Hey, hey, Street Fighter
Keep on fighting, make the future brighter
"Round 1, Fight!"
— Announcer
These games (or, at least, series of games) are the most well-known games of the
Street Fighter franchise; when most people talk about
Street Fighter, chances are that they really mean
Street Fighter II.
Street Fighter II is one of the most innovative and popular video games of all time; it also brought the "tournament fighter" genre to the masses, and its influence has not waned in the twenty years since its debut.
After the release of the first
Street Fighter, the series practically exploded overnight with its 1991 sequel,
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. The list of available player characters was increased to eight: alongside the returning Ryu and Ken, six new characters — Chinese
female crime-fighter Chun-Li,
American soldier Guile, Russian wrestler and hero
* Zangief, Brazilian mutant Blanka, Indian yoga practitioner Dhalsim and Japanese sumo wrestler E. Honda — with entirely different normal and special attacks were tossed into the mix. The game also had four tough bosses encountered after the other characters were put down for the count:
Not-Really-Mike-Tyson boxer Balrog;
Spanish ninja/cage fighter Vega; a returning (and now-scarred) Sagat; and the game's final boss,
evil druglord M. Bison.
The game also (
accidentally) invented the fighting game definition of
Combos, which quickly became a staple of the genre. Fighting game style combos later crossed over into other genres of games.
While not the first
Fighting Game by any stretch,
Street Fighter II was basically the breakthrough game which
defined the genre, with many games borrowing concepts introduced by the game. At the time of its release (and the releases of the subsequent
Updated Rereleases), it was heralded as renovating the arcade scene (particularly in the U.S.) as people began lining up at
Street Fighter II machines to compete against each other. A
Fight Clubbing mentality (not in the
"blowing up buildings" sense, mind you) is alleged to have evolved at the time; machines that cost just over $1300 were making that amount back in less than an month.
1992's
Street Fighter II′: Champion Edition (or
Street Fighter II Dash in Japan) was the first in
a long line of
Updated Rereleases of
Street Fighter II, though at the time was intended to be the
last release. This installment allowed players to play as the four bosses
and offered
an alternate color scheme for each character, allowing players to
fight against each other using the same character (neither
Street Fighter or the original
Street Fighter II had this feature).
The second update —
Street Fighter II′: Hyper Fighting (
Street Fighter II Dash Turbo in Japan) — was released a few months after
Champion Edition as a countermeasure to bootleg
hacks that were created. The hacks which were incredibly unbalanced but featured faster play speed and vastly modified the behavior of many moves to the point of eccentricity.
Hyper Fighting introduced brand-new special moves,
differentiating the movesets of Ryu and Ken and adjusted character balance, in addition to the faster play speed for more intense fighting.
Street Fighter II was ported over to the Super NES, where it quickly became one of the system's bestsellers. Versions of
Champion Edition and
Hyper Fighting were also ported to the Sega Genesis and Super NES. While the Super NES version was dubbed
Street Fighter II Turbo and the Genesis version was dubbed
Street Fighter II′: Special Champion Edition, both ports included both the
Champion Edition and
Hyper Fighting versions of the game; the differing names were used only to satisfy contractual terms with Nintendo (who demanded exclusivity for
Street Fighter II Turbo).
The biggest expansion yet came with 1993's
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, which added four entirely new characters —
Bruce Lee Clone Fei Long, British soldier Cammy, Mexican chief Thunder Hawk and Jamaican
Dance Battler and music star Dee Jay — as well as more new attacks for the existing characters, upgraded sound quality, and even some new animations for existing characters (thanks to the switch to the newer and better CP System II hardware). The game speed was reduced to the same level as in the original game and
Champion Edition. Even though the speed increase was well received in many parts of the world, countries flooded with bootleg hacks assumed
Hyper Fighting was another hack. Thus the speed was dropped for
Super, which caused backlash from fans of
Hyper Fighting, and didn't really acquire its intended audience either.
The next upgrade in this series was
Super Street Fighter II Turbo: The Ultimate Championship (also known as
Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge in Japan). This game introduced Super Combos, heralded the debut of the ferocious Akuma as the
True Final Boss, and returned the faster game speed of
Hyper Fighting (this time with adjustable settings).
Super Turbo is a
bonafide classic that is considered to be one of the strongest fighting games of all time; it's still a common sight at
tournaments even today, especially in Japan.
All five previous versions of
Street Fighter II were later re-compiled into
Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition; this version of the game enabled players to fight as any version of any character of their choice (for example: if a player had ever dreamed of fighting a Super Turbo Ken with a Champion Edition Guile, they were now free to do so).
In 2008, Capcom released a remake of
Super Turbo on on
Xbox Live and the
PlayStation Network. This remake currently holds the longest title name in the series, which is
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Developed by Backbone Entertainment, with David Sirlin as the lead designer, this remake features rebalanced/tweaked characters, high definition sprites, all new character and stage artwork (courtesy of UDON Comics), online play, widescreen support, and a brand-new soundtrack created by
OverClocked ReMix.
Tropes Distinct To, Or Introduced In, This Game:
- Ascended Glitch: Combos and the red fireball were integrated into updates, and the combo system became a staple of the entire fighting game genre.
- Art Evolution: The graphics were revised with each subsequent installment, especially notable with the character portraits, which were modified in Champion Edition and completely replaced in New Challengers.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Subverted in that the sprites never show any harm (of course the ROM size would have been a lot larger), but then we see the "defeated" faces.
- Breakout Character: Arguably, Chun-Li as she has appeared in every sub-series following this one being the only one of out the World Warriors to do so baring Ryu and Ken. She is also required to appear in all Capcom vs. Whatever games.
- Capcom Sequel Stagnation: The most purest example, if not the Trope Namer.
- Cash Cow Franchise: A cash cow within a cash cow, the II series is the most well-known and successful sub-series in the Street Fighter franchise. The SNES port of the original remains Capcom's best-selling game.
- Color-Coded Multiplayer: Starting with Champion Edition and onward, two players could use the same character, with one player having an alternate color scheme assigned for their character.
- In Champion Edition, the player using a character's standard palette has his name tag displayed in yellow fonts and the one using the alternate palette is displayed in blue. The same thing applies in Hyper Fighting, except all the characters have a new default palette and the original ones are now used as the alternate palette (except for M. Bison, who keeps his original as a default, but still gets a new alternate palette).
- In New Challengers, each character has eight palette choices (the three palettes from the previous games and five new ones). This was due to Tournament Battle variants of the game which allowed up to eight players to compete at the same time by linking four cabinets together.
- In Super Turbo, all of the returning characters received a new default palette. The original palettes were now used by alternate versions who retained their moveset from New Challengers and these alternate versions also had a new alternate palette each.
- Combos: Created them, by accident.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: In The World Warrior, the computer doesn't need to "charge" moves like players do. For example, the computer loves to have Guile walk up to the opponent and deliver a Flash Kick after only ducking for a split second.
- The overseas versions of Super Turbo is notorious for having cheap AI.
- Dub-Induced Plot Hole: Most of the endings in the Street Fighter II series were translated almost accurately with a few exceptions. The characters' backstories were also embellished for the instruction manuals of the SNES and Genesis versions.
- Easy Mode Mockery: In the console versions, clearing the single player mode on one of the three easiest settings will not play the character's ending. Instead, there is a screen encouraging the player to try a harder difficulty.
- Follow the Leader: All the knockoffs, which did eventually lead From Clones To Genre with games like Virtua Fighter, Tekken, and Super Smash Bros.
- Funny Background Event: Chun-Li's stage has a man in the background choking a chicken, while Guile's stage has a female member of Guile's groundcrew who appears to be giving a handjob to one of her male comrades. This was removed in the SNES version.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Super Turbo Revival on the Game Boy Advance had a pretty terrible one wherein, if the player managed to reach Akuma in arcade mode, the game would lock up on a glitchy picture of him and upon resetting, all of their Time Attack and Survival records would be glitched beyond repair. On a less breaky scale, Balrog, Vega and M. Bison's win quotes are mixed up so that Balrog has Bison's quote, Vega has Balrog's and Bison has Vega's, quite the consequence of their name change.
- Iconic Outfit: Chun-Li's Qipao costume is so iconic that when she was given a new, more realistic outfit in Alpha, all subsequent games in the series provided the option for the player to use her old outfit.
- Idle Animation
- Mirror Match: A code in the SNES version of World Warrior enabled this when the original arcade version didn't. From Champion Edition and onward, all future games allowed players to match characters up with themselves.
- Perma Stubble: Ryu gets one from Champion Edition and onward.
- Personality Blood Types: The character biographies list blood types.
- Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: New Challengers replaced the original opening sequence with a new one where Ryu launches a Hadōken towards the screen.
- The Smurfette Principle: Chun-Li among the original twelve World Warriors and Cammy among the New Challengers.
- Versus Character Splash: The fight openers.
- Wasted Song
- With the exception of Super Turbo, all music in Street Fighter II started over with the new rounds, and while it didn't hurt the game as most themes were less than 99 seconds long, it was very noticeable with Ken's theme, where it was cut off before the last part of the theme was played out.
- Starting from the SNES port of World Warrior, the second loop of Sagat's theme has a different ending.
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