period, the fighting game was the dominant genre in competitive video gaming, with enthusiasts popularly attending arcades in order to find human opponents. The genre was also very popular on home consoles. At the beginning of 1996, GamePro (a magazine devoted chiefly to home console and handheld gaming) reported that for the last several years, their reader surveys had consistently seen 4 out of 5 respondents name fighting games as their favorite genre. In the late 1990s, traditional 2D fighting games began to decline in popularity, with specific franchises falling into difficulty. Electronic Gaming Monthly awarded the excess of fighting games the "Most Appalling Trend" award of 1995. Although the release of Street Fighter EX introduced 3D graphics to the series, both it and Street Fighter: The Movie flopped in arcades. While a home video game also titled Street Fighter: The Movie was released for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, it was not a port, but a separately produced game based on the same premise. Capcom released Street Fighter III in 1997 which featured improved 2D visuals, but was also unable to match the impact of earlier games. Excitement stirred in Japan over Virtua Fighter 3 in arcades, and Sega eventually ported the game to its Dreamcast console. Meanwhile, SNK released several fighting games on their Neo Geo platform, including Samurai Shodown II in 1994, Real Bout Fatal Fury in 1995, The Last Blade in 1997, and annual updates to their The King of Fighters franchise. Garou: Mark of the Wolves from 1999 (part of the Fatal Fury series) was considered one of SNK's last great games; the company announced that it would close its doors in late 2001. Electronic Gaming Monthly reported that in 1996, U.S. gamers spent nearly $150 million on current generation fighting games, and in Japan, fighting games accounted for over 80% of video game sales. The fighting game genre continued to evolve, with several strong 3D fighting games emerging in the late 1990s. Namco's Tekken (released in arcades in 1994 and on the PlayStation in 1995) proved critical to the PlayStation's early success, with its sequels also becoming some of the console's most important titles. The Soul series of weapon-based fighting games also achieved considerable critical success, beginning with 1995's Soul Edge (known as Soul Blade outside Japan) to Soulcalibur VI in 2018. Tecmo released Dead or Alive in the arcades in 1996, porting it