Street Fighter II gathered an eclectic assortment of fighters from around the world: a GI, a sumo wrestler, a yoga master...you get the idea. Strange, then, that all their techniques rely on the same punches and kicks with the same tradeoffs in force and speed.
Ryu and Ken are identical. Somewhat justified in that they are students of the same fighting discipline, but their personalities are polar opposites. Later on, the two grow more separate, each of them developing a few new moves and unique Supers.
Because it's not an example of this trope. This makes it sound like the characters don't actually matter, just because each person has two weak fast attacks, two strong slow attacks, and two middle ground attacks, but the simlarities end there. Each characters attacks are dramatically different. Zangief's fastest punch is barely faster than Vega's slowest one. That's not even getting into Dhalsim's massive range advantage.
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Because it's not an example of this trope. This makes it sound like the characters don't actually matter, just because each person has two weak fast attacks, two strong slow attacks, and two middle ground attacks, but the simlarities end there. Each characters attacks are dramatically different. Zangief's fastest punch is barely faster than Vega's slowest one. That's not even getting into Dhalsim's massive range advantage.