So I'm hoping people still take interest in fighting games, because you're about to get blown away.  Recently two new clients have been released allowing for various fighting games to be played online with a community of other players.  These two clients, GGPO (Good games peace out) and 2df have shown to give practically flawless connection even with overseas players.  First I'll give a bit of introduction for each client, starting with ggpo.

Good Games Peace Out!
Creater: Tony Cannon (Goes by Ponder on SRK forums)
Everything you need is at www.ggpo.net. 
Currently Supports:
Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Street Fighter Alpha 2
Xmen Vs Street Fighter
Marvel Vs Capcom 1
King of fighters 98
King of Fighters 2002
Samurai Shodown 2
Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
Vampire Saviour
Dungeons and Dragons

All great games!!

GGPO has a neat spectating feuture (although it doesn't work with garou I don't think) allowing you to spectate matches as they are happening.  There have been complaints among players that it cause a small spike in the connection when specs leave but it shouldn't affect the overall gameplay because basically what it is doing is sending the inputs from the players to the server and then to you (although it's really accurate and captures everything except for what the players are typing to each other).

2dfighter.com
Creator: Damdai (raz tells me he's a beast with zangief in ST)
Everything you need is at http://2dfighter.com/default.aspx.
Currently Supports:
 Marvel Super Heroes
Metal Slug
Nightwarriors - Darkstalkers Revenge
Ninja Master's Haoh Ninpo Cho
Real Bout Fatal Fury
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special
Samurai Shodown
Samurai Shodown IV
Samurai Shodown V
Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition
Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting
Street Fighter III 2nd Impact
Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo
Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo
Super Sundays
SvC Chaos - Snk vs Capcom
King of Fighters 2000
King of Fighters 2003
The Last Blade 2
Twinkle Star Sprites
Vampire Saviour 2 The Lord of Vampire
Waku Waku 7
World Heroes Perfect
XMen Children of the Atom
XMen vs Street Fighter


2df has arguably smoother connections yet does not have a spectating function like in ggpo.  What it does have is a rating system to collect stats from all your wins, toughest opponents etc.  2df also saves all your matches into very long replay files that you can view at any time off their site.

Also ever since ggpo has supported Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo it's been ridiculously popular.  2df even offers a ranking battle that happens every Sunday.  I haven't been to one but you can ask Raz about that or just check the website for info.  Me and Raz have been playing this shit like crazy and i'm going to try and garner interest from here because it is a great game and you should all play it with us sometime. 

At the very least it's not a game that you have to practice 8 hours a day to get good at, you can really just pick up and play ST, so long as you know what the special moves are. 

For those interested in learning ST, here are some pretty useful resources.

David Sirlin's videos teaching the basics up to the advanced stuff:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=d0cFs5mHQC4 Beginner
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jCapuhsOMcg  Intermediate
http://youtube.com/watch?v=t8dD3K2_Pz4  Advanced

Also here is a realllllly useful wiki for anything super turbo related (game mechanics related)

http://www.shoryuken.com/wiki/index.php/Super_Street_Fighter_2_Turbo

it's good when it's up!!

also here are some videos of me and raz playing on 2df, they are crappy quality because I was stupid and forced myself to produce through camtasia (bad idea!).

wonderful.... t.hawk.........

Man, I would play this more if the addon I needed to run the app worked in FF3RC2, but it doesn't.

So I have to use INTERNET EXPLORER.

Currently Supports everything GGPO does, except for maybe Dungeons and Dragons.

It actually supports MORE than GGPO does, including:

Marvel Super Heroes
Metal Slug
Nightwarriors - Darkstalkers Revenge
Ninja Master's Haoh Ninpo Cho
Real Bout Fatal Fury
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special
Samurai Shodown
Samurai Shodown IV
Samurai Shodown V
Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition
Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting
Street Fighter III 2nd Impact
Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo
Super Sundays
SvC Chaos - Snk vs Capcom
King of Fighters 2000
King of Fighters 2003
The Last Blade 2
Twinkle Star Sprites
Vampire Saviour 2 The Lord of Vampire
Waku Waku 7
World Heroes Perfect
XMen Children of the Atom
XMen vs Street Fighter

wait there's a super puzzle fighter 2 turbo?

anyways cool i was too lazy to just log into 2df thanks goat updated first post!

also I added some cool resources for anyone interested in learning how to play ST, like some good advanced shit that i don't even use probably!  If you're just gonna play casually the wiki is still a good read i'd just stay away from frame data and stuff like that.

2df is nothing but p2p wrapped in a place to meet up with people. if you already have those people, nFBA + p2p does the same stuff. GGPO and 2df aren't even in the same ballpark really

um, i'm not a ggpo fanboy I rarely use it but ok. it is nothing but p2p wrapped in a place to meet people, and yeah, that's what ggpo is too but ggpo uses advanced techniques that do a better job tbh. i've used both i have both i prefer ggpo. it's pretty easy to tell the difference when you play a wide variety of people, I haven't seen any bugs on GGPO (please list some. Third Strike doesn't count because it's a terrible game.), and I could care less about half the games 2DF, half the features, or the stat tracking and ranking. None of that bothers me since I play to play the game with another person, not to stroke my e-peen on some ranking board or whatever.

Here's how I put up with the crap to get a game going in GGPO:
-load it
-challenge
-play

so hard.

Here's how I put up with getting a game on 2DF
-load it
-challenge
-play

I just prefer GGPO over 2DF, and maybe next time you should research this kind of stuff instead of automatically assuming I am a fanboy. Damdai himself even said all it is is just p2p (similar to nFBA and p2p) with more features added on. I don't see how you could argue this. GGPO has better connections tho, because of it's techniques. I like both, I just prefer GGPO for when I'm playing one of its games (read: Garou or ST), and 2DF when I'm playing one of its games (read: Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo)

Also you forgot #4: GGPO in Capcom games & ArcSys games.

:P

Btw, I only heard about capcom possibly licensing ggpo, which is great seeing as hyper fighting was absolute garbage. Wheres your source for the arcsys games?

Ya well it isn't possibly licensing, they've paid to use it in multiple games, for sure.

By ArcSys, I mean BlazBlue, and their community dude on SRK has been dropping hints like all the time.

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showpost.php?p=5442427&postcount=1605

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showpost.php?p=5442828&postcount=1614

As for your bugs:
-Seems to be a problem with firewall/routers or something. I've only had to do this once with somebody.
-Never seen this. o_O
-This happens because people turn off GGPO so people can't spectate them, mostly.
-This is being looked into, and isn't much of a problem really.
-Don't multi challenge people.
-It's barely noticeable unless if a ton of people join, and you can prevent specs from joining if it bothers you.
-That's because of the chat bot, just relog in.
-Hit the AFK button when you're playing a game.

As for your paragraph after, that's what I meant by "it's just p2p". It's really just the p2p client, whereas GGPO isn't, it's handbuilt by ponder with his own special techniques. When you're playing foreign people in p2p it's really easy to notice the lag or frame loss, but in GGPO it's not noticeable so much. Also I've played people in my own location before and it hasn't stuttered ever, you might have an issue with firewall/routers there.

Anyways this isn't the topic to argue which one is better, so.

I like how both 2df and ggpo have their own modified verions of p2p code, but HL says ggpo is better because it uses "special techniques".

I like how both 2df and ggpo have their own modified verions of p2p code, but HL says ggpo is better because it uses "special techniques".

there's a difference here.

2DF uses the P2P Client's code but modified it to include a lobby and such.

Ponder wrote GGPO on his own...it's a p2p client (peer to peer) but it doesn't use modified code from the p2p client written by someone else. And yes, it is better because it uses special techniques. It hides the lag and makes it non-existent more efficiently.

i like how you don't get what i meant be this???? (i felt the need to make a witty come back)

Wow, that was definitely a witty comeback. Do explain these "special techniques" in more detail than just LESS LAG.

Wow, that was definitely a witty comeback. Do explain these "special techniques" in more detail than just LESS LAG.

I can't because I'm quite sure I would mess it up and don't know all the info/technical know how, that's something Ponder would have to explain. I just know the basics (prediction, hides lag, etc.)

The site says this:
 GGPO uses a peer-to-peer topology to run a complete copy of your game for each player, transmitting controller inputs over the network to keep these copies in sync. Each player's inputs are sent to their copy of the game without having to wait for their opponent's to arrive over the network.

If the simulations diverge, GGPO rolls back to the most recent accurate state, corrects the mistake, and jumps back to the current frame, all before the player can notice. This provides the illusion of lag-free gameplay.

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this is pdifferent from the p2p client, which actually does wait for both players inputs. it rly does depend on who you play and this is the stupidest off-topicness ever. Let's get back on topic instead of arguing which one is better bc they are both pretty good.