Capcom has produced many famous franchises across its run.Resident Evilfreaked people out with zombies and other monstrosities.Megamanbecame the company’s icon across multiple consoles, andAce Attorneytaught people how fun going to court can be. Well, virtually anyway.
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However, few of their properties have been as influential asStreet Fighter. It didn’t invent the fighting game genre, though every entry in it has followedStreet Fighter’s lead to one degree or another. From the combos to the characters, its DNA can be seen in fighting games new and old. The series has gone from strength to strength, and here are its strongest moments.
7The Sequel to Beat All Sequels
The originalStreet Fightercaught on because it named its characters, had big, bright graphics, and funky, pressure pad buttons. Still, it was clunkier to play than rival games likeYie Ar Kung Fu. The game’s directors would join SNK and try to improve on its formula withFatal Fury. But they didn’t know their old employers were going to take things to a new level.
Street Fighter 2: The World Warriorgave players 8 varied characters to choose from, each with their own special moves, stages, and catchy tunes. The most revolutionary addition was the ability to join punches, kicks, Hadoukens, and more into chain attacks based on how they cancel or link into each other. These combos were originally a glitch, but with some tweaking, they madeStreet Fighter 2quicker, more responsive, and more engaging than anything else on the market at the time.
6Akuma Appears… If You’re Good Enough
Capcom would capitalize onStreet Fighter 2’s success by spending the next 3 years re-releasing it.Championship Editionwould make the four bosses- Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M.Bison- playable.Hyper Fightingwould speed the gameplay up. ThenSuper Street Fighter 2would add Fei Long, T.Hawk, Deejay, and Cammy, while slowing the game back to pre-Hyper Fightinglevels.Super Street Fighter 2 Turbowould rectify that by bringing the speed back, adding in super combos for every character, and a new secret boss.
Inspired by EGM’s famousSheng Long April Fools' Prank, Capcom would create an actual super shoto boss called Akuma (or Gouki in Japan) as a secret character. If players beat the other characters on the arcade ladder quickly and without losing a round, Akuma would zip in, defeat Bison in one go, and test the player’s mettle. He would continue to be the series’ super-boss across multiple installments, be it as himself, Shin Akuma, or Oni.
5The Most Famous Handshake in Fighting Games
Akuma was also the first character to take on the Marvel characters, as he was a secret character inX-Men: Children of the Atom. Still, he was the sole Capcom representative in that game. What would the X-Men do if they had to take on the rest of theStreet Fightercast?
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EnterX-Men Vs Street Fighter. Its faster, more frenetic take onStreet Fighter’s gameplay, the tag gameplay, and the hyped-up super combos would make it a must-play game. Seeing Ken blast his opponents away in a pillar of fire, or Cyclops and Ryu joining forces with a double laser attack was hype enough on its own. It would only get more wild as it would lead into theMarvel Vs Capcomseries.
4Alpha 3 Wins Out
Inspired byStreet Fighter 2: The Animated Movie, Capcom’s actual follow-up toStreet Fighter 2would go in a more anime-inspired direction with theStreet Fighter Alphagames.Alpha 1was fair, though fairly slow by today’s standards.Alpha 2brought the speed, more characters, and better presentation overall.
The series peaked its popularity withAlpha 3in 1998. It was bolder, with moodier music, andM.Bison at his most powerfulas an end boss. The game would get released on a wide swathe of consoles, adding extra modes and characters like Guile,Final Fight 2’s Maki, and Eagle fromStreet Fighter 1with each big re-release. It was successful, though the series wouldn’t reach its level again until 2008.
3It’s the Third Strike, Y’all
Street Fighter 3: New Generationwas a disappointment. It had some neat ideas and silky-smooth animation, but the gameplay was clunky compared to theAlphagames. Nor did it have any of the old favorites except for Ryu and Ken. Where was Cammy? Or Charlie? Who’s this ninja girl, and why is she so broken? Its follow-up,Second Impact, tweaked things and threw in Akuma, but it still paled next toAlpha 3.
Then, in 1999,Street Fighter 3: Third Strikewould come out with a funky hip-hop soundtrack, the best gameplay of the bunch, and a returning character who wasn’t a shoto. Chun Li would come back and kick her way back into top tier. Still, it would take a few years for it and its unique characters like Alex, Elena, and Dudley to catch people’s hearts. Roughly 5 years in fact.
2Evo Moment #37
WhileThird Strikewas a cult favorite, it was also unpopular with hardcore fans around the early 2000s. They felt the game killed off theStreet Fighterseries outside of crossovers, withAlpha 3andMarvel Vs Capcom 2being much more popular. Then at Evo 2004, two players would go head-to-head and inadvertently makeThird Strikea must-have title. All they did was demonstrate a gameplay feature.Street Fighter 3introduced a way to avoid taking chip damage by pressing forward in time with each hit to ‘parry’ it.
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It’s easy enough to do with slower strike, but much harder to do with quick flurries. Nonetheless, when Daigo Umehara’s Ken was left with a pixel of health against Justin Wong’s Chun Li, he had to master them to counter her Hoyokusen kick super. To everyone’s surprise, he managed to parry every single one of the super move’s 17 hits, then snatch victory from defeat with a combo of his own. It’s become known as Evo Moment #37 and gaveThird Strikeviral success. It was popular enough to become a Trial Challenge inthe game’s PS3/360 port.
1Street Fighter Goes Forth
Despite this, fans had given up hope there would ever be a newStreet Fighter. Any ‘new’ game was likely to be a re-release, a compilation, or a mishmash of old assets. Yet it was after such a mishmash,Capcom Fighting Evolution, that led toStreet Fighter 4. Kind of. That game’s director, Yoshinori Ono, pressed Capcom higher-ups to make a new fighting game and, after much urging, got the go-ahead. The final result was2008’sStreet Fighter 4. The chunky 3D graphics gave fans pause, thinking it might be more of a novelty like theEXseries.
But the game ended up being a success, gainingSuper,Arcade, andUltraupdates. It brought back all the classicSF2characters, and some ofSF3’snow-beloved cast. Newer characters like Juri Han also caught on, appearing in future entries. Plus, one executive producer got vindication. Takashi Nishiyama, one of theSF1andFatal Furydevs, was the head ofSF4’s co-developer Dimps. Without his company’s help, the game might not have been made. Then the new fighting game boom that producedUltimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Guilty Gear Strive, and more may not have happened. Perhaps karma exists after all.
