Street Fighter II / YMMV

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Accidental Innuendo: One of T. Hawk's victory lines in Super is "My totem is too great for your desperate fighting techniques!" which gets a pervier meaning if you think of "totem" as a euphemism for a Gag Penis.
Americans Hate Tingle: T. Hawk isn't well liked by Mexican players as he is depicted as a Native American despite being identified as Mexican in nationality and birth.
And You Thought It Would Fail: Ultra Street Fighter II was widely derided before its release due to its Nintendo Switch exclusivity, the addition of a gimmicky first-person mode, and especially for being released and priced $40 despite only adding two characters (particularly since the previous HD Remix release was digital-only and only $15). On its release, it garnered mixed reviews for all stated reasons. Surprisingly, Capcom called it a "smash hit" in a financial report, and because of it, the company pledged to support the Switch with more games.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Not in the II series itself (unless you count oddities like Zangief doing That Russian Squat Dance with Mikhail Gorbachev or Chun-Li merrily going back to the life of a "young single girl" moments after paying her respects to her father), but rather a tie-in 3D simulation ride. Whereas the goal of the attraction is to help the heroes stop Bison from escaping the video game and destroying the real world, the ride features various random fights between characters (Fei Long vs. T. Hawk, E. Honda vs. Zangief, Dhalsim vs. Blanka) that have nothing to do with stopping Bison, not unlike the Zangief/Blanka cage match in The Animated Movie. And that's before you get to a showdown with a 20-foot-tall Bison, complete with Ryu yelling, "I'm gonna rip your heart out!"
Broken Base: Ultra Street Fighter II. Some welcome the chance for a new generation to experience Street Fighter II all over again. The more hardcore competitive crowd, however, don't like the changes that were made to the system, such as throw teching, the removal of stored supers, etc. Then there are fans who would've rather seen whatever resources that went into Ultra instead being used to address the numerous grievances that continue to plague Street Fighter V and/or aren't particularly wowed by the fact that the "Final Challengers" are Palette Swaps of Ryu and Ken.
Common Knowledge: Many Western fans believe that Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu drags the victim to Hell where their soul is attacked by demons; the more sinful they are, the more they're hurt (therefore, a pure-hearted person would be unaffected). However, this is just a vestige of both Capcom USA's Bowdlerization that Akuma was possessed by a demon rather than being an extreme Blood Knight, as well as assumptions caused by the literal translation of the attack's name: "Instant Hell Murder" or "Blinking Prison Killer". The Shun Goku Satsu is simply a barrage of incredibly fast physical attacks, as seen with the Street Fighter V iteration.
Contested Sequel: On one hand, Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers brought Cammy, Thunder Hawk, Dee Jay and Fei Long to the table, extra polish and balance tweaks plus a few new moves, along with a massive animation and art upgrade compared to the prior versions with a more anime-style design. On the other hand, coming off the heels of Hyper Fighting, the older release had Turbo modes and a much, much faster gameplay pace by comparison, which caused many to stick to Hyper Fighting. It says a lot that Super Turbo pretty much existed to not only polish this release further but re-implement the faster speeds of its predecessor to become what many consider the definitive (and competitively viable) version of II.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Zangief is always a fan favorite, even though he's never been in a leading role. Fans clamor for him whenever he's missing from a game, to the point that neither Ken nor Akuma made it to the Marvel vs. Capcom roster, but the Red Cyclone did!
- Vega is very popular. He even placed 10th on IGN's Top 25 Street Fighter Characters list.
- Cammy was the first of the "New Challengers" to be present in most later games, and the only one other than Akuma to be involved in early crossovers. She even made a cameo in Wreck-It Ralph, albeit wearing something more modest,^note along with M. Bison, Chun-Li and Zangief.
- Not to the extent of Cammy, but Fei Long was the only other "New Challenger" to make it to the console ports of Street Fighter IV. It helps that many players consider him an awesome Bruce Lee Clone.
Ethnic Scrappy: T. Hawk among Mexicans, likely due to him not having any Mexican traits (he's a Native American, and is far more evocative of the native tribes of the American West and Great Plains than the indigenous tribes found in Mexico). The fact that he's only Mexican because there were already an abundance of American characters doesn't help matters.
Even Better Sequel:
- II was so good that I is barely ever acknowledged nowadays.
- Amidst the myriad of Capcom Sequel Stagnation, there's two competitive versions of II: Hyper Fighting (also just known as Turbo in Japan and home releases), and Super Turbo. The former had enough balance changes and its titular turbo speed modes to become the definitive edition of the CPS-1 era of Street Fighter II, whereas the latter took everything Super: The New Challengers introduced and brought back the turbo modes on top of adding in Super Combos, Akuma, and that extra last touch of polish for what some still consider to be the best game in the series.
Evil Is Cool:
- Bison. Must be the uniform.
- While not as evil as Bison, the three bosses (Vega, Balrog, and Sagat) get this as well, Vega in particular.
Fan Nickname:
- Due to Dub Name Change, fan communities (particularly in tournaments between Japanese and overseas players) have adopted a set of nicknames for characters to avoid confusion.
  - M. Bison to Balrog (Boxer)
  - Balrog to Vega (Claw)
  - Vega to M. Bison (Dictator)
- E. Honda's Sumo Squat is also known as the "Ass Slam".
- Mexican fans calls E. Honda as "Porky" or "Super Porky" (after a famous Mexican wrestler) since Honda is fat and his ramming headbutt attack (the famous "Dosukoi") sounds like he's saying "oink oink" instead in Spanish.
- Guile is "The Family Man".
- "The First Lady of Gaming" for Chun-Li, which became canon as of Street Fighter IV. Also "Thunder Thighs" and Chunbuns.
- More like fan abbreviation, but many fans just call Zangief "Gief". Also "Blue/Green hand" for his Banishing Flat.
- Balrog has "Rog" and "Barlog", the latter coming from a misspelling on some of the game's own cabinets.
- Vega has "Matador", "Bull Fighter", "Cage Fighter", and "Assassin".
- "Bruce" for Fei Long.
- The announcer for Super and Super Turbo is referred to as "Big Bird".
Fanon: Some fans wonder if Ken's Theme was originally supposed to play on Guile's stage but was swapped at the last minute because it was too on-the-nose as a Top Gun song parody.
Fountain of Memes:
- Guile. Just check the page.
- Bison qualifies in a roundabout manner, thanks to his hamminess in the movie and the American Animated Adaptation. See Memetic Badass below and the Memes page.
Franchise Original Sin:
- Street Fighter III was criticized for bringing back very few characters from this game and mostly replacing the cast with newcomers. Thing is, this game did it first, with very few returning characters from the original Street Fighter. The main difference was that very few had played the first game, while Street Fighter II made the series famous.
- In another effort to make itself a notable update from the previous two entries, Hyper Fighting introduced new alternate colors for each character, but made them the default colors instead of their canonical colors, with the CPU opponents stuck with these colors and the endings not even bothering to make them more consistent. Capcom had a nasty habit of toying with this further in later games such as Super Turbo (which not only locks the original colors behind cheat codes, but also downgrades them into not being able to use super combos), Alpha 2 Gold, Alpha 3, and the first two Street Fighter III games. It wasn't just exclusive to the Street Fighter games, as three of the five Darkstalkers games and both Muscle Bomber Duo and Super Muscle Bomber were also guilty of this.
Game-Breaker:
- World Warrior Guile is considered in a league all his own, and is THE single most broken version of the character to ever exist. In a game where the concept of the Mirror Match did not exist yet, Guile stood out as having the best capabilities of any of the original 8 world warriors. His Sonic Boom controlled ridiculous amounts of space, and Guile himself had an arsenal of counters for people trying to avoid it. His Flash Kick was not only a strong anti-air, but as damage was randomized it could potentially rip the opponent's lifebar apart. He had normals with ridiculous range and even hitboxes. He was one of the first characters to have a true overhead with his Upside Down Kick. And those aren't even what makes Guile god tier in World Warrior. No, what truly sets him apart is the amount of broken things he can do, including glitches. His Four Fierce Combo (jumping HP, close HP, HP Sonic Boom, far standing HP) could instantly dizzy an opponent and resulted in a touch of death. If you wanted to really style on the opponent, he could also touch of death with just six jabs. And to top it all off, through the use of input manipulation, he could perform what is now known as the Magic Throw, which let him throw an opponent from anywhere on the screen, even right out of their own movements or attacks. The Magic Throw, as well as other input manipulations, could result in other things like the infamous Handcuffs glitch, making Guile himself invincible, and potentially soft-locking or even outright resetting the entire game.
- Champion Edition M. Bison/Dictator remains the strongest version of the character to this day. When he first debuted as playable, Bison's modifications from his original CPU boss incarnation resulted in him being very overtuned. His Psycho Crusher forced the opponent into blockstun for a whopping SIX HITS and had a random chance of being a crossup, meaning the opponent would have to block in the opposite direction to avoid getting hit. But because they are already in blockstun and are naturally inclined to keep blocking, it was outright impossible to tell which hit would result in a crossup, forcing the helpless opponent to take full damage from it. In adition, he had ridiculous combo potential with his Scissor Kick which led to touch of death setups and even blockstun infinites due to Bison's ridiculous frame advantage. That's right: you could literally chip the opponent to death with them having zero chance to retaliate without getting hit.
- In Super Turbo and its successor HD Remix, Akuma is banned for having ridiculously overpowered combos and juggles. He was eventually balanced out in later games, with his most balanced form so far being in IV.
- Also in Super Turbo, Old Sagat. Sure, he doesn't have a super, but it doesn't matter when he can throw out Tiger Shots about as fast as he can say them, making him a hilariously easy and braindead zoner that can't be outclassed in his field. His banning and softbanning is one of the more famous ones in the community, because the consensus is that if he were legal, then several characters in the roster would suddenly become nonviable.
- Ultra brings Evil Ryu and Violent Ken into the mix, two characters so powerful they can stun with a 3 hit combo strong enough to take off 75% of the opponent's health. It also adds Shin Akuma as a playable character through a code, who understandably falls into this category.
- In Hyper, using older versions of the cast tends to be real awkward since they have less combos or general polish and options versus newer versions of characters. But not only are several of these older versions their own respective Game-Breaker, like Guile, they also have the old and hilariously broken damage scaling in effect. The result is that attacks from a World Warrior Guile are generally going to hurt a LOT more than a balanced-out Super Turbo Guile's.
Genre Turning Point: While fighting games had been around for a few years at the time of its release, it was the original Street Fighter II that forever reshaped the genre, spawning a competitive scene.
Good Bad Bugs: This video showcases various interesting glitches throughout the game.
- While playing as Dhalsim, performing a Yoga Fire and kicking one frame before the fireball comes out will turn him invisible. However, he is unable to move and getting hit will return him to normal.
- If Zangief performs a suplex on the first frame out of stun-block, he will grab the opponent no matter how far they are away from him.
- In World Warrior, Vega can be hit with low attacks while down, an action not normally possible with any other opponent.
- Vega can perform a backflip underneath a barrel in the third bonus stage. This will cause him to fall through the floor and keep teleporting from the sky to the floor at increasing speeds.
- "Guile's Handcuffs" involves a Guile player doing a medium throw immediately into a flash kick. The opponent is now frozen, stuck to Guile, and will follow him wherever he goes.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- Chun-Li's stage can be as this for many reasons: When the game was released in 1991, China wasn't a very developed country, and one of the most famous stereotypes associated with the Chinese was almost all Chinese people ride bicycles, since they couldn't afford, or were not allowed to have, a car. Not only is this stereotype mostly a Dead Horse Trope outside rural towns, but China is suffering a serious case of environmental pollution because almost everyone is abandoning their traditional bicycles and using cars instead. This is one of the reasons many of Chun-Li's scenarios in later sequels stop showing them in order to show the more modern face of China.
- In Zangief's ending, Gorbachev claims that Zangief's victory has proved that "the Soviet spirit can overcome all obstacles." Just months after the game came out, the Soviet Union, still under Gorbachev, was dissolved.
High-Tier Scrappy: Street Fighter II has had one of the longest competitive lifespans of any competitive fighting game, and has a had quiet a few of these, particularly in Super Turbo:
- O. Sagat is in famous for his high and low Tiger Shots which make approaching him damn near impossible, and even if you have a fireball of your own it's very difficult to win fireball wars against him. Jumping over a Tiger Shot? Sagat's Tiger Uppercut is a strong anti-air that takes off huge amounts of damage. His zoning is infamous for making certain characters totally irrelevant against him.
- Vega in Super Turbo is considered to be the best character in the title thanks to his mobility and devastating mixup game with left-right Sky High Claw. Getting knocked down once against a competent Vega almost feels like a Luck-Based Mission if you can block his Sky High Claw. Even without that, Vega boasts impressive range and mobility, and has positive matchups across the board.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- One Japanese commercial for Turbo featured a live-action Guile duking out against a live-action Bison. One year later...
- As mentioned above, the 3D simulation ride has Bison trying to escape into our world. In Wreck-It Ralph, it's Bison who asks the titular protagonist if he's "going Turbo" (i.e. breaking the rule of leaving one's own game).
- Even in-universe, Vega is continuously mocked due to being a Spanish ninja. Cue Águila Roja, a Spanish series featuring a heroic Spaniard ninja as the main protagonist.
Iron Woobie: Chun-Li and T. Hawk.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: One of the criticisms of Ultra Street Fighter II is that it's little more than a port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and what additions it does have, such as 3 new playable characters that are more powerful versions of old ones and the widely panned Way of the Hado mode, add little to the core experience. It also doesn't help that it has a $40 release price, when HD remix originally was a $15 game.
It Was His Sled: Akuma was a secret Optional Boss that was only hinted at in Super Turbo's intro, with the conditions for getting to him (get past Sagat in under 25 minutes without a single continue) intentionally obtuse and perfectionist to make the chances of his encounter incredibly rare besides for the most skilled players while also calling back to the Electronic Gaming Monthly April Fool's joke that birthed Akuma in the first place. Pop Culture Osmosis and Akuma being a recurring character in every part of the franchise (plus extensive amounts of Wolverine Publicity in other Capcom fighting games) relegated this borderline urban myth encounter to something everyone simply knows as a matter-of-fact now, never mind the cheat code to play as Akuma as he proceeds to snap the game in half over his knee.
Lady Mondegreen: A mistranslation of "You must defeat my Shoryuken to stand a chance" to "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance" led to the existence of a Sheng Long, so to say (see Recurring Fanon Character below for more).
Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Out of all the Street Fighter characters, Chun-Li has the most fan-made pairings, namely with Ryu, Ken, Guile, Charlie, Cammy, and Juri. While it's not really bad when it comes to most shipping wars, it has caused a bit of varied mileages in the fandom. The various Street Fighter anime from the '90s (and to a lesser extent the manga) have helped Ryu, Ken, and Guile in this regard. Though while they are only good friends in the series one of the reasons why Ryu is fairly popular in this regard is that unlike the other three men mentioned here Ryu is the only one who's still alive and not Happily Married. This is justified in the case of Charlie since the official storyline states that they posed as husband and wife while traveling in search of Bison during Alpha.
Low-Tier Letdown: Super Turbo Cammy feels like she wasn't finished. Her anti-air is impressive, but that's about it. Her range is lacking and she has to take a lot of risks to get in on her opponent. Any blocked Spiral Arrow will lead to Cammy eating a huge punish, and her matchups are abysmal. There's a few Cammy diehards, but for the most part the character is absent in competitive play.
Mainstream Obscurity: Even those who haven't played this know it as the grandfather of the modern fighting game.
Memetic Badass:
- Dhalsim. And it's not all memetic:
  Dhalsim: I will meditate and then destroy you.
- Bison, due to his final boss difficulty and The Movie:
  "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday."
- Guile isn't too far behind either thanks to his theme going with everything. And then his going home to be a family man. He also questions his fallen opponents if they are "man enough to fight with me".
Memetic Molester:
- Zangief is half-man, half-chest hair, is Friend to All Children, and has a primarily hug-based moveset. Do the math.
- Bison. Why else would a super-powerful man get twelve beautiful teenage girls brainwashed into becoming his Bodyguard Babes, huh?
Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
- Hilariously, Brazilian players adore Blanka and actually are disappointed that he's not a native Brazilian.
- Guile edges on being a parody of the United States and its militaristic culture, yet he's still highly beloved by American players.
Narm: M. Bison's ending in Super Street Fighter II. He manages to Take Over the World, with creepy music and graphics... and then the narration asks "WILL ANYONE EVER DEFEAT THIS EVIL SCUM BAG???", making it pretty hard to take seriously.
Nightmare Fuel:
- M. Bison's ending in Super.
- While most are tame, some of the post-match defeated portraits, particularly the better-drawn ones in Super and Super Turbo, can qualify.
- Akuma's status as a secret boss, appearing out of nowhere without context and outright killing Bison if you played well enough to get this far. Not only was it shocking for the time, but having what looks like a twisted, demonic Shoto fighter suddenly give you the fight of your life is like something out of modern Creepypasta, and the endings don't acknowledge him whatsoever, making it seem like the game was out to get you.
Once Original, Now Common: Many fighting game mechanics codified in Street Fighter II were immediately copied by its followers, including its own sequels, Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter III. Because of this, by the end of the 1990s, what made Street Fighter II unique was no longer unique any more and the game started to draw criticism for its relative simplicity, balance issues and many others. The game still enjoys much popularity and has a Tournament Play demographic, but the series' fans generally prefer its sequels and play this game for nostalgia values.
Paranoia Fuel: In Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Akuma suddenly sneaks up on Bison and kills him before challenging you to a fight. It's well known for being a completely unexpected "Holy shit!" moment. But when you think about it, knowing Akuma's motives in hindsight, he may have been keeping tabs on you the entire time, hiding in the dark unnoticed until the boss battle, where he decides to judge you worthy of a duel to the death. And if you fail to defeat him... well, you might as well sign your own will.
Polished Port:
- When it comes down to it, the various Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis/Megadrive ports were quite good for the limited hardware, besides Super for the Genesis in Porting Disaster below. While the graphics and sound were obviously not on-par, you really couldn't go wrong with these if you were itching for a home fix. Champion Edition also had a Japan-only PC Engine port that was somehow equally competitive to the competition despite the outdated hardware. They only pale in comparison to later arcade-accurate ports and emulation.
- The Japanese-only Dreamcast version of Super Turbo featured online play and has an unlockable DIP switch menu.
- Hyper Street Fighter II is probably the most beloved version of the game from the pre-HD era, with the game itself being an updated rerelease of Super Street Fighter II Turbo with not only all of its features and balanced design, but also the ability to pick any prior release version of the characters, complete with their older art, mechanics, balance and sounds for basically every prior version of Street Fighter II, letting you do things like throw vanilla Ryu in a Mirror Match with his "Turbo" self, or "Champ" Sagat versus playable Akuma, and so forth. It even restores certain destructible background elements that were removed past the original game. The PS2 version goes above and beyond, and also includes the option to switch between the original CPS1 music tracks (and similarly edited Sharp X68000 tracks for Akuma and the new challengers, which would later be reused in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate) and music tracks from Super Turbo's 3DO port. The only major downside is that like in Super Turbo, the AI in the US version is through the roof on difficulty, but for those playing Versus, this isn't an issue. Lacking a port since then, it's this version of the game that was revived for both Capcom Fighting Collection and Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium in 2022, with the former being a definitive way to play it now, complete with fully functional online play and rollback netcode.
- Whilst the updated balance in HD Remix proved to be extremely controversial, the updated graphics and soundtrack look and sound gorgeous, and the Classic mode gives access to the final version of Turbo from 1995.
- Turbo Revival for the GBA, surprisingly. Despite having to cram a 6-button fighter on a system with only 4, the gameplay is still surprisingly fluid (helped by a optional "Easy Control" mode that simplifies special moves). Not to mention that it sports exclusives stages for many fighters (even Akuma, who also now has a Super—the Shun Goku Satsu) plus you can even unlock Shin Akuma. The only real downside is the music, which pales in comparison to the arcade original.
- The port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo found on Street Fighter Anniversary (PS2, Xbox) features the remixed music from the 3DO port, but better controls due to having six buttons instead of five.
Porting Disaster:
- Street Fighter II: The World Warrior's Game Boy port. While its simplified moves and character lineup (only nine characters) can be forgiven due to the system's obvious limitations, the unresponsive controls, single digit framerate and slow as molasses physics utterly destroy the gameplay, leaving it a barely playable mess.
- Super Street Fighter II's Sega Genesis port is fine for the most part, but its music took a massive nosedive, a glaring issue considering the earlier Special Champion Edition had better music that was faithful to the CPS1 original music.
- Super Street Fighter II Turbo's 3DO port. While the graphics are generally faithful to the arcade version more than other ports and features excellent music, the game loads whenever you jump. Though the loading times are faster than expected for a game of its era, they are still slow and interfere with player controls, rendering Versus matches nearly unplayable. The already fairly tame violence was also censored, the background scrolling was removed, and the score system was inaccurate.
- The original MS-DOS port Street Fighter II was infamously terrible with poor sound, controls and framerate and a lot of graphical downgrades to make the game work on home systems at the time. Fortunately, later DOS ports were considered a massive improvement.
- The PS1 and Saturn version of Super Turbo from the Street Fighter Collection introduced several bugs not present in the original arcade version that had a significant and overall negative impact on the balance of the game.This is touched upon here by tournament legends John Choi and Mike Watson.
- The Xbox Live Arcade version of Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting. Not only was this version much more laggy than the original arcade version, but the balance was changed considerably for the worse as certain combos and techniques no longer worked. Online play was even worse, as matches had a random chance of desyncing and forcing people into waiting practically an entire minute just for the game to return to the lobby or online menu. It was also possible to de-select your character at the select screen, and since it took a long time for the "Start Match" confirmation to pop up, this usually led to constant counter-picking attempts that could last for several minutes.
- The 30th Anniversary Collection made by Digital Eclipse contains emulations of all the original arcade-released games, but with noticeably flawed emulation quality including issues such as increased input lag. These problems also extend to its online functionality, which runs on save states so there is no way to actually select a stage. Hope you like only seeing E. Honda's bathhouse if you play Hyper Fighting. Super Turbo actually has it even worse. It has more save states (thus more available stages), but if you somehow get Zangief's stage, then the save state has the Turbo setting inexplicably set at the wrong speed: 1 setting higher than the default.
Recurring Fanon Character: One of Ryu's winquotes states "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance!". Players immediately began to speculate who Sheng Long was, and it eventually became rumored that Sheng Long was the name of Ryu and Ken's unseen master. Electronic Gaming Monthly seized on this idea and launched an April Fools' issue in which they gave a detailed (and false) description of the absurdly difficult and convoluted way to unlock Sheng Long as a boss. But there was no Sheng Long; Ryu was telling his opponent that to stand a chance, they had to overcome "Sheng Long", which is a translation error for his "Dragon Punch". However, Capcom liked the idea so much that they later introduced Akuma for Super Street Fighter II Turbo. This did not end fan rumors or fanon about Sheng Long, however, and EGM again posted another April Fools' prank for Street Fighter III. Years later, for Street Fighter IV, Capcom finally introduced Ryu and Ken's real master, Akuma's brother Gouken, who had almost all of the abilities that EGM had once claimed Sheng Long had, stated "You must defeat ME to stand a chance!", and had "aka Sheng Long" as one of his equippable titles just to put the issue to bed. Despite all of that, though, Sheng Long is still a popular fanon character and occasionally reappears as an alter ego of Gouken, a third brother to himself and Akuma, or a forgotten student who trained alongside them, amongst others.
Retroactive Recognition: Yoko Shimomura, the woman behind the music of Super Mario RPG, Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana, Kingdom Hearts and Mario & Luigi, composed almost the entire soundtrack of the original games. The only tracks she didn't do were Sagat's theme and the round start/new challenger jingles.
Scrappy Mechanic: If you're playing the Genesis ports, buying a 6-button controller is a must. Using the stock 3-button controller means having to press Start to alternate between punches and kicks. The same problem occurred with the Japan-only PC Engine port thanks to the default 2-button controller, except it was the only legally-licensed game on the console to ever use a 6-button controller, expounding the problem into a money sink for what amounted to a slightly fancier Champion Edition port compared to the competition.
Sequel Difficulty Spike: Within its own re-releases aplenty, II would just get harder and harder in a single-player run. The first couple versions, only the bosses were a significant threat for obvious reasons, and the CPU could be cheating bastards but weren't too stingy about it until you met Sagat. By Hyper Fighting, they were all suddenly out for blood, toned down in time for Super: The New Challengers, and then got amped up even worse than ever by Super Turbo for overseas releases. Hyper Fighting and Super Turbo (plus the latter's derivatives, including the separate Hyper version) are often considered nigh-unplayable by casual audiences due to this if you don't have actual friends to play Versus with.
Sequel Displacement: Before the Internet and a few rereleases, you could count the number of people who played the original Street Fighter on one hand. Turns out, it's for the best. 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. It is one of the most innovative and popular video games of all time; it brought the "tournament fighter" genre to the masses and popularized six-button controllers, and its influence has not waned in the years since its debut.
Signature Scene: The intro of Super Street Fighter II is iconic, due to it being Simple, yet Awesome, and cool as hell. It's to the point where it was even remade for Ryu's Smash trailer.
Signature Song: Guile's theme due it to becoming extremely popular as a meme.
So Bad, It Was Better: The CPS2 voice clips for Super and Super Turbo are perfectly fine and an improvement, but whenever Street Fighter II is referenced in pop culture, it's almost always the grainy and scratchy CPS1 voice clips and sounds that are used. They're just so classic and memorable.
Squick:
- In the games with better animation (SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos, Street Fighter IV), you can see Dhalsim's limbs actually snapping back like a rubber band after doing one of his stretch attacks.
- You can hit an opponent so hard that they might outright produce a vomit effect post-impact, something that the series got rid of later on.
Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The original Street Fighter sucks by modern standards and wasn't considered anything fussing about in its day either, with only two playable characters that are just a few pixels from Palette Swap, unresponsive controls, and special moves that rarely (if ever) work. Street Fighter II, on the other hand, became the Trope Codifier for the Fighting Game genre with better controls, more moves, a deeper story and tons of characters.
Suspiciously Similar Song:
- Guile's theme is based on T-Square's "Travelers".
- Ken's theme sounds a lot like Cheap Trick's "Mighty Wings".
- Chun-Li's ending theme in Super Street Fighter II is lifted from the main theme of The Last Emperor, written by David Byrne.
Tear Jerker: The True Credits/Staff Roll theme. Even to this day, many people who played this game growing up still get Tears of Joy in their eyes when they hear this.
That One Attack:
- If you're facing a CPU Zangief, you will come to dread the Spinning/Screw Piledriver. Not only will it take out the better part of 60% of your health in one go, his range is longer than you'd ever realize and the AI fully knows how to exploit the hell out of it, on top of it being able to come out basically instantly. Combine that with the rest of their cheap tricks and most players have come to fear the CPU Zangief grabs utterly destroying them.
- Any player fighting a CPU controlled Ryu, considering that he often spams out more Hadokens at an inhuman rate. Especially if one plays as Zangief. The same problem occurs when fighting CPU Sagat, who spams Tiger Shots and instantly responds with a Tiger Uppercut if you somehow go over them.
- Akuma's Zanku Hadoken (the diagonal air fireball) is considered a major reason he's banned in tournaments. The vast majority of the cast just doesn't have a meaningful answer to it: it comes out at an odd angle, Akuma is usually well off the ground when performing the move, it's hilariously safe due to its favorable hitboxes and Akuma being able to trip guard, and moves that normally go through projectiles don't block it. A semi-competent Akuma player can use it to trap and pressure with hilarious ease while the opponent struggles to do anything back.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The eventual fate of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Many top players complained that about the balance changes, specifically that these weren't the ones that they suggested. Combine this with the fact that the game never got an arcade port in Japan and you can see why the game failed to replace the original Super Street Fighter II Turbo as the standard for competitive play. Ultra likewise failed to replace original Turbo for similar reasons.
Unintentional Period Piece:
- Street Fighter II: The World Warrior was originally meant to take place around the time of the game's real-life release, but it was retconned later on to be on an ambiguous time period. Still, you can say this game takes place in 1991 because of Zangief, whose nationality is USSR, which collapsed in the same year the game was originally released. Also, he dances with the late Mikhail Gorbachev in his ending. This was unchanged for the rereleases.
- Fei-Long uses the old British colonial flag of Hong Kong, which was discontinued after the territory was handed over to China in 1997. The flag was changed for rereleases in the 2010s though.
The Woobie: Cammy learns that she's either Bison's clone or former lover, depending on the version, and the revelation leaves her devastated.
Woolseyism:
- "Vega" is a fairly common Spanish surname, making it somewhat more appropriate for him than the dictatorial Bison. In addition, a "Balrog" is a fictional creature known for being large and monstrous, making it a more fitting name for the ruthless Boxer than for the narcissistic and graceful Claw.
- Cammy's ending in Super Street Fighter II has Bison claim they were in love rather than her being his clone, with implied brainwashing as the cause and leaving her devastated either way. The American cartoon also used the "brainwashed lovers" plot point, and several fanfic writers have written about the localized revelation of her being his clone and lover.

YMMV / Street Fighter II

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