The other day, out of nowhere, I suddenly remembered about [tag]Street Fighter II[/tag]. Now that’s iconic arcade game. There have been a few landmarks coin-ops that have made an impact in Malaysia, like 1942, Raiden, Hong Kong Mahjong (a perennial favourite this). But one that really took arcades across the nation, is none other than the humble Street Fighter II.
(all images taken from the Coin-Op Museum, they have an excellent site there…)
Just like Final Fantasy VII for the Playstation One, and Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo 64, SFII was a high water mark for its platform. I remember my friends were really into it, spending hours in seedy, dark and smoky arcade rooms with stacks of 20sen in a small basket in front of them. The SFII influence wasn’t limited to Malaysia only, it literally took the world by storm, I can remember at least half a dozen Hong Kong movies spoofing fight scenes from the game. One even featured Jackie Chan as Chun Li (now what was that called…?) My friend even had a collector’s edition of the SFII book showing all the moves for all the characters for arcade, SNES and the comparative systems in the day.
For those of you who have never heard of [tag]Street Fighter II[/tag], or who were born after that generation, it was a simple one on one beat them up game. There were about 14 characters from different parts of the world, later versions like World Warrior and Championship edition had more characters. You fought in best of 3 rounds, you lose a round when your health bar finishes. Lose two rounds and you lose the game (or add a coin within 10 seconds to ‘continue’.) If you played against the computer, you literally traveled around the world fighting challengers until you lost. While playing alone, anyone watching can come and challenge you by inserting a coin in the vacant seat, unless you explicitly tell him you don’t want to be challenged.
If you count the different versions on all the different platforms (arcade, console and PC) there are no less than 50 different versions, so it almost impossible to track them all. Other than the arcade version, the ones I played the most was PSX’s Street Fighter Zero.
What made SFII head above its competitors (like King of Fighters, Virtua Fighter, and Tekken) were, in my opinion down to 2 reasons – the gameplay, and the characters. The game play involved lots of hidden powers – the more you practiced, the better you become. With timing, great moves, and knowledge of each characters strength and weaknesses, the game was easy to play but difficult to master. I guess a lot of SFII experts can still go on and on about the beauty of the gameplay: the air juggling, the counter attacks, the super bar, the EZ versions, the Alpha versions, the new challengers, etc… Indeed on of the greatest coin-op games of all time…
The second reason, is of course the playable characters.
I’m running out of time. We’ll look at all the beloved characters tomorrow…
12 Comments
lilian
Abuuuugen!!!
lucia
it was my 2 nephews who introduced me to street fighters! when they were kids (under 10 – now they are near 20), they were crazy over it and everytime could heard them going ‘abuuugen’ (thanks for the reminder, lilian), when the meet each other to pretend to fight.
colourful characters all of them there. i remember playing the consolde game once… never like the game. fighting game is not for me.
Sashi
And let us not forget one of the greatest movies of all time, Street Fighter starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.
😛
andycjw
I have the first street fighter game catridge for NES, but I never see any coin-op machine of street fighter before until the SF3, maybe i was too young to visit those seedy place last time
S-Kay
Eh eh….Up + Down and I forgot which button on the right can make Chun Li do her helicopter kick. Hahahah.
yuin
i think that jackie chan show was called city hunter or something like that..
all I remember was the actress who had boobs so gigantic that she couldn’t stand straight and kept falling over.
rijac
hey what about this…
http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/RaidenX.html
raidenX. i used to skip school to play…
Ken
We used to play street fighter game catridge non-stop whenever I visited my friends’ house…
Helicopter Kick = up + down + A + B i think… Hahahaha…
zyrin
ehehehehe… yeah, the movie! had kylie minogue in it, too 😉
man, i never fail to watch the movie whenever i’m flipping channels on astro. i used to collect those cheesy street fighter stickers…
simon
lilian – HADOOOO…KEN!
sashi – gaaah… kylie was the only thing i remember of that bomb…
andycjw – coin ops were everywhere, but the NES version was not too bad either. only if you had the joypad…
s-kay – most girls like chun li!
yuin – i googled it and it was city hunter. oh, the girl part you remember la? 🙂
rijac – yeah, i remember raiden too. but didn’t really spend too much time on it.
ken – haha, that’s one of the easiest to master…
zyrin – kylie was the only good thing i like the movie.
Jason
There’s another version, with Aaron Kwok, Stephan Chow (I think) and Jacky Cheung (Gulie) and Cheng Ekin (Ryu), Andy Lau (Masked Man)and alot of other hong kong stars one.
simon
er, what’s the name of the movie?