Street Fighter II: Savior of the Fighter Game Genre
Shoryuken! Hadouken! Spinning Bird Kick! These are some catchphrases that just about anyone who has ever owned a video game console might have heard. From watching Woolie fight Daigo at Street Fighter V in EVO Fighting championship, to reminiscing over an old Super Nintendo, Street Fighter is probably the best known fighter game in history, rivaled only by the name Mortal Kombat made for itself with the help Street Fighter II. While the game continues to inspire fighting games today, it is important to look at what it was that inspired the game itself.
Fighting games, or the idea of it to say the least, were introduced with Sega classic “Heavyweight Champ”. The game lacked various mechanics that the modern fighter games have, including the ability to move the characters position. The game dealt with simply the basic concept of hitting and blocking hits from your opponent, from a side view perspective. The game, while very basic, introduced some of the basic concepts of the fighting game genre to the world, two characters fighting themselves, no weapons, from a side view perspective, which is seen in most fighter games such as Mortal Kombat as well as Guilty Gear, and of course, Street Fighter. With such a basic concept, the game as well as the genre didn’t take off immediately, leaving room for more games to set up the building blocks for the genre.
Progress slowly made its way over the years. In 1979 a game known as “Warrior” was released where two players could fight as knights, yet still it lacked much of what is considered standard to modern fighter games such as health bars as well as various select characters. Soon boxing games began to rise with the production of home consoles. Intellivision Released “Boxing” in 1981 which featured 6 chooseable characters, a staple in fighter games which would only be further reinforced by 1985 arcade game “Yie Air Kung Fu” which featured fully distinct characters as most fighter games include today. The year before “Boxing” was released , Atari had also released a game of the same title, giving hints at the potential the genre had.
One of the first ground breaking games was Funvisions Atari 2600 game, “Karate”. The game featured different moves for each joystick direction pressed with the controllers button. This gave way to a new era of martial art based fighter games, which allowed for more creativity in fighter games than the simple punch and block of a boxing game. However, with more complex games, more complex controllers are needed. Furthering the game genre in this way, “Karate Champ” debuted in 1984 and first began to remedy this issue. The game first included a dual-joystick control, best of 3 rounds match system, as well as bonus stages. Bonus rounds are some of the more memorable parts of Street Fighter, such as the one in particular which involves wrecking a car, as referenced in Disney cartoon “Gravity Falls” episode where an arcade character is brought to life.This change opened two new possibilities, the possibility to port fighter games to home consoles with better controllers which make games more fun, as well as the technology of effective controllers to allow games to grow in complexity to grasp its audience. “Karate Champ” also had a separate arcade machine made for two players, which would be the basis of the home console ports of the game.
“Yie Air Kung Fu”, mentioned earlier, was a game developed by game giants Konami, and was one of the first games that popularized the genre, requiring players to strategize as they learn each characters move sets and weaknesses. Soon after, the company went on to release “Galactic Warriors” which featured health bars as well as block damage, and the option of ranged and melee moves. Another game which featured health bars as well as combos and throws was “Shanghai Kid” in a system that was in need of desperate improvement. A feature for the more socially inclined, games like “Galactic Warriors” and “Typhoon Gal” featured female characters, a ground breaking development who will be appreciated by those who main Chun-li as well as those who wish to see more diversity are sure to appreciate.
With home consoles on the rise, “Way of the Exploding Fist” basically redid “Karate Champ” but had detailed backgrounds such as we may see today, as well as overall more fluid and smooth game play and animations. The game came to receive multiple copycats, which shows to prove the amount of popularity had arose in the game genre. Fighter games went from overly simplified games such as “Heavyweight Champ” which attracted no one, to games that developed separate controllers to be adapted to home systems, such as a personal favorite “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament” Fighters for the NES which features special moves, different stages, chooseable characters, and a certain orb which could be considered a special move. It seems the issue with the first fighter games was a level of simplicity which simply couldn’t grasp anyone's attention.
With the fighter game genre halfway built, and a lingering aura of experimentation in the air, the original Street Fighter was released in 1987. With a detailed story based on Ryu’s travels, and a cabinet which used pressurized punch pads, the game was still short of one more feature in order to make fighting games popular: the six button joystick layout. The new six button controls replaced the pressurized pads and allowed for the new concept of special moves to be and executed much easier. The buttons are familiar to fighter game fans today as the heavy, medium, and light punches and kicks the game introduced to fighter games.Characters each had some backstory to give the game more of a purpose, as well as stages that went with the story. While the game wasn’t quite the success that such a ground-breaking game would be expected to be, the game brought a sense of interest into the fighting game genre, spawning a few more games such as SNK’s “Street Smart”, developed by former Capcom director Takashi Nikiyama two years before the classic “Street Fighter II” came out.
1991 came along and Street Fighter II finally made its way into history. The game featured bizarre characters, such as Blanka, a character from Brazil which resembles an ape, to Dhalsim, the high flying, stretchable character from India. Each character had completely different fighting styles (Apart from classic characters Ryu and Ken). Most importantly, the game featured a .vs mode as well as an arcade mode, giving players the option to fight a computer through the games story as was the custom for the genre at the time, as well as to fight head on with siblings, friends, or strangers. This sense of competition made the game take off in arcades, leading to the success of the game in a few separate revisions as well as a port to the SNES which made it to be one of the consoles greatest hits. The improved graphics and game play as well as the unique characters and stages and a focus on competition made the game so popular that Street Fighter II Turbo was bundled with the Super Nintendo for a time.
Out of all the standards which Street Fighter II introduced to the world, the most notable feature of the game were combos, which were never to be seen before. Combos originated as a side effect of a different improvement to the game, in which special moves were made easier. Programmer Motohide Eshiro states, “…we decided to open up that timing a little bit, just by a few frames, so that if you hit that punch button within those few frames you’d be OK and your fireball would work. And as a side effect of that…players could perform combos.” Combos were found to be a way to connect attacks so that there is no opening in between, allowing for a more effective way to take down your enemy. This can be seen in the video above, where fighter Daigo playing as Evil Ryu lands a 25 hit combo which leaves his opponent defenseless as the attack continues.
Street Fighter II built heavily on standards set by previous fighter games and improved on them. The matches were best of three rounds, with bonus rounds every three matches, which could be seen in “Karate Champ”. Rounds were timed, with close quarter combat as seen previous games of the genre. As in “Yie Air Kung Fu” there were different characters with different fighting styles, however Street Fighter takes this to another level with having strength characters (Zangief) as well as keep away characters (Dhalsim) and characters that might be considered average (Ryu/Ken). Blocking is done by holding back, known by some casually as the “Street Fighter Block” in which chip damage is done, receiving minute damage while blocking an attack, and the game features health bars, mechanics first seen in “Galactic Warriors”. The game kept the eight-direction six-button layout which helped in being ported to the Super Nintendo which conveniently had a similar layout. The game also kept special moves which today have become a just as special part of fighter games even today, with games like Mortal Kombat XL having all sorts of special moves, such as a “Fatality”.
Most importantly, the game introduced a sense of player-against-player action which resulted in the massive popularity of the game as well as arcades. The idea of such a focus came from Okamoto, looking for the best way to please both the arcade operators as well as the arcade players. By making players play head on, operators get twice the money and players have fun as well as help playing for longer periods of time. The success of the idea can be summed up by the following Okamoto quote: “ If we dictated the difficulty, players could always get frustrated. But if players were competing against each other, whether they won or lost would be up to them. So we were thinking that could take out the frustration”. The idea was successful; fighting games became an important part of gaming culture, and these features of the game were kept in the genre since.
Street Fighter now a huge success, Niyashima, who previously worked on Street Fighter, made SNK Capcom’s rival with Fatal Fury. The game was hosted on the Neo-Geo which became known as the fighter game console. After Fatal Fury the SNK came out with the Art of Fighting. Soon both games would be combined to form the well known SNK game King of Fighters. The game featured three character teams and a smoother game engine which allowed for juggling attacks as well as easily dodging. Street Fighter II would later continue to influence fighting video games for years to come.
The influence of Street Fighter II on fighter games to come is impeckable. The series even has a 30 year anniversary edition collection out, with five of the twelve titles included being different ports of Street Fighter II. Game Designer Michael Murray, who works for the TEKKEN Team Project, remembers playing the game in his local grocery store as he had fun attempting to master the game before his friends. He explains, “Street Fighter really created the VS Fighting genre. Mastering complex inputs that result in rewarding in-game animations/attacks, characters with unique abilities, each from different locations throughout the world, stages with visual themes and music tailored to specific characters and based on certain locales — all of these are elements that would become staple in games that followed.” Michael wasn’t the only one to be inspired by Street Figher II to participate in fighing games. James Goddard went from playing the game in his local Sunnyvale Golfland to getting a job at Capcom and being Co-lead on Street Figher II Hyper as well as director in 2013s Killer Instinct. Goddard states, “While SFII inspired so many of us to make other fighting games, there is something SFII did that no other game can touch- it founded the FGC (Fighting Game Community).” Street Fighter took a few basics from the first fighting games while adding elements of their own to create this game that truly was a success; while the genre continued to be even more of a success.
Street Fighter II has come a long way. The game started being simply appearing in local arcades, yet 28 years later Street Figher II is on shelves and in peoples homes again in the Street Figher 30th anniversary collection. It truly is simply the proper honor to be given to a game that has been loved so much.
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