Street Fighter II: The World Warrior

Street Fighter II is a 1991 competitive fighting game by Capcom. It is widely credited with launching the fighting genre into the mainstream and extending the life of the worldwide arcade scene for several years with its unique six button "combo" controls and revolutionary "loser pays" competitive gameplay. Its popularity far eclipsed that of its comparatively obscure predecessor, thanks in part to its inclusion of eight selectable characters (a number which would increase in subsequent revisions) with their unique playing style and refinement of the unique play controls featured in the first game, setting the template for future fighting games. Its success also led to the production of several revised versions of the game (including home versions), as well as merchandising and cross-media adaptations (including two separately produced theatrical films).

Street Fighter II was followed by a prequel titled Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams and a sequel titled Street Fighter III: New Generation. Both games also inspired their own series of revisions.

Overview

As one of the most popular games of the early 1990s, Street Fighter II, released on Capcom's CPS-1 arcade board in March 1991, shaped the direction of arcade games for nearly a decade to follow. It is widely acknowledged as the premier fighting game of its era, due to its game balance with regard to the timing of attacks and blocks, which was unparalleled at the time; and due to "special moves" in which experienced players could execute complex fighting moves by moving the joystick and tapping the buttons in certain combinations. The game featured a six button layout, with punch buttons consisting of 'jab', 'strong', and 'fierce' and kick buttons consisting of 'short', 'forward', and 'roundhouse', in ascending order of strength. This was not new or exclusive to fighting games, but the way in which the game relied on them was. These complicated fighting moves were given names, such as the Shoryuken (the Rising Dragon Punch), the Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku (the Tornado Whirlwind Kick) and the Hadouken (Surge Fist or Wave-Motion Fist), which provided a framework for players to have conversations about their games. It also introduced the convention of "cancelling" or "interrupting" moves into other moves, which enabled a player to create sequences of continuous hits. This was the game which introduced the concept of the combo, a sequence of attacks which, when executed with proper timing, did not allow the opponent to interrupt the combination. Mastery of these techniques led almost directly to the high-level competition which has been a cornerstone of this type of game ever since.

Characters

The original version of Street Fighter II featured a roster of eight playable characters that could be selected by the player. Out of the eight character in the roster, only Ryu and Ken were taken from the original Street Fighter. The others were created specifically for this game.

The single player tournament mode also features four CPU-controlled opponents whom the player face after defeating the other main characters. The bosses in the Japanese version were: M. Bison, a black American boxer; Balrog, a Spanish clawman; Sagat, the former champion from the original Street Fighter; and Vega, a mysterious crime lord. When Street Fighter II was released overseas, the names of the bosses were rotated, fearing that the character of M. Bison resembled Mike Tyson (whom Bison was modeled after) too closely, but also because Capcom USA's marketing team believed that "Vega" was a "weak-sounding name" for the final boss. As a result, the boxer became Balrog, the clawman became Vega and the final boss became M. Bison in the localization. The initial in M. Bison originally stood for "Mike", but its meaning was lost to western players. From Champion Edition and onward, the boss characters became playable, expanding the selectable roster to twelve.

Super Street Fighter II introduced four new characters from previously unrepresented nationalities to the pre-existing roster: Fei Long, Cammy, T. Hawk and Dee Jay. The new characters were designed by Capcom's internal artists in Japan except for Dee Jay, whose original design was contributed to the game by American designer James Goddard. The character roster was now increased to sixteen.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo featured another new character whom the player faced (upon meeting the required conditions) in the game's final match instead of M. Bison. This character, who was unnamed within the actual game, was officially referred as Gouki in Japan and as Akuma in the english version and the different names were stuck in those territories. Akuma/Gouki becomes selectable only by entering a special cheat code in the character selection screen.

Roster

• Akuma

• Balrog

• Blanka

• Cammy

• Chun-Li

• Dee Jay

• Dhalsim

• E. Honda

• Fei Long

• Ken

• M. Bison

• Ryu

• Sagat

• T. Hawk

• Vega

• Zangief

Arcade Revisions

Champion Edition

Street Fighter II′: Champion Edition, released in Japan as Street Fighter II Dash.

• All four boss characters became playable.

• Players could choose the same character to fight against each other, using palette swapping to differentiate the second player.

• The backgrounds of each player's stage were re-colored (a theme throughout most of the revisions).

• There were various bug fixes for serious glitches (such as Guile's "Handcuffs"), as well as some balancing of the characters.

It is currently playabe on gametap for free.

Hyper Fighting

Street Fighter II′ : Hyper Fighting, or Street Fighter II Dash Turbo in Japan, was released in response to the proliferation of modified bootlegs of Champion Edition. Changes included:

• Faster gameplay.

• Many characters gained new moves (all composed of recycled animation frames), and several that could now be performed in mid-air.

• All characters were given new, default color palettes, with their original color scheme accessible as an alternate color scheme (replacing the ones from Champion Edition). The only exception to this was the final boss M. Bison, who still used his original color scheme by default, but was given a new alternate color scheme anyway.

Also playable on gametap.

Super Street Fighter II

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers was the first Street Fighter game that Capcom would release on its CPS-2 hardware. The arcade version of this game also included a variant titled Super Street Fighter II: Tournament Battle that allowed four arcade cabinets to be connected together for simultaneous tournament play. This version contained the most extensive changes introduced in the series:

• Four new characters were added (Fei Long, T. Hawk, Cammy, and Dee Jay).

• Boss characters received updated regular move sets.

• Boss characters received new, individual game endings.

• Each character could be selected with one of eight different color palettes.

• Some of the original eight playable characters received updated art and audio.

• The speed introduced in Hyper Fighting was reduced.

• 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

Super Street Fighter II Turbo, or Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge in Japan, is a much updated version of Super Street Fighter II. The updates, though seemingly small, radically change the game dynamic. This version introduced:

• The addition of the "SUPER" bar. This allowed character to build up and unleash a very powerful special attack.

• The speed was again raised from Super SF2, close to Hyper Fighting levels.

• Intentional air juggling (a series of attacks that could hit an opponent while airborne)

• The ability to tech or "soften" non-multi hit throws (teching allows a character to land on one's feet instead of on their back, resulting in less damage).

• A new secret character (Akuma).

• New regular moves, throws, and special moves for many characters, notably Ken, whose kicks have been radically changed from Super Street Fighter II, and E. Honda.

• Some characters, such as Ken and Ryu, now have an overhead attack that hits high while the character is standing on the ground, which allows players to hit a ducking and blocking opponent.

• Alternate versions of each character that with similar characteristics (but not quite identical) to their Super Street Fighter II version.

• The bonus stages (where players try to destroy all the objects in the stage before time runs out) were removed.

Hyper Street Fighter II

Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition is an arranged version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo with the ability to choose every previously playable version of the characters from all five arcade versions of Street Fighter II (including the alternate versions of the characters in Super Turbo). It was first released as a PlayStation 2 game, but was backported to the CPS-2 hardware and distributed in arcades in Japan and Asia. The game includes an option to switch between the CPS, CPS-2 and arranged (from the 3DO version of Super Turbo) renditions of the game's soundtrack. The PS2 version of the game was sold as a stand-alone game in Japan and in the PAL region, as part of a bundle with Street Fighter III 3rd Strike titled Street Fighter Anniversary Collection in North America. This same bundle was released worldwide for the Xbox.

Ports

These are the major ports of the Street Fighter II games made for consumer devices and is not comprehensive.

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior was released for the Super NES in 1992 as a 16Mbit game pak. Character sprites were slightly smaller and less detailed, and some frames of animation were omitted. The arcade's Frequency modulation synthesis background music was adapted to the SNES's SPC700 PCM based sound chip. This port has different tones of the characters' voices using different levels of the special attacks. Their voice is quick and precise for the stronger attacks, or slow and prolonged for the weak attacks. It went on to become the biggest selling console port of a fighting game ever, and is currently available for download on the Wii's Virtual Console. The SNES version is also notable for correcting a minor error of the arcade version - Chun Li's portrait in the arcade had red clothes even though she actually fought in blue ones. The portrait color is changed to the proper blue on the SNES.

There were also versions released for DOS systems, ZX Spectrum, Commodore Amiga and the Commodore 64, developed by U.S. Gold. With its extremely slow gameplay, which saw drastic changes from the arcade version (including only one punch and one kick button), massive glitches and tinny music and sound effects, most fans did not give these ports a second glance.

Street Fighter II': Champion Edition and Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting

The PC Engine was the first console to receive the updated Street Fighter II and was ported by NEC. The game is contained on a standard HuCard and features graphics comparable to the more powerful SNES port which came later. A 6 Button PCE Controller was created specifically for use with this game.

The Mega Drive/Genesis port, known as Street Fighter II′: Special Champion Edition (Street Fighter II ′ Plus or Dash Plus in Japan), contained both Champion Edition and Hyper Fighting — as did the SNES release of Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting (the SNES port does not contain a prime symbol on its title). The Mega Drive/Genesis version received the Special Champion Edition subtitle because it was intended to be a port of Street Fighter II′: Champion Edition to be released in the fall of 1993, about one year after the SNES version of the original SF2.

The Mega Drive/Genesis was to be the only US console to receive an SF2 game that allowed people to play as the bosses, but 5 months before its release Nintendo announced an exclusive deal with Capcom to port the newer Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting to the SNES for release before the Mega Drive/Genesis version of the game. However, their contract only extended exclusivity to the name and presentation of the game, allowing Capcom to add Hyper Fighting mode to the Mega Drive/Genesis game as a bonus, giving both versions of the game the same features. The legacy of this contractual obligation is apparent in the games as the Mega Drive/Genesis version presents the Champion Edition intro, attract mode (only presenting Champion Edition gameplay and color scheme) and title screen and defaults to Champion Edition mode, while the SNES version contains the Hyper Fighting intro (though missing the fight in front of the skyscraper), attract mode (presenting Hyper Fighting gameplay and color scheme) and title screen and defaults to Turbo mode.

Street Fighter II′: Special Champion Edition for the Mega Drive/Genesis allowed the selection of game speed by increasing 'stars' at game start, up to 10-star speed (The SNES Version has the 4-10 option, but requires a controller code to activate Stars 5 to 10). The Mega Drive/Genesis port also allowed for four stars of speed in Normal/Champion mode, but the SNES version lacked this feature, allowing stars only in Turbo mode. Gameplay was faster than the arcade versions.

Though both versions of the game were identical in overall gameplay and graphics, there were differences in the sound. While the SNES-voices sound somewhat muffled the Mega Drive-version's voices are clearer, but scratchy. All tunes had to be remixed for the SNES-version, offering a more natural instrumentation, while the Mega Drive was closer to the arcade-original thanks to the Yamaha-soundchip being a relative of the one found in the arcade. The result are two very different sounding versions where every player had to judge his favourite by personal preferences. The PC-Engine-version is to be mentioned for having by far the clearest voices. The soundtrack is closer to the Mega Drive-version than to the SNES-version.

In Brazil, there was an official port of Street Fighter II′[9] for the Sega Master System, developed and published by Tec Toy. This version had collision detection problems, missing moves and missing characters, but the graphics were very impressive regarding the system's limited capabilities and were not too far from the 16-Bit counterparts.

Street Fighter II′: Hyper Fighting (the arcade versions released outside of Japan never had the word Turbo in the title) has also been released on the Xbox 360's Xbox 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 US quarter. This was done to re-enact the arcade scene of the 1990s. The game was released on August 2, 2006 for a cost of 800 points ($10 USD) and has become the fastest selling game on the Xbox Live Arcade service.

Recently, the Super NES port, Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, has been released on the Virtual Console for America and Europe.

Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II Turbo

The SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis received a port of Super Street Fighter II a year after their respective SF2'T port, but was a commercial failure at retail and a financial hit to Capcom who had overestimated consumer demand.[citation needed] This was a sign that the audience was not willing to pay for annual updates of SFII, especially when Super Street Fighter II Turbo already superseded Super Street Fighter II in the arcades and fixed many of the complaints people had of SSF2. The SNES version was released on the Wii Virtual Console in 2008.

The FM Towns port is the first fighting game by Capcom to feature a color edit mode. It also features remixed soundtracks, the same ones found in the 3DO version of SSF2T, Street Fighter Collection 2 and the console versions of Hyper Street Fighter II.

The 3DO received the first console port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, it featured the same remixed soundtracks found in the FM-TOWNS port of Super Street Fighter II, with full Q Sound support. The second port was for the IBM PC by Eurocom (released by Gametek) in 1995 and was the first truly ported version of a Street Fighter game for a home computer, helped by the fact that PC hardware was sufficiently powerful to reasonably duplicate the 2D graphics and sound capabilities, to the results of dedicated 2D game machines like the CPS-2, the original platform of the game. Up until this release, home computers received interpretive remakes of past Street Fighter games that did not play like the arcade games they were based on. An interpretive remake of Super Street Fighter II Turbo was on the Commodore Amiga for its AGA chipset based systems, coming on 12 floppy discs and requiring a hard drive to play.

In 1997, the PlayStation and Sega Saturn received a port of both Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II Turbo along with Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold in Street Fighter Collection. The Saturn version was thought to turn out superior because of the dramatic increase in Video RAM it offered over the PlayStation version. The last stand-alone version of SSF2T released is for the Dreamcast and was released only in Japan. It featured online play via Capcom of Japan's Matching Service, making this the first Street Fighter game to be officially playable through a network connection.

A reworked portable version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo titled Super Street Fighter II Turbo: Revival (Super Street Fighter II X: Revival in Japan) was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2001. It featured new character artwork on the versus and post-fight screens, as well as for the game endings. Some of the game endings were changed to reconcile the storyline with the Street Fighter Alpha games. There were new stage backgrounds for Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Zangief and Bison and the car and barrel bonus stages from Super Street Fighter II returned. There were two unlockable versions of Akuma and unlike their original Super Street Fighter II Turbo versions where their names are not shown during a fight as well as not having a super combo gauge for performing super combo finish, in this portable version both actually had a super combo gauge and had their trademark Shungokusatsu (Instant Hell Murder) unblockable super combo which was made famous from their appearance in the Alpha series. The classic versions of all the original returning characters were removed.

A high-definition remake of Super Street Fighter II Turbo titled Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix will be released on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network in 2008. It will feature redrawn graphics at 1080p HD resolution, online play and a "remix mode".

Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition

Street Fighter Anniversary Collection was released in 2004 for the Xbox, PS2 and CPS-2 , which contained both Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike and Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition. CPS-2 version was updated version of SSF2T. Capcom also included the censored version of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie as a bonus. Hyper Street Fighter II on its own was released for the PS2 in Europe, which also included Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie as a bonus. However, the shower scene with Chun-Li was edited, as was some of the Vega vs Chun-Li battle which followed.

Retro Collections

The Street Fighter Collection was released both in the US and Japan in late 1997 on the original Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn. 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.

A second collection, titled Street Fighter Collection 2, was released 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 Warrior, Street Fighter II′: Champion Edition and Street Fighter II′ Turbo: Hyper Fighting. It also featured a "Deluxe Versus" mode, which allows players to battle with characters from different versions of the game, for example, matching Champion Edition Ken vs. Turbo Chun-Li, in a similar concept to the one found in Hyper Street Fighter II.

In 2003 Capcom Arcade Hits — Volume 1 was released for Windows PC, featuring emulated arcade versions of the original Street Fighter and Street Fighter II: Champion Edition.

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 Warrior, Street Fighter II′: Champion Edition and Street Fighter II′ Turbo: Hyper Fighting as well as a multitude of other Capcom games. The games contained in this collection are actually ports of the games featured in the Japan-only Capcom Generations series 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. The load times from Capcom Generations/Street Fighter Collection 2 were ported over, which is unusual since each game should be able to fit into the system RAM of the PS2 and Xbox in their entirety.

2006 saw the release of Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 for the Playstation 2 and Xbox and contains Super Street Fighter II Turbo.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is an upcoming title on the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Store download services. The game is based on Super Turbo, but with sprites and backgrounds replaced by high-resolution artwork drawn by UDON Comics, and remixed music is also in development. HD Remix is currently planned to include two game modes: an arcade accurate version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo and an upgraded version of the same game with over 100 changes from the original Super Turbo. Other features will include:

• Online and offline multiplayer

• A training mode

• Voice chat

• A 'Quarter Match' mode which allows players to spectate and jump into online matches

• Worldwide rankings and leaderboards arranged by character and country

• Indepth statistics tracking

• A display mode that fits the game into a 16:9 aspect ratio without impacting gameplay

• HD 1080p display for HDTV's

Other Media

Street Fighter II was adapted into two different movies in 1994, Street Fighter II: 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, Kylie Minogue as Cammy and Raul Julia as M. Bison, the live-action 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."

Even though the Street Fighter film was once considered one of the worst movies ever made, it has gained a sizable cult following and has even seen numerous DVD releases, complete with a plethora of special features and bonus content. In contrast, the animated film was better received due for having a more faithful approach to the game's plot and has also seen some DVD releases.

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