Why do I love Street Fighter 2!

My first experience playing Street Fighter 2 was not on the SNES or in the arcades. No, it was on Mega Drive (Champion Edition). For a full year after its release on SNES, I never played it. It was a blast, especially being a Master System owner and avid Sega Power reader.

The ad was amazing, I still have this image of Blanka receding in my mind that still makes me smile (her mom wouldn’t be impressed …). I saw how it was played in arcades (I was not allowed in) and on TV shows like Gamesmaster. He couldn’t believe that he could have something like this at home that wasn’t inexplicably too expensive (like the Neo Geo). Sega Power initially reported that the Mega Drive could not handle SF2. It took a 24 Megabit cartridge and the invention of a six button Mega Drive joypad to make it happen, but oh, it was worth the wait! A friend of mine from elementary school got it and I immediately went to see it. Even with a normal control panel and having to press select to switch between punch and kick, it was amazing. I think I spent the whole day there, my friend’s brother brought us some Fruta Tella to sustain us.

The evolution of SF2 is something strange and wonderful. I’ve never known a solitaire game (forget about the sequels) that has so many incarnations and so many fans. Thousands still download it on the Microsoft and Nintendo networks to play on next-gen consoles. I think I’ve been exposed to about ten versions, and except for the NES version, all of them have been great. That includes the Master System version!

The original incarnation in arcades was “The World Warrior” and it was credited with starting a plethora of titles in the same genre – I can name Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, and Virtua Fighter to the top of my head. Just when the title was heading to the SNES and various home computers, Capcom released the Champion Edition, allowing you to play as all four bosses. Woof. I’ve been excited about the SNES version, but one that I didn’t expect to be good was the Amiga version that runs on an A500 + (that’s 1MB of RAM) and without the additions that are possible with a cartridge, but it’s great! Since it is much less colorful than the SNES version and you only have a kick and a hit button (possibly more with the keyboard? I forget …) but it is just as fluid and playable. Capcom’s versatility across platforms cannot be understated and while a few third parties have helped (TecToy and er, Yoko Soft), the integrity of SF2 remains intact.

By the time Champion Edition hit the Mega Drive, Capcom had already released the Hyper Edition (Champion plus extra speeds) for the SNES, which turned out to be so popular that it actually came as a title bundled with the console for a while. Capcom then packed the “Hyper” section into the same Mega Drive cart, great! So MD owners were able to enjoy a port of the original Champ Edition and the faster Hyper Edition (set your own speed), phwooaaaar. The release of Fatal Fury on the MD should have been a very celebrated thing (I think it’s great) but SF2 and the hype surrounding it, ruled.

And then there was Super Street Fighter 2, which I didn’t hug myself, but it was a solid extension of the SF2 license in arcades and 16-bit.

What made SF2 so special? There are a lot of things, but for me, the capacity for joy (yes, I just made that word up) made it hard to put away. Button smashers and more calculated players were able to take it, enjoy it for a while, and then put it down again. Then pick it up again. With the Hyper Edition, it’s twelve different approaches and twelve different ways that you can win the game, choosing different characters when you see fit. You might not get along with Guile one day, so why not try to wreck him (literally) with E Honda the next? This subtle variation in special moves also pleased different types of players. With Ryu and Ken, players can be more reactive as their movements can be performed quickly and effortlessly. Whereas with Guile and Blanka, you would have to think a few moves ahead (more like a chess player) as their moves (mostly) need to charge for a few seconds. For button mashers, Vega or Chun Li are perfect, many times I have wanted to strangle a friend who beat me by simply bouncing as fast as possible and making annoying gliding motions. The more I think about it, the more obvious SF2’s appeal becomes. And I haven’t even mentioned the bonus stages yet, don’t think I’ll never get tired of wrecking that car.

Ryu and Ken are great, end of story. Memories of a graphic novel, possibly a comic book vaguely come to mind, but despite that, these two characters are the epitome of cool. Ken in his eye-catching red Ferrari-style Gi and Ryu in his classic understated white: muscles rippling with a look of death. Also. Cold. In order to. School. I think Capcom screwed it up in the last SF4, their tiny heads on ridiculous bodies make them look like the goombas from the Super Mario movie. Ryu or Ken? Ken for me, mainly because I like the red Ferrari. I have never known a game that makes two identical character sets (save for the difference in their strong throws, they are identical) work as well as two different characters. Although Midway has tested it in the Mortal Kombat series with varying degrees of success (robot camping anyone?). There are myths that Ken is faster and Ryu hits harder, but we’ve done extensive testing here at AA (we love the good testing we do) and they are the same. I can’t explain the Ryu myth, but Ken’s speed could be explained by the Gi’s brighter colors and less detail, which creates a kind of optical illusion. Anyway, just as every kid in school has their favorite soccer team, every boy (or girl) also has their favorite character. Which brings me very well to …

Cosplay. Street Fighter 2 is great too as it cuts across the sexes. Even though the high school girls didn’t say it out loud (out loud?), There are guaranteed to be some SF2 fans there. On a recent trip to Tokyo (which you can read about here) I saw some magazines / posters advertising cosplay events. Guys, we all wanted to meet Chun Li in the 90s, right? Google “Street Fighter 2 cosplay” and thank me later, as there were clearly girls in the 90s who wanted to be Chun Li. Wow, she kicked some of the proverbial ones. Dozens of Japanese girls still play SF2 and its derivatives, when you can find them among all role-playing and rhythmic games.

Capcom discovered gold and (justifiably) rinsed it for all it was worth. You can still find the original arcade machines now. I found an interesting version of the Champion edition earlier this year, where it was only playable with the third (I think) character color. It was a pleasure to control Guile Brown (oo er) with the original left stick and right button combo, although I think I managed to fight three before running out of 50p. What wouldn’t I give to have one of those machines! Er, the replicas are £ 1400 and the originals over £ 5000 if someone wants to get us an early Christmas present …

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