As far as the gaming world at large is concerned, the Street Fighter series began in 1991 with Street Fighter II. And it's easy to understand why. Street Fighter II was a behemoth. It shook arcades in such a ubiquity not seen since Pac-Man fever. Yes, the late 80s had arcade hits, no doubt. But Street Fighter II was an absolute phenomenon. Everybody in an arcade in the early 90s was standing in line, waiting to play whichever revision of Street Fighter II was currently in rotation.
But let us not forget that there was in fact a Street Fighter I. And that original game has gone down in history as mostly forgotten. I mean, everybody knows that there could be no sequel without an original. But anybody who's played it walks away unimpressed. As a bit of an amateur gaming historian, I've always wanted to defend Street Fighter. Like, there must be some merit to it as a game that somehow managed to birth a sequel that was so influential to the fighting game scene that we're still feeling the ripples even as I type this in 2023 not long after Street Fighter VI was released. The sad truth is that every five or so years, I attempt to play Street Fighter again and find the good in it and every time I walk away shaking my head at just how bad this first attempt really was. I'm not even sure how Capcom greenlit a sequel honestly. This is a fighting game that only allows you to pick from two playable characters (Ken and Ryu who may as well just be the same dude) and subjects you to matches of sluggish and buggy fighting that feels bad, looks bad and has AI that is just completely unfair. In reality, the original Street Fighter has none of the things that made the sequel(s) so good. The fighting is basically just kicks and punches. The physics feel floaty. The (playable) roster is tiny. It's honestly just not a fun game to play. But let us not talk about what the game isn't, and at least talk about what it is. While Street Fighter is basically a chore to play, its history is at least semi-fascinating. Really, I don't want to talk about Street Fighter so much as I want to talk about Takashi Nishiyama. In reality, the original Street Fighter isn't really the first in a series as it is the second in Nishiyama's early fighting game trilogy. 1. In the beginning, there was Kung-Fu Master (1984). Nishiyama developed Kung-Fu Master and it was a hit for Irem. This wasn't a straight up fighting game, but rather a belt-scroller that played on a 2D plane. Attacks were fairly limited with punches, kicks and crouches and jumps. Like many, I discovered this game through its NES port, which was released not long after the system's 1985 launch in the US. It was a fun enough game. But the important thing to note here is that each stage ended with a boss battle, and these boss battles were actually the blueprint for Street Fighter. 2. Street Fighter was released to the arcades in 1987. Nishiyama had the idea of making a new game that was entirely just the boss battles from Kung-Fu. Why have stages to walk through when you could just focus on that one-on-one fighting? It was a great idea, for sure. Although in fairness, it also kind of draws inspiration from Karateka (1984). The original arcade game featured an innovative (and stupid) setup where you punched two pads (punch and kick) and the intensity of the punches determined the intensity of the attack. A lot of machines got broken, and the cabinet was changed to the low-medium-high buttons we are so used to in Capcom fighting games to this day. 3. Nishiyama's follow up to Street Fighter was not Street Fighter II. While Capcom was working on a sequel, he was off to SNK where he released Fatal Fury a mere nine months after Street Fighter II was released. Interestingly, both Street Fighter II and Fatal Fury would fix, improve and expand upon all of the ideas of the original Street Fighter. There was a full roster of playable characters, better controls, faster action, and special moves. What's really the most interesting thing to consider here is that in Nishiyama's mind, Fatal Fury is the true sequel to Street Fighter. At least this sequel was created by the guy that made the first game. And yet, Fatal Fury was such a niche hardcore game. Not to humble-brag, but I played it on a big red Neo Geo cab at a shady market not far from my house back in the day. At least until the game was ported to SNES and I got a copy of it there. Street Fighter II was absolutely huge, and got the push from Capcom which was a bigger deal to the mainstream in 1991 than SNK could possibly be. If I'm being completely unbiased, Street Fighter is kind of a sluggish piece of crap with some interesting ideas and horrible execution. But it matters because it resulted in an arms race. It basically led to two branches of incredible fighting games. Nishiyama created Fatal Fury as his personal sequel. Fatal Fury was a great game that begat a whole series which encompassed the untouchable Garou: Mark Of The Wolves, as well as the larger The King Of Fighters series. Meanwhile, Capcom pushed out Street Fighter II, a bonafide classic along with Street Fighter III (their own Mark Of The Wolves level of perfection) and a whole slew of adjacent fighters built around Street Fighter II mechanics. Even if Capcom themselves have downplayed the importance of the original Street Fighter over the years, they never shied away from its lore. While some of the cast carried over to the second game (Ken, Ryu, Sagat), Mike carried over to Final Fight, which itself started life as Street Fighter 89 before becoming its own thing. Perhaps the most interesting thing to me is that Street Fighter Alpha (1995) was released before Street Fighter III. Alpha was created as a prequel to Street Fighter II. Though it technically took place after the events of the first Street Fighter, I can't help but think that Capcom created the Alpha games as a sort of mulligan. What if Capcom went back and made a game of Street Fighter II's calibur using much of the original, younger roster? Obviously I'm not condoning erasing or overlooking the work that Nishiyama did, but at the same time Alpha is a way better game. If you want to view Alpha as sort of a semi-remake, it's way better than the original. But in fairness, it has almost a decade of insight to guide it. So there you have it. Street Fighter is an incredibly awful game that spawned so many incredibly awesome games from both Capcom and SNk. Never mind all of the imitators that came after. I really don't have time to talk about Fighter's History here. Maybe another day.
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