But dial-a-combo stuff was really only prevalent in the Killer Instinct series and Mortal Kombat. I’m not sure Killer Instinct really had any influence on what the Japanese developers were doing.
For the most part the Japanese seemed to completely ignore what the American developers were doing. Even sometimes to their own detriment. Like, from an aesthetic standpoint, I think Street Fighter really hurt themselves when they started dropping the blood and stuff they had in Street Fighter 2. They weren’t known for violence like Mortal Kombat was, but it was there in their biggest game, it was a cool little aspect people liked, and the violence of MK was something MK’s larger casual audience was more into than the actual gameplay of MK.
I did always find it funny that Mortal Kombat: Deception basically had (a crappy version of) Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo as an extra, and that was a selling point, but Capcom never got the bright idea of putting a new Puzzle Fighter in a fighting game as an extra.
Could be, it seemed to me that it was picking up more than it may have been, but that's possibly anecdotal since I picked up that Injustice superhero fighter when it came out and was irked by the dial a combo crap I'd forgotten about.
It just struck me that the SF2 style of game was generally dying. SF3 was cool, but SF4 and 5 felt completely different and not in a good way, imo. Virtua Fighter (not SF2 style, just another fighter that I loved) died years ago. Soul Calibur's been fairly crap for ages... Guilty Gear is fun, but didn't have the same appeal to me as SF. BlazBlue, not only do I not know what's happening thematically, I don't know what the characters even are and it doesn't have the rock thing like GG to help ease that. Etc.
I'm an old man and I miss my toys, ok!?