Genre: Fighting
Year: 1991
Developed by: Capcom
Published by: Capcom
Platforms: It’d be easier to list platforms it wasn’t on
#132
Feeling Like: ROUND 1FIGHT!
I am standing in the 7-11 on Oak Bay Avenue, waiting for my dad to pay for our Slurpees. It was a minor adventure we’d do before school, if I woke up eartetly enough. In my head, it was at least a 15 or 20 minute ride, but according to Google Maps it was only 5. I was only seven at the time, so I’m sure five minutes at 7am riding uphill felt a lot longer but I was heavily motivated by a sugary treat and the notion that I could catch a glimpse of the Street Fighter 2 arcade present by the door. Dad wouldn’t let me play it, but I still dared to hope I could watch others. He could hardly stop me from watching, could he?
The loading screen…wait, what do you call that for arcades? You know, when the screensaver-type scenes show you a demo of the game, enticing you to play? INSERT COIN INSERT COIN usually flashing somewhere. I’ll call it a loading screen, but I’d love to know the real name and it’s not like I can just google it… Anyway, the image of two dudes squaring off before another one right hooks the other into oblivion while the crowd cheers on and the camera pans up to a building with a sign reading Street Fighter 2 completely mesmerized me as a kid. I’d played Super Mario Bros. and Tetris and a few other child-appropriate titles, but this was a level of violence I was totally unprepared for.
I loved it.
Street Fighter 2 is so ubiquitous in gaming that it’s become cliche. I’m sure there are other fighting games with better mechanics, or more spectacle, or more gore but nothing touched Street Fighter 2 for a very long time. Its success was so monumental that it spawned spin-offs, sequels, sequels to the spin-offs, spin-offs to the sequels and is generally front and center in every tournament since its release. Street Fighter 6, launched this year, is the 40th game in the series.
40.
Now, many of those are extra editions of the same game, but they clearly kept garnering enough public interest for them to be made. You don’t see dozens of sequels/editions for very many other games for good reason – few have the rabid popularity of a Street Fighter.
I was never very good at it. I’m sure I beat the single player campaign from time to time, but it was all about competition amongst my friends. My sisters loved playing as Dhalsim because he was cheap as hell and watching a guy kick another from across the room is hilarious. Mark and Matt absolutely destroyed me at Mark’s place downtown on Johnson St. We all thought getting drunk on a Tuesday night was a good idea, since none of us had to work the next morning. Jumping up on a haphazardly put together tower of couches so we could get onto the roof and watch the sunset was a very unsafe, and a very good idea.
I never got how Matt and Mark were so much better at Super Nintendo than me, they always claimed they barely played and I played a lot. Whatever, as long as we were in the same vicinity, I’d take the losses. I was even more inept at Super Mario Kart – thankfully we were all just starting out in terms of being adults, so money was never on the line. Only pride. And booze.
It’s borderline unfair how catchy the beats are.
And, naturally, Guile’s theme. It does indeed go with everything.
Extra shout out to my favorite OCRemix of the bunch, Sly Thai Guy by Kaijin. While the original hardware limits the soundtrack’s original impact, the melodies have been transfixed beautifully thousands of times over. I still listen to songs inspired by a game that’s now 31 years old. Incredible.
31!
I played some version of Street Fighter 2 (Champion Edition, Turbo, Hyper Fighting) with virtually every friend I had at the time. I could never beat Kasim when he was E. Honda and did the belly flop over and over. Adam showed me the new characters in Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers. Every summer camp I went to had some form of Street Fighter 2 discussion, about who was the best at it and which boss was the hardest. It was a common rental for sleepovers. Until I wrote this entry, I’d almost forgotten how pervasive the series was in my childhood. It literally was everywhere.
Even in Bigelow House, when I discovered the anime series I had a flock of buddies watch alongside me with great interest. There is a criminal amount of filler (the Hadoken charge up montage was despicable), but the fights were incredible. Ken vs. Vega remains one of my all time favorite anime moments; it’s bloody, kind of creepy and completely off the walls.
Without Street Fighter, we wouldn’t have the best b-movie quote ever, we wouldn’t have combos, we wouldn’t have the most common fighting input in gaming (↓ ↘ → + attack) and I wouldn’t have nearly as good a reason to get excited for my pre-GNS bike trip with dad to revel in frozen coke slush and Capcom’s smash hit.
Next 131 Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
The 500 