Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight is an early Street Fighter Spin-Off released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990, just one year before Street Fighter II would turn the series into a household name. Set in the distant and terrifying future of the year 2010, 2010 deviates completely from the martial arts tournament format of the original Street Fighter. Instead, it is a futuristic action game with emphasis on boss battles.
25 years after winning the first Street Fighter tournament, Ken has since become a gifted scientist, developing a new substance called Cyboplasm that gives subjects superhuman strength. When the Cyboplasm is stolen and Ken's lab partner Troy is murdered, Ken decides to take justice into his own hands by donning a cybernetic "Bionics" suit equipped with an inter dimensional transporter, allowing Ken to pursue Troy's killer by tracking down traces of the Cyboplasm left behind across five different planets.
While considered something of a joke among Street Fighter purists due to its tenuous ties to the rest of the series and its now dated vision of the future, 2010 nonetheless has a cult following among NES players and fans of 2D action games due to its detailed graphics, killer soundtrack, and unique game mechanics. And, in spite of its connection to its namesake being In Name Only, you can find information on this game's two main characters in this subpage of the Street Fighter franchise character index.
Street Fighter 2010 features examples of:
- Big Bad Friend: The final boss is Troy himself, who secretly implanted traces of the Cyboplasm into Ken's body and then faked his death in order to test out Ken's abilities.
- Boss Game: One of the few 8-bit examples in this Sub-Genre.
- Canon Discontinuity: If this was ever canonical to the Street Fighter games at any point, it isn't anymore, or at the very least Capcom forgot about it.
- Continuing is Painful: Ken can increase his shooting range by picking up power-ups. Dying once will revert him back to his default range. Some of the power-ups, namely the flip-shield and option capsules, are also pretty hard to come by, as they only appear in certain stages.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: To shoot diagonally upwards, the player must press down while shooting rather than up-left or up-right like in most action shooters.
- Dub Name Change: The Japanese version changes Ken's name to Kevin and turns him into a completely different character. Contrary to popular belief, the English version is actually the original story and the Japanese version is the localization.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Was released a year before Street Fighter II started the whole fighting game boom.
- In Name Only: Those expecting a futuristic competitive fighting game will be disappointed.
- Meaningless Lives: Continues are unlimited, you lose all your powerups if you even die once, and you restart the same stage no matter what. The game doesn't even have a scoring system to reset when you run out of lives. You can earn extra lives, but since a Game Over is the same punishment as a life lost, they're worthless. It would make far more sense if you kept your powerups between lives but lost them all with a Game Over.
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Nintendo Hard: Having unlimited continues doesn't make the game much easier. You have a very strict timer, the bosses are difficult, and it doesn't take many hits to die. The final stage of the game ramps this up to eleven, with a boss rush against five bosses featuring only two possible powerup levels to earn, all within a very strict time limit. Unless you're a master of the game, if you can do this at all it will take you hours, or even days of repeat attempts to finally get through. - Ret-Canon: Kevin Straker and Dr. Jose (aka Ken and Troy) have profiles on the Street Fighter V Shadaloo CRI website, although it's not clear how this fits in with Street Fighter continuity.
- Timed Mission: It's a pretty tight timer at that, what with the somewhat confusing and often slow gameplay.
- Unstable Equilibrium: You lose your upgrades when killed, so if you can manage a No Death Run, Ken can abuse his screen clearing attacks and invincible backflips.
- We Can Rule Together: The final boss, Troy, makes this offer to Ken word-by-word. Ken, of course, refuses.
- Zeerust: Remember back in 2010 when our Earth was being populated by space aliens and mutants, people could travel to other planets by using inter dimensional warp gates? No? Neither do we.
