lol dude.. I think you have no idea what you're saying. Maybe snk wasnt first in america, but japan they were. snk is still very big in japan to this day. capcom wasnt a pioneer in fighting games or anything, they just furthered things along. With all honesty though, 2d fighting games suck these days. Same stupid hadoken motion, counters, tech hits, blah blah blah.. soul calibur freshened all of that up. Still.. just the same shit in a different wrapper
heres a link for some character design funnies
http://www.gamegen.com/fightgen/funnies/separated/otherchars.html
the problem is just people arent creative anymore... noone is original or had any effort put into thier design (the characters I mean) all spikey headed silver haired long black coat and big sword retards... I think I covered every fighting game character description with just that one sentence... so sad