but it was never a universal rule or anything. He was still by far the best character in the game, and the viability of the rest of cast was almost entirely determined by how well they did against Meta Knight. He also had a few glitches and techniques that were banned, like a glitch which involved his dimensional cape move, where he becomes invincible and invisible and teleports a short distance in any direction. There was a glitch that could allow you to start the move and by tapping a certain button in rhythm you could stay invisible and invincible permanently. That was obviously banned, and there were also rules against stalling because due to how mobile he was in comparison to the rest of the cast he could often permanently stall offstage with little to no risk at all, and rules against that were implemented. There were also multiple stages that had to be banned solely because MK could abuse their geometry in ways that made certain matchups completely unplayable, despite those stages being perfectly fine for the rest of the cast. He was an overall (k)nightmare for the meta of competitive Brawl and most of the competitive ruleset had to be designed around him because he was just that broken.

Adding on to the SC2 bans: It worked out that all three were banned because Heihachi had stupidly good pokes and ridiculous guaranteed damage when you put things together, plus his mixups were so hard to react to at a high level. Spawn wasn't terribly busted at first glance, but he had two ways to set up guaranteed 100% combos on most stages(if they were wide enough), or a good chance at a ring out otherwise. And Necrid... Necrid was just stupid good. He was an amalgamation of moves taken from the entire roster, with a few originals thrown in, and juiced up on steroids. Blockstun for days, +frames on tons of moves, crazy good start up on most of his pokes, one of the fastest unblockables in the game, just frames everywhere, and his damage was LUDICROUS. All in all, it was logical from the jump to ban console exclusives, but it definitely worked out in the end lol. Fun to play them at home, though! Necrid made a lot of single player challenges absolute jokes once you figured out his kit.

One thing you didn't mention about Hilde is that she was built to have to hold down buttons and release/negative edge them for some of her powerful attacks. This came with the downside of not being able to tech throws while holding down any of the buttons needed to tech them. However, when playing on pad, you could map buttons in a way that allowed you to tech throws while holding down the buttons at the same time, effectively removing the handicap that she was built around.

Michelangelo was banned from Super Smash Con just mere weeks after the release of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. (a game FILLED with busted characters) Mickey’s Forward air/air grab combo was a infinite that was extremely easy to do. Thankfully the developers just patched this out.

Sailor Saturn in the Sailor Moon SuperS fighting game was one of those boss characters made playable. The character in the setting is the harbinger of death for entire worlds... and the primary reason she's banned, IIRC, is that her standing kicks come out in one frame, which is faster than a character holding back puts up a block. If you aren't already in blockstun, she starts a combo on you whenever she feels like it.

Spawn Armageddon was made by EA and Namco. The latter helps develop Soul Calibur. Necrid was designed by Todd MacFarlane as well. That's why Spawn was in the Xbox version of SC2.

Ivan Ooze is the #1 most broken fighting game character of all time!

happy to see PetShop in the list properly explained without any misconception, for real. it's also worth pointing out he can charge icicles while blocking totally safely, making even pressuring him unsafe if prolonged too much, and since in hftf you are forced to block meaties on wakeup unblockables are actually unescapable, making a knockdown often mean the end of the game (not like PetShop needs it, since his damage output is enough to kill you with a 1 bar meter positive combo), his dash is also good enough to catch you with an icicle + d.2a from midscreen and kill you with it, all of this counting icicles themselves are a really damn good space control tool, since staying under one means getting unblockable'd

Launch Leeroy in Tekken 7 was super strong. He literally tore the competitive scene apart and was nerfed later on but he needed to be banned at EVO Japan 2019.

Normal Kakyoin in HotF is also generally banned in competitive tournaments, because he can perpetually stunlock you with mystic trap spam. Coupled with his insane maneuverability and screen reach, he can pretty much do damn well anything he pleases. No, this does not cost him any resources, most of these are basic moves that do not cost meter to use. New Kakyoin however, isn't nearly as cheesy and is allowed to be use anywhere.

Finally a solid video explaining why Petshop has been banned in HFTF. A lot of videos usually go 'oh yeah he can fly and spam and uh yeah' and leave it at that but the real problem Is the unblockable icicle hold (that works while blocking), high damage from easy confirms and the amount of matchups that can be made be the most boring match on earth betcause they can't catch the fuck or fight back. Cheers jmcrofts

Hftf Kakyoin is another banned character and generally considered the best character in the game due to his long and high damage combos, great 50/50 mixups(that lead in to combos), & some of the best normals and movement in the game. Most people consider him as strong if not stronger than pet shop

Algol was also bannned in Soul Calibur 4 because he had infinites on half the cast. That said, the infinites were very situational and didn't come up in play very often, and I think, at least by the end of SC4's tournament lifespan, most people agreed he probably shouldn't have been banned in the first place. Unlike Hilde. Hilde needed to go. As if doom combo wasn't bad enough, she was an amazing character even without. Best sidestep in the game, safe, huge damage. She wouldn't be banworthy without Doom Combo, but she'd have been top tier without it.

I'm sort of surprised you didn't mention Gambit from MvC2 being banned because of his glitch where he can just fly off the screen and never come back. :P