History Trivia / StreetFighterII

** [[RippedFromTheHeadlines Right off the heels of the Mike Tyson ear bite]], rumors persisted that you could become a CoolLoser by cancelling Boxer's Megaton Punch into a hidden Super Combo just as the punch lands. Rotate the controller full-circle twice and hit all three buttons and Boxer will lock his opponent in a headlock and start biting until [[VideoGame/FinalFight Edi. E]] busts Balrog and carts him off to jail, forfeiting the match. This became a AscendedMeme in ''Super Street Fighter IV'' when he received a new Ultra called Dirty Bull which, before ''AE'', was two full-circle controller rotations and involves illegal boxing maneuvers such as sucker punching, stepping on someone's foot, and clinching.

* ActingForTwo: With the exception of Chun-Li, everyone in the cast of the original ''II'' had the same voice set. ''Super'' would start giving everyone there own voice actor.

** She was originally designed by Akira Yasuda, and when questioned by composer Yoko Shimomura why her thighs were so big, he told her "You just don't understand the appeal" and started ''explaining his sexual fetish to her'', which she said made her rather uncomfortable.

* NonDubbedGrunts: When playing with the HD Remix filter in ''Ultra'', the characters reuse their Japanese voice acting from ''VideoGame/StreetFighterIV''. In the case of Evil Ryu and Violent Ken, they reuse the voice clips from their regular selves with a demonic filter applied.[[note]]This is particularly weird for Evil Ryu, who had a separate set of clips from Ryu in ''IV'', but was most likely done to give consistency with Violent Ken.[[/note]] A non-voice example is in the first-person "Way of the Hadou" mode, which reuses 3D models from ''IV''.

* DifficultyByRegion: For whatever reason, the AI in the US version of ''Super Turbo'' had the AI ratcheted up in difficulty to [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard outright cheap]] levels. This extended to Hyper, too.

** "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance!" This mistranslation of Ryu's winquote ("You have no chance against my Shoryuken!") resulted in a long-standing rumor that Sheng Long was a SecretCharacter or BonusBoss. ''EGM''[='=]s running of an April Fools' Day hoax article purporting to give instructions on how to fight him only fueled it further, but also resulted in the birth of Akuma and indirectly, Gouken. The SNES ports changed the mistranslated line from "Sheng Long" to "my Dragon Punch", and ''Ultra'' further changed it to "my Shoryuken".

* TalkingToHimself: The laziest case in the series. Everyone not named Chun-Li had the same voice set. This was mostly fixed in ''Super''.

* FollowTheLeader: All the knockoffs caused the genre to turn into clones of the game, which inverted FromClonesToGenre, until games like ''VideoGame/VirtuaFighter'', ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'', and ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' brought variance back to the genre. Funny enough, ''Street Fighter'' characters (often Ryu himself either accompanied by Chun-Li or Ken) have made it a habit of showing up [[VideoGame/CapcomVs to pick fights with many of these characters]].

* NamesTheSame:
** Chun-Li's Super/Ultra Combo, the Housenka, is also the name of one of Jun Kazama's moves from ''[[VideoGame/{{Tekken}} Tekken Tag Tournament 2]]''.
** Fei Long's Rekkaken shares its name with [[VideoGame/Onimusha2SamuraisDestiny a fire broadsword used by Jubei Yagyu]].
** Killer Bee, Cammy's former Shadaloo codename, is also the name of [[Manga/{{Naruto}} A's younger brother]].

** ''Super Turbo'' had several different subtitles before its final name. Some early promos had it listed as ''Super Street Fighter II: The Ultimate Championship''.

*** Projectiles were originally planned to be able to duck under.

** There was a ''Street Fighter 2'' in 1988, called ''VideoGame/HumanKillingMachine: Street Fighter 2'' that was developed by Tiertex, who had developed the PC port of the first game and pitched it to Capcom. The game was single-player only, had players fighting enemies that included a dog and a bull, and whose final boss was completely glitched (and never patched).
** Leftover data in ''Super Street Fighter II Turbo'' suggests that there was going to be a round robin tournament variant dubbed "The League Battle", where players would fight up to nine rounds against others.

** The original prototype control scheme involved pads the player hit that would determine the strength of attacks depending on how hard the player hit it.

** "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance!" This mistranslation of Ryu's winquote ("You have no chance against my Shoryuken!") resulted in a long-standing rumor that Sheng Long was a SecretCharacter or BonusBoss. ''EGM''[='=]s running of an April Fools' Day hoax article purporting to give instructions on how to fight him only fueled it further, but also resulted in the birth of Akuma and indirectly, Gouken. The SNES ports changed the mistranslated line from "Sheng Long" to "my Dragon Punch", and ''Ultra'' further changed it to "my Shoryuken".
** [[RippedFromTheHeadlines Right off the heels of the Mike Tyson ear bite]], rumors persisted that you could become a CoolLoser by cancelling Boxer's Megaton Punch into a hidden Super Combo just as the punch lands. Rotate the controller full-circle twice and hit all three buttons and Boxer will lock his opponent in a headlock and start biting until [[VideoGame/FinalFight Edi. E]] busts Balrog and carts him off to jail, forfeiting the match. This became a AscendedMeme in ''Super Street Fighter IV'' when he received a new Ultra called Dirty Bull which, before ''AE'', was two full-circle controller rotations and involves illegal boxing maneuvers such as sucker punching, stepping on someone's foot, and clinching.
* PortOverdosed: Ported to every platform in existence at the time, and continually re-released since then. Even the ZX Spectrum got a version.

* TalkingToHimself: The laziest case in the series. Everyone not named Chun-Li had the same voice set. This was mostly fixed in ''Super''.
* ThrowItIn: Since Dhalsim and Guile were the only members of the cast to have a family at the time, Dhalsim's son Datta and Guile's daughter Amy were made pen pals, a plot point that resurfaces in ''IV'' (Datta hears from Amy that Guile has left on a mission, informing Dhalsim that [[Theatre/{{Hamlet}} there's something rotten in the state of Denmark]]).

** Originally, the game was going to be ''Street Fighter '89'', which became ''VideoGame/FinalFight'' due to the RAM chip shortage.
** Ryu and Ken were not part of the original eight combatants; among them was the prototype for Chun-Li, Zhi Li, whose murdered father would have been Gen from the first game. Vega also started off as a knight.

** Originally, the game would have had stage hazards, such as fighting on a train and having to dodge obstacles, as well as the ability to pick up and use weapons.
** [[http://fightingstreet.com/folders/artworkfolder/artworkpages/sf_art_pages/sfii_art_pages/sfiiww_art_pages/sfiiww_bwart2.html Zangief was originally going to go by the name of Vodka Golbalsky]]. He was also going to be replaced in the early stages of ''II'' by [[VideoGame/FinalFight Mike Haggar]], but Capcom decided against it due to a quarter of the original roster already comprised of American fighters.[[note]]Ken, Guile and Balrog (Boxer).[[/note]]

** Initially the developers wanted to have Chun-Li move faster and string attacks quicker than the males but have a much smaller health bar to compensate. While in the final game she has just as much HP as the males, later games would be infamous for the females having less on average health than and Chun herself would often be on the lower end of health.

** The full title of ''Street Fighter II′: Champion Edition'' in Japan is ''Street Fighter II Dash: Champion Edition''. However, the word "Dash" is not spelled out, but represented on the game's logo by a prime mark (an apostrophe-like symbol used in mathematics to indicate derivatives). The prime symbol still appears on the title screen in the overseas versions, but Capcom USA didn't [[LostInTranslation understand its significance]] and simply referred to the game as ''Street Fighter II: Champion Edition'' on promotional materials.
** ''Street Fighter II′: Hyper Fighting'' is known as ''Street Fighter II Dash Turbo: Hyper Fighting'' in Japan (the word "Turbo" did not appear in the overseas versions). The SNES version is simply known as ''Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting'' in all regions.
** The first of the two Mega Drive/Genesis ports is known as ''Street Fighter II Dash Plus: Champion Edition'' in Japan and ''Street Fighter II′: Special Champion Edition'' everywhere else.

* AscendedFanon: How Akuma was conceived. ''Electronic Gaming Monthly'' created Sheng Long (the would-be [[VideoGame/StreetFighterIV Gouken]]) for one of their infamous April Fools' articles and caused fans to swarm to arcades to find him. Capcom USA ended up calling Capcom of Japan about this secret boss character, and so they decided to go with it and add in Akuma. The method to fight him in ''Super Street Fighter II Turbo'' is a greatly simplified version of the hilariously impossible instructions in the joke article.
* BadExportForYou: The localization for ''Super Street Fighter II Turbo'' removes all text related to Akuma (i.e. his battle introduction upon fulfilling the requirement to fight him, his win quotes, and both variants of his ending).

* KillerApp: The [[UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem SNES]] version of ''Street Fighter II: The World Warrior'' sold 6.3 million copies, making it the system's bestselling third party game, while ''Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting'' sold 4.1 million copies. Combine those two together, and you get a whopping ''10.4 million copies sold''. And if you count the sales of ''Super Street Fighter II'', which sold 2 million copies, then it brings it up to 12.4 million copies, making ''Street Fighter II'' and all of its re-releases ''the second-bestselling game on the SNES''. The only game to sell more was ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'', at over 20 million copies. Anticipation for the console port was so high that, when the SNES version was released a year later, it gave {{Creator/Nintendo}} a tremendous boost in the UsefulNotes/ConsoleWars after it had been trailing behind the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis in the NA region; it got to the point where it was sold as a console bundle in Europe.
* LifeImitatesArt: There are a lot of Website/YouTube videos of people trying to imitating the famous car-breaking bonus stage. While any RealLife martial artist can do this, it needs more than 60 seconds just to being able to wreck a car using regular fighting techniques and it's not as cool at it sounds.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: Zangief dances with Mikhail Gorbachev in his ending for ''II''. 'Nuff said. Also his nationality was USSR, which collapsed in the same year the game was originally released.