Fighting games have come a long way since Karate Champ back in 1984. You can get just about any major fighting game on a home console, or on a handheld. From watered down home ports on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis to downright unplayable ports on the original Game Boy and Game Gear, things have changed dramatically for console and handheld fighting games. While a few fighting game franchises still need to make the jump to online on home consoles, they're fairly solid as a whole. However, handheld fighters are another matter.

Many of you probably own one of Capcom's PlayStation Portable fighting games, and Namco recently announced that Tekken: Dark Resurrection will be heading to the PSP as well. But let me ask you this; how many of you actually have fun playing those fighters on your PSP? How many of you actually feel that they were worth the $40 you spent on them? It can be difficult justifying a $40 action or platformer purchase on the PSP, but a fighting game has the least amount of replay value in terms of the single player experience.

It's no secret that fighting games were designed with a heavy focus on multiplayer. While Namco's upcoming Tekken PSP title will have wireless multiplayer, that still doesn't solve the issue at hand. Casual players may have no problem with handheld fighters, but they are the ones with the biggest problem spending $40 on a game they'll hardly get any playtime out of. Meanwhile the hardcore fighting game fans have all kinds of complaints when it comes to handheld fighters.

Let's take a look at the PlayStation Portable d-pad. You absolutely can not play a fighting game with any kind of precision using the analog stick, so that's completely out of the question. But if you switch over to the d-pad, you won't be much better off. Just like the horrid Xbox 360 d-pad (and by horrid I mean it's annoying to use even for menu navigation), the PSP d-pad is by no means precise. You can get away with the loose control in a game that doesn't require you to hit a specific direction within one frame of animation of the next input.

Tekken is the perfect example here. Some of the attacks in Tekken: Dark Resurrection require directional inputs within a one frame window. How are you supposed to do that on the PlayStation Portable d-pad? For one, you're already focused on leveraging the handheld with both hands. Most high level Tekken pad players balance the PS2 controller on their leg in order to perform these attacks with higher precision. To take it up a level, many high level Tekken players consider the pad to be inferior to the arcade stick. Sorry, but there's no way to use a quality arcade stick on the PSP.

Now again, don't get me wrong. The PlayStation Portable fighting games are fun to play if you're okay with a quick single player experience. But I don't know very many people who are okay with spending $40 on a game that they'll get minimal single player enjoyment out of. Compare Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower to Untold Legends: The Warrior's Code. Don't say it's not fair comparing a fighting game to an Action RPG because they both cost the same amount and they will both be played primarily as single player games. Darkstalkers will give you maybe 10 hours of single player experience before you've done everything the title offers. Meanwhile, Untold Legends will give you over 20 hours with just one character.

So what's the point of this article? Simply to point out that instead of focusing on the PlayStation Portable market where fighting games don't have anywhere near the value they would have on a home console, companies should instead focus on online gaming. Tekken: Dark Resurrection will have wireless multiplayer on the PSP, but Tekken 5 doesn't have online multiplayer on the PlayStation 2? Something seems wrong there. Capcom can release classic fighters in a compilation on the PSP, but they only give us Street Fighter II on Xbox Live Arcade? How about showing us a little next generation console love on those classics Capcom? Oh, and some XBLA Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo would also be nice.