Street Fighter



Street Fighter is the name of Capcom's premiere video game franchise.

Street Fighter I
Street Fighter I is a poor video game developed by Capcom and released in 1987. This game would be completely forgotten, if not for its sequel, Street Fighter II.

In 1988, it was released on the Turbo Grafx-CD under the name Fighting Street, because there had to be a home version, but the game is so bad, Capcom knew it wouldn't sell with the proper title.

Player One is always Ryu. Player Two is always Ken Masters, but only in a two-player game.

After inserting your quarters and pressing start, players wi'll be given a choice of which country to fight in. In each country, there are two opponents:


 * From England:
 * Eagle
 * Birdie
 * From Japan:
 * Retsu
 * Geki
 * From China:
 * Lee
 * Gen
 * From USA: 
 * Mike
 * Joe

For each country finished, you'll take on an impossibly-difficult bonus game that will just get you extra points. Points are totally worthless, except to try and get the top score.

After defeating all 8 opponents, you will be flown to Thailand, where you will face Adon and, finally, Sagat.

The original arcade version had two attack pads - One for punches and one for kicks. The harder players hit each pad, the stronger the attack would come out. This resulted in many broken arcade machines, and a second iteration of the game was released that had six buttons, one representing each of the six possible attacks: Three punches (Jab, Strong, and Fierce) and three kicks (Short, Forward, and Roundhouse). This layout became standard for Capcom fighters for over 10 years.

The Hadoken, Shoryuken, and Tatsumakisenpukyaku are all in the game, but are nearly impossible to perform. Interestingly, the Shoryuken can KO an opponent in less than a second, if all 3 hits connect while the timer still says 99.

This game is pretty bad. Don't play it unless you hate yourself. Or you're REALLY bored.

Street Fighter II
Street Fighter II is the umbrella title for seven games in the Street Fighter Franchise:

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior
Released in 1991, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior introduced the world to head-to-head fighting games. Ryu and Ken Masters returned from Street Fighter I as playable characters, and we were introduced to E. Honda, Chun-Li, Blanka, Zangief, Dhalsim, and Guile. Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M. Bison were unplayable boss characters.

Street Fighter II: Champion Edition
Released in 1992, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition (known as Street Fighter II Dash in Japan) allowed players to take on the same character (for example: Zangief vs. Zangief was now possible), and allowed players to play as the four boss characters. Each of the backgrounds were recolored into a different time of day or weather condition.

Turbo Street Fighter II: Champion Edition: Hyper Fighting
Released later in 1992, Turbo Street Fighter II: Champion Edition: Hyper Fighting, as the arcade cabinets called it (known as Street Fighter II Dash Turbo In Japan, Street Fighter II Turbo on the SNES, and Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition on the Sega Genesis), gave each character new moves and modifications, as well as sped the game up about 15%. Each characters' alternate color was changed, but the backgrounds from Champion Edition remained. The voices from World Warrior were still in use.

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers
Released in 1993, Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers introduced four new challengers: Dee Jay, Fei Long, Cammy and T. Hawk. Each character now had eight selectable colors. The previous characters gained even more new moves and balance tweaks. Every character was given an individual voice, and both the background stages and the portraits on the character select screen were completely re-drawn. The music for the entire game was re-recorded using Capcom's new Q-Sound board. The four boss characters each gained several new animations for their normal moves. Some arcades featured four SSFII cabinets linked together (known as "Super Street Fighter II: The Tournament Battle") where up to eight players could compete in tournaments, playing musical chairs to figure out where they were supposed to play next. The missing player slots were filled in with CPU-controlled opponents.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo: Grand Master Challenge
Released in 1994, Super Street Fighter II Turbo (known as Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge In Japan) was the last "new" game in the Street Fighter II franchise for nearly a decade. This game introduced Super Combos into the Street Fighter world (Something several of SNK's fighters had already been using), as well as Akuma, the brother of Ryu and Ken's master, Gouken. Each character was given yet even MORE moves and tweaks, in addition to their new Super moves. Using secret entry codes during character selection, the original Super SFII versions of each character was selectable, effectively giving this game 33 selectable characters.

Hyper 'Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition
Released in 2003, Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition includes every version of every character from every Street Fighter II, allowing matches such as World Warrior Blanka vs. Super Turbo Guile, to determine which version of each character truly was the best. This game effectively has 65 available characters.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Released in 2008, Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix was released on XBox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. This game features a re-balancing of every character, as well as completely re-drawn graphics. Music remixes were supplied by artists from. Online play was made available, to determine who the best SFII player in the world is.

Street Fighter Alpha
Street Fighter Alpha is the 4th series entry in the Street Fighter franchise, built on Capcom's CPS II hardware. It is known in Japan as Street Fighter Zero. The series contains the following games:


 * Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams
 * Street Fighter Alpha 2 (arguably replaces SFA in terms of storyline)
 * Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold ("Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha" in Japan) (introduces Cammy as a hidden character)
 * Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Playstation and Saturn releases have extra characters than the Arcade original)
 * Street Fighter Alpha 3 Saikyo Dojo (Dreamcast version with even more extra characters)
 * Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper (Gameboy Advance version with missing stages and modified controls)
 * Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX (PSP version with even MORE extra characters) ("Street Fighter Zero 3 Double Upper" in Japan)

Chronologically, Street Fighter Alpha takes places between Street Fighter I and Street Fighter II, despite being released after SFII.

Street Fighter III
Street Fighter III was the long-awaited proper sequel to Street Fighter II, Capcom's premiere fighting game. Unfortunately, by the time SFIII came out, nobody cared anymore. 5 versions of SFII, 4 Street Fighter Alpha games, and the three Marvel Vs. Series titles had been released before this game. That's 12 Street Fighter games that didn't weren't III.

However, for those of us patient enough to wait, the game was well worth it. Some of the crazier antics of Street Fighter Alpha were removed; No air-blocking, no auto-blocking options, and characters were back down to just 1 Super move each, now called "Super Arts." Sort of. Players have the option of 3 separate Super Arts, but select 1 to use during the fight. This allowed players to best match their Super Art to their play style.

Additionally, SFIII introduced the Parry ("Block" In Japan): By pressing the joystick towards your opponent (or by pressing down for low attacks) the instant before an attack connected, players could knock their opponent's attack away and leave them vulnerable for a split-second. This tactic essentially nullified Fireball spamming, as players could knock projectiles away with a simple flick of the joystick.

Street Fighter III: New Generation
The original arcade cabinets for SFIII didn't include the words "Street Fighter" anywhere, and the game was simply referred to as "III: A New Generation Of Fighters." In addition to the above features, there were eleven playable characters: Alex, Dudley, Elena, Ibuki, Necro, Oro, Sean Matsuda, Yun and Yang, plus the returning Ryu and Ken Masters. Yang was selectable by choosing Yun with a Kick button, and the two had an identical moveset. After defeating all opponents, players would face Gill, a half-red, half-blue man that resembled a Greek God. Fittingly, Gill was fought in front of the Mediterranean Sea.

The lack of familiar faces and total change in gameplay style caused the game to be met with a lukewarm reception; By this point, most casual gamers were done with fighting games and moving on to the 3D platformer games offered on the Nintendo 64 and Sony Playstation.

Interestingly, the beta versions of New Generation didn't even include Ryu and Ken. The game was all-new characters (hence, "A New Generation of Fighters"), which was met with piss-poor reviews. Capcom scrambled, and decided to add the original Shotos back into the game by recycling Sean's sprite and adding new heads (which explains the spectacular "explosion" effect of their dougis when executing a Hadouken - The animation was originally used for Sean's Hadou-Burst Super Art).

Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact: Giant Attack
Released in 1998, 2nd Impact re-balanced a bit of gameplay from New Generation, made Yang a separate character from Yun and changed some of his moves, and added Final Fight's Hugo and Gill's brother, Urien to the lineup. Akuma also made his SFIII-franchise debut, as a hidden character.

The biggest change in SFIII, however, was the addition of EX moves. When executing a special move, if the player presses two appropriate buttons instead of just one, their character will flash yellow, and the move will often do an extra hit, or inflict extra damage. For example, if Ken executes a fireball by pressing down, down-toward, toward, and 2 punch buttons, he will flash yellow, and his fireball will now do 2 hits instead of just one. Using EX moves will use up half of one bar of Super Art meter.

Street Fighter III: New Generation and Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact: Giant Attack were sold in a on a single disc for the Sega Dreamcast, under the name Street Fighter III: Double Impact.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike: Fight For the Future
The last Street Fighter game released for a decade, 3rd Strike came out in 1999, and fixed nearly every problem players had with the SFIII franchise. Hitboxes were tightened up, so if there wasn't sprite overlap, characters wouldn't hit each other. Yun and Yang were individualized even further. Gill was given a cool glowing effect, to further show the power of Capcom's CPS3 arcade hardware. Akuma was added to the regular character select screen, and fan-favorite character Chun-Li was added to the roster, albeit with a nearly completely new moveset. Four new characters were added: Makoto, a sassy Karate student;Q, a mystery man in a coat; Remy, a raver kid with moves similar to Guile; and Twelve, one of Gill's genetic experiments, sent out to capture Necro.