Street Fighter II

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991) was a highly popular and immensely successful fighting game created by Capcom. It centers on two characters, Ryu and Ken (the two main characters from the original Street Fighter), facing the evil villain M. Bison (Vega in Japan).

Today, Street Fighter II is routinely listed as one of the greatest video games of all time. It is widely considered to be the "Grandfather" of the fighting game genre, and is still considered by many purists to be the finest example of the genre, relying more on control and playability than graphics or flashiness, and setting the groundwork for gameplay in later titles.

Karate Champ and Street Fighter, two one-on-one fighting games which preceded Street Fighter II, are now largely forgotten, and have been generally criticized. Lately though, the original Street Fighter game saw a re-release in the latest Capcom Classics Collection for the PSP.

The game featured a line up of eight characters which a player could choose from to battle all the other fighters around the world. Once the other characters had been defeated, four boss characters could be battled, finishing off with M. Bison (Vega in Japan).

Legacy

Street Fighter II': Champion Edition (Street Fighter II Dash in Japan) - Champion Edition included several significant updates Street Fighter II: Champion Edition at The Killer List of Video Games:
1. All 4 boss characters (Vega, Bison, Balrog, and Sagat) were playable. However, because these characters were not originally intended to be playable, the characters had smaller regular movesets than the original 8 characters.
2. Players could both choose the same character against each other. It was the first fighting game to have same character vs. character by using palette swapping.
3. The backgrounds of each player's stage were modified (a theme throughout most of the revisions).
4. There were various bug fixes for serious glitches (such as Guile's Handcuffs), as well as some balancing of the characters.
5. Added the ability to execute reversal attacks (special attacks either when blocking or rising from the ground that would cancel the animation frames and give higher priority)

Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting (Special Champion Edition on the Sega Genesis) - was released in response to an explosion of modified bootlegs of the Champion Edition which were becoming popular amongst arcade operators Street Fighter II arcade information (for more information see Hyper Fighting (1992)). Changes included:
1. Faster gameplay.
2. Many characters gained new moves, and several that could now be perfomed in mid-air.
3. All characters were given new color palettes.

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers - This was also the first Street Fighter game that Capcom would release on its CPS-2 hardware. All prior Street Fighter games had been released on Capcom's CPS-1 hardware. The arcade version of this game also included a variant that allowed eight arcade cabinets to be connected together for simultaneous tournament play. This version contained the most extensive changes introduced in the series:
1. Four new characters were added (DeeJay, T. Hawk, Fei Long, and Cammy).
2. Boss characters received updated regular move sets, to put them on par with the original 8 (and 4 new characters).
3. Each character could be selected with one of 9 different color pallettes.
4. The original 12 fighters received new art and audio.
5. The speed introduced in Hyper Fighting was reduced.
6. A combo counter (a first despite combos being in the game since the original), as well as point bonuses for first attack, combos and reversals.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo: Grand Master Challenge (Super Street Fighter II X in Japan)- a slightly updated version of Super Street Fighter II. This version introduced:
1. The addition of the "SUPER" bar. This allowed character to build up and unleash a very powerful special attack (typically a special attack with more strength, and the character gained "shadows" of the previous frames of animation.
2. The speed was again raised from Super SF2, to close to Hyper Fighting levels.
3. Intentional Air juggling (a series of attacks that could hit an opponent while airborne) (Note: a glitch in Champion Edition allowed Dhalsim to be air juggled under certain conditions).
4. The ability to tech non-multi hit throws (teching allows a character to land on one's feet instead of on their back, resulting in less damage).
5. A new secret character (Akuma).
6. Alternate versions of each character that played very similar (but not quite identical) to their Super Street Fighter II incarnation without the super bar or the ability to tech throws.

Ports

Street Fighter II has been ported to almost every console available since the creation of the game. Some notable versions:
Street Fighter II, in its first and third versions were ported for the Super NES, which were the most popular ports of this game. The Sega Genesis version released later, known as Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition, contained both Champion Edition and Hyper Fighting, as did the updated SNES release of Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting.

NEC also developed a port for the TurboGrafx 16. It is a fairly faithful adaption of the original and is commonly put along with the Super NES ports as one the best. It is also one of the few games for the system that uses a 6-button pad.

In Brazil, there was an official port for the Sega Master System, developed and published by Tec Toy. While this version had collision detection problems and some slowness, it was still very popular in that country.

Several computer versions were also released, seeing versions on the Commodore 64, and IBM PC. However, these versions are held in very low regard by many fans, mostly due to poor or half-hearted work done on them. A version was also released for the Commodore Amiga which was slightly more popular, featuring graphics closer to those from the arcades than its counterparts (although with the colour palette noticeably lower due to hardware limitations of the time).

Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master's Challenge was ported to the 3DO and Dreamcast in Japan.

The Street Fighter Collection was released both in the US and Japan in late 1997 on the original Sony Playstation. It featured near arcade perfect versions of both Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II: Turbo as well as Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold.

The second collection, titled Street Fighter Collection 2, was in the US in late 1998 on the Sony Playstation and featured the first three major Street Fighter II titles: Street Fighter II: The World Warriors, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition and Street Fighter II’: Hyper Fighting.

Street Fighter Anniversary Collection was released in 2004 for the PS2, including a version of SSF2T which had the ability to select different "revisions" of each character (Championship Edition Version, Hyper Fighting Version, etc).

2005 saw the release of Capcom Classics Collection on the Sony Playstation 2 and Xbox and it also featured the first three major Street Fighter II titles: Street Fighter II: The World Warriors, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition and Street Fighter II’: Hyper Fighting'' as well as a multitude of other Capcom games.

Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting is also due for a highly anticipated release on the Xbox 360's Live Arcade service featuring online play through Xbox Live and a new 'Quarters mode' which allows players to watch, and challenge others to matches. The order in which the players fight is represent by a quarter. This was done to re-enact the arcade scene of the 1990's. The official release date is scheduled for August 2nd 2006 and will cost 800 Microsoft Points which is unusual for the Xbox Live Arcade which normally prices 2D games at 400 MS Points and 3D games at 800 points with the exception of Bankshot Billiards 2.

Characters

The characters in Street Fighter II were all associated with different countries around the world, although some countries had more than one representative.

Original eight

These were the eight World Warriors available in the original Street Fighter II. The characters other than Ryu and Ken have made their debut in the series.

Bosses

Four boss characters (listed in order faced) were only encountered after defeating the other normal fighters. They were not playable characters in the original Street Fighter II, but they have been playable from Champion Edition onward. Three of the four characters had their names changed for the western version; see individual entries for the explanation.

Balrog - United States (M. Bison in Japan)
Vega - Spain (Balrog in Japan)
Sagat - Thailand
M. Bison - Thailand (Vega in Japan)

(Note: M.Bison is not a native of Thailand, as his origin is unknown, but simply fights there in this series.)

The New Challengers

These four new characters were introduced in Super Street Fighter II.

The Grand Master

Akuma (Gouki in Japan), first appeared in Super Street Fighter II Turbo. He was not given a country of origin. Akuma is a secret character in the game, and is only playable via a secret code.

Other media

Street Fighter II was adapted into two different movies in 1994, The Animated Movie (a Japanese anime released in the U.S. courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment) and an American-produced live-action film, simply titled Street Fighter. Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile and Raul Julia as M. Bison, the film effectively incorporated the main cast of the video game and wrapped them into an action adventure very reminiscent of the classic adventure films of yore. Director Steven E. de Souza's take on the premise: "I especially loved films like The Longest Day, The Great Escape and The Guns of Navarone. What made those films great wasn't the random violence. It was the clear-cut struggle between forces of good and evil, leading to an ultimate showdown."

Although the live-action film tanked at the box office and was largely considered a flop, it has gained a sizeable cult following and has even seen numerous DVD releases, complete with a plethora of special features and bonus content.

There was also a US Street Fighter cartoon, which followed the plot of the Van Damme movie, and an anime titled Street Fighter II V.

SFII in Capcom Classics Collection

Street Fighter II and the other two original versions (Champion Edition and Turbo) are featured in Capcom Classics Collection, a compilation of classic Capcom games from the 80s to the early 90s, available for the Xbox and Playstation 2. Street Fighter II and the other versions in Capcom Classics Collection are actually ports of Capcom Generations vol. 5 (released in North America as Street Fighter II Collection) for the PlayStation and the Sega Saturn, complete with its special modes including versus mode, CPU battle mode, training mode, and more. Even the cast artwork and information is the same as Street Fighter Collection 2, but there is some new unlockable artwork that was not featured in that collection. One complaint about the game is that it has loading times, which is very unusual for a contemporary video game console running older games. Perhaps the best feature for fans is the Street Fighter Deluxe mode in all three versions of the game, which allows players to battle with characters from different versions of the game, for example, matching Champion Edition Ken vs. Turbo Chun-Li. The Deluxe mode is not unlike the normal playing modes in Street Fighter Anniversary Edition and Capcom's Vampire Chronicle.

SFII in pop culture

The 1993 Hong Kong movie Chao ji xue xiao ba wang (Future Cops) featured SFII characters.
In the movie The Perfect Score (2004), Roy (played by Leonardo Nam) talks about how he played SF2 for hours and wanted to grow up to be Blanka.
In the movie City Hunter, Jackie Chan's character collides with an arcade machine and randomly transforms into various SFII characters, along with his opponent.
Dan Haigh, the bass player in the post-hardcore band Fightstar, can be seen in the video for "Lost Like Tears In Rain" wearing a t-shirt with the word Shoryuken, there is also the now legendary instructions to perform the move written in small unreadable text on the t-shirt.
One can find mention of Ryu's Hadouken in the online web comics 8-Bit Theater and Neglected Mario Characters.
Characters in the Internet webisode series entitled Pure Pwnage play Street Fighter II and make reference to Ryu's shoryuken, among other things.
The Hadouken is a secret weapon in the videogame Mega Man X. In the game, it is capable of killing any enemy in one hit but requires full health in order to be used. Similarly, the Shoyruken can be acquired in Mega Man X2
The British rock band Arctic Monkeys have an instrumental song titled "Chun-Li's Spinning Bird Kick."
Princess Fiona executes a Spinning Bird Kick, followed by a Shoryuken, while fighting bandits in Shrek 2.
The noise rock band "Champion Edition"^* (Alton, Hampshire, U.K.) are named in honour of the video game.
In a Homestar Runner cartoon, "dangeresque 3", Homestar uses the Hurricane Kick, screaming, "The pipes are broken!", a mishearing of "Tatsu Maki Sen Pu¯ Kyaku". In a later video game, the 20X6 version of Homestar, 1-Up, uses this as an attack sans any vocals. In another Halloween special, the Poopsmith dresses as M. Bison and does a Psycho Crusher.
The Maskate newspaper of Manaus, Amazonas State, Brazil, known by publishing news in a comical way is famous for references to Street Fighter. Every time there´s violence between politicians or any street brawl, the newspaper uses words like "Shoryuken" and "E.Hond salps" and "short Psycho Crusher" to describe the action. A text once said a representative was speaking when an adversary gave him a "Shoryuken".
Housemates on Big Brother 2006 in Australia have spoken at length on many occasions over their love of the game comparing themselves to certain characters.

Trivia

A version of the game was planned for the Nintendo Entertainment System and a half-decent illegal version of the game was sold and noticed by several major video game magazines. However, Capcom cancelled production of the game.
Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) created a hoax as an April Fools' Day joke that a character by the name of Sheng Long could be unlocked.
Capcom unsuccessfully sued Data East claiming that a fighting game that the company had made, Fighter's History, illegally copied Street Fighter. Capcom lost the lawsuit, but most video game critics generally panned Data East's game. Video Game Law Blog Gamespy - "Data East's Hypocritical Adventure "
The original Street Fighter II was full of glitches. Players in the arcade could reset the game, lock up the machine with "handcuffs" or "freezing" (requiring a hard reset), and "air throw" with Guile. The "air throw" was an advanced manouver that would cause an opponent to fall and take throwing damage from anywhere. A skillful player could execute the manouver four times in a row and defeat his opponent before he could even stand. Perhaps the most advanced and spectacular usage was executing an "air throw" on Vega as soon as he jumped on the fence. He would just fall off and less skillful players would gawk in amazement. These glitches however were fixed in later releases of the original game, thus resulting in the glitchy SFII demanding a premium.

References

External links

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