Game Discussion of the Week: Street Fighter II

It's a bit clunky and unbalanced by today's standards, but I still give it a 5 for revolutionizing the fighting game genre.

I read something very interesting in the Street Fighter book: One of the programmers went to check out a glitch with one of the arcades somewhere. It was running too fast (about 30% faster). The arcade was made by a pirate version. The programmer hated it, but when he tried the original again he couldn't stand it as it felt too slow. This sparked the idea of creating Street Fighter II: Turbo. Pretty cool I thought.

Street Fighter II updates consist of:

- Street Fighter II The World Warrior [2/1991]
- Street Fighter II Champion Edition [3/1992]
- Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting [12/1992]
- Super Street Fighter II The New Challengers [9/1993]
- Super Street Fighter II Turbo [2/1994]
- Hyper Street Fighter II [12/2003]
- Super Street Fighter II Turbo Remix [11/2008]
- Ultra Street Fighter II The Final Challengers [5/2017]

The only reason in my own personal opinion why Zero 1 wasn't ported to the Super Nintendo, but Zero 2 was (Alpha 2), is because of the "2", Street Fighter II had such a reception that it was one of the biggest system sellers, and even though the Alpha games are part of the Marvel Vs. Capcom lineage, my guess is they wanted to mix them because consumers were going aftet that "2".

The thing is that Street Fighter II is not only the most influential game for the fighting scene as it pretty much sets up all the foundations of the genre, it is also widly regarded as one of the most relevant and important best games of all time.

The game was so well received that Hollywood felt compelled for the opportunity to make a movie about it featuring the (at the time) current action super star Jean-Claude Van Damme. The game was so popular that the movie was a box office hit despite that it was not critically well received.

It is the best selling game for Capcom, accounting how huge the name Capcom is in the industry, we all know who Capcom is, and out of that amazing library, this is at the top, only Resident Evil 5 has sold more if we count multiple systems, except that counting one single platform Street Fighter II wins. Capcom claims that the game alone has generated for them more than 10 billion dollars in gross revenue, also making it one of the best selling games of all time.

That's how much impact this game has had, and that is just for consoles without counting the stellar success it has on the arcade scene alone. It has inspired entire generations to organzie tournaments around the world, and we currently live in a world where Street Fighter best players are self made millionaires living of playing the series that has tournaments broadcasted on ESPN and online around the world.

In realistic terms if this is not a 5 out of 5 nothing is. It is amazing to me that even on the lastest console (Nintendo Switch), the game is still coming out with a new iteration and still ranking as one of the system's best sellers, almost 30 years after its initial release.



[^^^ Singing star Kylie Minogue portraying Cammy for Street Fighter in 1994.]

It's okay overall for it's age, the later versions are good enough but the earlier versions are very lackluster with an abysmal character roster of really uninteresting characters and the one female it has is weird looking with a bra on her head.. even the bigger roster versions that came later didn't add much to the mix, backgrounds are okay, sound is okay but very distorted in the older versions, gameplay is extremely bareboned, basic kicks and punches, one attack per character that stands out a little, a fireball here, some fast kicking there, that's about it.

Had the characters and visual design been more interesting than generic karate guys and a woman with a bra on her head I probably would've cared more, as it is it's an old 2D fighting game that wasn't good when it was new and becuase they've milked it so insanely much and still do on a regular basis it's become one of the most overrated games of all time.

It's not that it's bad, it's just painfully average, unappealing, mediocre and lackluster all across the board yet raised to the skies by it's fans as if it's not only better than average but one of, if not THEE best fighting game of all time, which is annoying to see and hear constantly when you're well aware of how the game doesn't even begin to live up to that reputation.

I didn't get it back then and it makes a lot less sense now with countless better games that wildly outperforms it in every way and has actively done so since the time it was released.

I'm not saying you can't enjoy it, I'm just saying if you can find enjoyment in such a shallow and unremarkable title then maybe give some good games a try some day and start having a really good time, I dunno, just a thought, to each their own.

What can I say about this game (and it's series of updates) that hasn't already been said ITT? I can at least disagree with the idea that SFII is clunky since I think it hasn't aged much in the control department. The only problem I can think of is the relatively low sprite count for animations (compared to later fighting games) which can mean a bit less visual feedback during gameplay.

The iteration of SFII I find myself coming back to the most is Hyper Street Fighter 2 on the PS2 SF anniversary collection. The game is inexplicably harder than any other version of SFII I've played for some reason, it's got Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 levels of AI. It also expands on the "old character" feature from SSF2T and lets you pick a version of the character from any iteration of SF2 they appeared in. To top it all off it allows you to pick between the CPS1 (SFII-Hyper Fighting), CPS2(SSF2-onwards), and arranged soundtracks, AND it comes with the SF2 movie and SF3 3rd Strike on the same game disk. I can't remember the last time Capcom's been so generous.

I think there's something to be said for SFII's relative simplicity. The game remains one of the most accessible fighters for newcomers. Despite that, if you take a look at how people play the game on a higher level, it also remains one of the most strategic and intense fighters out there, with the vast majority of characters being viable for tournament use(even after being horrifically broken by the pros who've been playing it for 20+ years). SF2 relies on an actual solid roster of characters rather than a hodgepodge of 100 half-baked characters and a laundry list of convoluted mechanics. This makes it easy for a newcomer to wrap their head around and get comfortable, but it also doesn't cut them much slack. I think SFII gets the "easy to learn but hard to master" idea right, moreso than any other game that even involves fighting.

Overall, it's pretty good but I think we can all agree the series started going downhill after Street Fighter 1.

Street Fighter has been having tournaments ever since II came out. If balance was a major issue, everyone would be playing the same character. But they don't, do they?