They travel the world to meet and battle each other, and above all, to win. Some search for answers, some for glory, some for revenge. Some only seek worthy opponents in a never-ending quest to improve their knowledge and skills.
But only one can become the world's greatest street fighter.
Round 1 - Fight!
Konami hired high school senior Yoshiki Okamoto as a graphic artist in 1982, despite the fact that Okamoto didn't like video games and didn't want to make them. Two years later, under orders to create a racing game, he made classic shooters Time Pilot and Gyruss instead... and then asked for a raise. He was fired the next day.
Five-year-old Capcom scooped him up. They were shifting their business model from electronic game machines to video games, and Okamoto - their second R&D hire, after designer Noritaka Funamizu - put one of their first hits in arcades with 1942, a scrolling World War II aerial shooter that, ironically, encouraged players to wipe out the Japanese air force on their way to Tokyo. Together with Tokuro Fujiwara's one-two punch of Commando and Ghosts 'n Goblins, 1942 helped put Capcom on the map, and ushered in their move on the American market. The next step involved Okamoto taking on his old employers.
Data East had release Karate Champ, a basic fighting game, in 1984. Konami answered in 1985 with Yie-Ar Kung Fu (One-Two Kung Fu), staring martial arts master Oolong as he put the hurtin' on fighters like sumo wrestler Buchu, shuriken-throwing ninja girl Star, and tonfa-wielding Tonfun until somebody's health bar was gone. Capcom wanted its own fighting game, combining the best elements of Karate Champ and Yie-Ar Kung Fu, and outdoing both. Okamoto put director "Piston" Takashi Nishiyama and project planner "Finish" Hiroshi Matsumoto - the team responsible for Capcom's overhead beat-'em-up Avengers - on the job, and stuck newly hired 22-year-old graphic designer Keiji Inafune on the team to design the fighters.
They named their project after the Americanized title of Sonny Chiba's 1974 beat 'em up classic, Clash! Killer Fist. Street Fighter landed in arcades in 1987.
Cosmetically, Nishiyama and Matsumoto didn't deviate far from Yie-Ar's example, and Inafune had cribbed heavily from 70's manga and anime Karate Baka Ichidai for several character designs. Gamers played as Ryu, a solemn, red-headed Shotokan Karate master in a torn white gi and red slippers. The health bars were identical to Yie-Ar's, and several of the ten fighters scattered across the globe were curiously familiar... like shuriken-throwing ninja boy Geki and tonfa-wielding Eagle. Joining them was elderly Chinese assassin Gen, Caucasian punk Birdie, thinly veiled Mike Tyson clone Mike, and Thai bosses Adon and Sagat, the eye-patched Mauythai master and dead ringer for Ichidai's villainous Reiba, the Dark Lord of Muaythai.
Where Street Fighter differed was in the execution.
The colors and characters popped off the screen in ways Yie-Ar's super-deformed avatars never did. You had your choice of where to go first for a best-of-three contest, and whatever the outcome, a very, very badly digitized voice would declare victory or bemoan defeat. Even better, a second player could join the game at any time as Ken, Ryu's blonde, American sparring partner, for a karate duel against Player 1. If the challenger won, they continued the game as Ken. Joust and Mario Bros. covered similar ground years before, but neither brought the same level of competitiveness to their gameplay. Street Fighter was about busting the other guy up and sending him home.
Then there were the devastating special moves. Executing a Hadouken ("wave motion fist") fireball, Shouryuken ("rising dragon fist") uppercut, or Tatsumaki Senpukyaku ("tornado whirlwind kick") spin-kick could easily wipe out most enemies in one or two hits, but they were incredibly tough to pull off. Some gamers didn't believe they were actual moves. Discovering the tricks to Ryu's magical chi-based attacks was a matter of trial and error, or else the knowledge was passed down from experienced player to novice. Even then, the game's unique control scheme didn't always cooperate.
Instead of buttons, the Street Fighter upright cabinets came with punch pads - one for punches, one for kicks - that delivered light, medium, or heavy attacks depending on how hard and fast it was mashed. But the eight-direction joystick was legendarily unresponsive, and players couldn't really judge what constituted a strong versus a weak hit, opting instead to simply pound the machines relentlessly. Tales of sprained and dislocated fingers began to circulate.
Regardless whether the injuries were real or apocryphal, the punch pads didn't last long under all that abuse. Street Fighter cabinets went down with alarming frequency.
Luckily, the game's board had been built to accommodate a second design for the Japanese market. The punch-pads were phased out in favor of a six-button control scheme that made it far easier to use the various kicks and punches. The conversions, however, didn't make the joystick any more accurate, or clean up lingering bugs from the force-reading sensors, which were never removed.
Despite the problems, Street Fighter became a modest success in Japan and a hit - literally - stateside. Capcom USA soon requested a follow-up game. Funamizu and character designer Akira Yasuda gamely obliged with Street Fighter '89, a side-scrolling brawler in the Double Dragon vein that failed to catch on. Meanwhile, riding high on yet another successful title called Mega Man, Tokuro Fujiwara made the Metroid-ish action platformer Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight for the Nintendo Entertainment System, featuring a bionic Ken; it mercifully vanished into obscurity. Street Fighter '89 was soon re-dubbed Final Fight, and went on to its own successes.
But what everyone really wanted was a real Street Fighter sequel, and Okamoto was now on the hook to provide one.
The World Warrior
While Street Fighter ported to various consoles -- occasionally as "Fighting Street" -- Okamoto went to work. He didn't blame Nishiyama and Matsumoto for jumping ship, but it did make him competitive; he not only had to outdo their game, but everything they'd done since.
He brought Funamizu in, along with Akiria "Akiman" Nishitani as a planner. Character designs were assigned to Funamizu's Final Fight collaborator, Akira Yasuda. They started by keeping the six-button control map despite corporate fears it was too complex - most games used two buttons, max - then promoted a few guys forward from the first game: Ryu, Ken, Sagat (now sporting a Dragon Punch scar on his chest and a huge grudge in his heart), and boxer Mike, now even more thinly veiled as "M. Bison." More fighters were required to fill out the roster, and in a move that changed everything, Okamoto decided they'd all be playable. Suddenly, the modest sequel was different from every other video game ever made.
There were eight distinct fighters to chose from, with seven distinct fighting styles offering thirty-plus moves each. The combinations were mind-boggling. Gamers could select Ken or Ryu (now barefoot and brunette), or they could play as Edmond Honda, a sumo wrestler out to redeem his entire sport, or power through as Russian bear-grappler Vodka Gobalsky (later changed to Zangief), or pour on the speed and acrobatics as "spring beauty" Chun-Li. Indian warrior Dhalsim's yoga-fu was borrowed from wuxia classic Master of the Flying Guillotine. Military man Guile put American guts and a fantastic hairdo into the mix. Electrified beast-man Blanka added some weirdness. Each got their own back story, blood type, and animated arena, complete with breakable objects and cheering crowds, and every single one was somebody's instant favorite.
Blocks and throws were in. Always-popular special moves became easier to pull off, but still carried a learning curve that separated experts from novices. Street Fighter's board-smashing bonus rounds were upgraded to bashing up cars, falling barrels and flaming barrels. And this time, hardware advances made the controls hyper-responsive... a necessary change to pull off each fighter's expansive move set.
Okamoto's team delivered a mammoth sixteen-megabit game knowing they'd done themselves proud, but they had no idea what was coming. Street Fighter II: The World Warrior debuted in 1991, four years after the original, and instantly conquered the video game market.
The plot was fairly standard for any tournament-style kung fu story: mysterious criminal organization Shadoloo (also called Shadaloo, Shadowloo, and Shadowlaw) organized a global fighting tourney, inviting the most powerful fighters to compete. After roughing up their seven competitors, the winner advanced to face three Shadoloo lieutenants - M. Bison, Spanish ninja Balrog, and Sagat - culminating in a brutal fight against Shadoloo's megalomaniacal, psycho-powered ruler, Vega. But in response to Capcom USA's fears of a Mike Tyson lawsuit, the "Four Devas" swapped names around at the last minute; the hulking boxer was re-dubbed Balrog, vain Spaniard Balrog (originally envisioned as a knight in armor) took Vega, and Vega became forever known as M. Bison. Sagat stayed Sagat.
Whatever their names, powering through them treated players to yet another feature unfamiliar in an arcade game: a proper cut-scene ending. Most fighters returned to their families or loved ones. Chun Li, an undercover Interpol agent, brought her father's murderer (Bison) to justice and shed her mourning silk. Zangief enjoyed a dance with Mikhail Gorbachev. Ryu, as always, pointed himself towards the horizon and started walking, searching for the next challenge.
Only some gamers never saw the bosses, or the plot.
In SF I, competitive play was a built-in bonus. For II, players turned head-to-head combat into the primary game mode. Queues formed as champions survived multiple challengers, only to be scrubbed by a Lightning Kick, a Hundred-Hand Slap, a Yoga Spear, a Sonic Boom, a Dragon Punch. Quarters were balanced on the cabinet's marquee and boards, marking everyone's spot in line. Players came to identify each other by their fighter of choice, which often dictated their tactics and, occasionally, just how good they were. It wasn't long before some got better than anyone ever thought possible.
There were bugs in the game. By interrupting the strike animations at key points with more button commands, it was possible to chain attacks into a fairly devastating combo. The programming team knew it, but the timing and precision required to purposely cash in on those glitches just didn't seem within the typical gamer's reach.
Devoted players learned them and exploited them. Street Fighter II was never going to be a simple button-masher, but now the skills and tactics involved went to an entirely new level. Mastering all the moves, all the combos, was the goal, and that ethos separated the population into Hardcore Gamers and Everybody Else for the first time. Before, video games were largely accessible to anyone with a quarter and a few minutes to spare... Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Pac-Man all had a certain pick-up-and-play quality about them. Capcom's killer app wasn't so inviting. A newbie could easily find themselves trashed in a mere fraction of the ninety-nine second match time without landing a single hit. Moreover, the characters' abilities were seriously unbalanced; a top Guile, Ryu or Dhalsim player could last all day on one quarter, so long as challengers kept coming. And they did.
Around 60,000 cabinets shipped world-wide, a number not seen since Donkey Kong. Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into Capcom. Nothing could match Street Fighter II's versatility, or its bone-crunching fun. Even though it was developed at roughly the same time, Nishiyama and Matsumoto's Fatal Fury, released just a few months later, came across as something of a cheap knock-off. The first of many.
Fighting games flooded the market. Some staked out their own territory -- Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, Killer Instinct -- while others cashed in and faded out in the same breath. All followed the same guidelines set down by SF II. Some copied the controls and style exactly. Rival developer SNK Playmore, famous for producing Ikari Warriors and the modular Neo-Geo game cabinets, swiftly poached Nishiyama and Matsumoto from Capcom to create King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, and Samurai Shodown.
Despite that glut, fans were eager to see what the next Street Fighter might do to the genre, and persistent rumors claimed Street Fighter III topped Capcom's to-do list.
They were only off by about eleven games.
Fists of Fury
The Street Fighter II phenomenon took off fast and went further than Okamoto or his team thought possible. True fandom surrounded their game. An April Fool's joke played by Electronic Gaming Monthly staffers sent thousands back to the arcades, attempting to tease out nonexistent "hidden" character Gouken by not hitting M. Bison during the final match. Hundreds more attempted to find the button combo that made Chun-Li throw her spiked bracelets, an attack that was never programmed. When it ported to the home markets, millions more went into Capcom's bank account. All things considered, a sequel didn't really seem necessary, so much as a refinement on existing success.
April 1992 saw Street Fighter II' - Champion Edition make the for Devas playable, and allowed players to fight using the same character for the first time; palette swaps, soon to be an SF staple, set the two avatars apart. Street Fighter II' - Hyper Fighting followed that December to counter an unofficial hack that juiced up Champion's speed and added more vertical moves, but Capcom took the opportunity to make those changes their own and add other satisfying tweaks as well. Ryu became more defensive, Ken more offensive, befitting their cool and hot personalities. Chun-Li got a fireball, Dahlsim's buggy vanishing act became a Yoga Teleport, and all the fighters were balanced slightly better. Power-slam tactics like the fireball/dragon punch combo and flash kicks could now be countered or punished by a player with skill. The blinding speed made it a fascinating example of tactical twitch-gaming.
After two minor, if welcome upgrades, more rumors circulated about a new Street Fighter with new street fighters to learn. Anticipation for SF III grew, and quickly deflated when Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers released in October 1993. Only four new combatants were added to the roster: Native American giant Geronimo (changed to T. Hawk after concerns were raised), amnesiac English special agent Cammy (alternately a former Shadoloo agent, Bison's lover, and a Bison clone), Bruce Lee devotee/homage Fei Long, and a head-swapped Fei Long clone. American designer James Goddard stepped in to replace the "Faux Long" with Jamaican capoeira master Dee Jay.
Super SF II certainly looked better. All the animations were redrawn and updated, the sound remixed, and combos became an officially recognized part of gameplay. Reversals and recoveries appeared and added to your score. Guile and Dhalsim's near-invincibility was toned down. But most players were reluctant to try the new characters, particularly against a seasoned Ryu or Ken and their new special moves. That was just a fast ticket to a humiliating knockout, and minus the new kids, Super didn't seem like an improvement on Hyper Fighting.
Nevertheless, Street Fighter's world was evolving, and fans slowly warmed to the idea. The new faces became familiar, even popular in Cammy and Fei Long's cases. Again, the time felt right for a bump to III; instead, word came down from Capcom that Super SF II went live without all its intended upgrades due to a rushed production schedule, and yet another II - a complete II this time - was coming. Its intended audience wasn't terribly excited to see it... until they did. Billed as the ultimate version of the II legacy, Super Street Fighter II Turbo lived up to the claim, finally balancing all the characters, offering hyper and souped-up "super" modes to play, and adding two new franchise mainstays: air combos that let you juggle your human punching bag, and super combos that dished out an extra bucket of pain.
And this time, there really was a hidden character. Inspired by EGM's old practical joke, players who reached Bison on a single quarter or with an outstanding track record of Perfect wins were shocked to see a demonic fighter in an ash-grey gi leap out and casually murder the nigh-invincible master of Shadoloo. Created by Funamizu, "master of the fist" Akuma was your new end-boss. He was the vicious brother of Ken and Ryu's sensei Gouken (the subject of EGM's joke), and he lived to pound gamers into the dirt. If they were worth his time.
After a lot of sameness, Super Street Fighter II Turbo stood out. It remains a franchise favorite.
Street Fighter was now a billion-dollar franchise. Its various incarnations and home console ports had won or placed in multiple Game of the Year lists and sold better than any other coin-op game in history, according to the Guinness World Records. Sponsored tournaments gave rise to legendary players like Daigo "the Beast" Umehara and Alex Valle. Beyond the core games, the now-iconic fighters appeared in parody Pocket and Puzzle Fighters, casino games, and performed numerous cameos. A deeply panned live-action movie staring Belgian Jean-Claude Van Damme as American Guile still made over $100 million, and featured scenery-chewing Raul Julia in his final role as M. Bison. A more appreciated anime feature and multiple animated series from both sides of the Pacific followed, along with comics produced on three difference continents, toys, and a collectible card game.
Its lock on the gaming market, however, was slipping. A dismal tie-in game for the Van Damme movie looked more like Mortal Kombat than Street Fighter, while the real Mortal Kombat siphoned gamers off with over-the-top violence and a proper sequel in 1993. That didn't even begin to cover Darkstalkers, ClayFighter, Guilty Gear, Eternal Champions, Primal Rage, Rise of the Robots, X-Men: Children of the Atom, dozens of anime-licensed fighters, from Dragonball Z to InuYasha to Zach Bell! to Gundam, and the inestimable Shaq-Fu. And after Virtua Fighter's first few tentative steps, competitive fighting games were about to dive headfirst into 3-D with Tekken, Soul Edge, Soul Calibur, and Dead or Alive.
Street Fighter wasn't making that leap, or any other. And the intense pressure to produce more games faster led to nearly half the SF II team quitting Capcom and hiring on at SNK.
Hits and Misses
Okamoto, feeling there wasn't much else to contribute, also stepped away from Street Fighter to work on Mega Man titles. Funamizu took the franchise reigns. Under his lead, the Street Fighter Alpha series took its cues from Capcom's own Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors, changing up character designs for brighter, anime style-renders, then adding super-combos and counters while keeping the violence strictly 2D. It also gave the series something else: continuity.
Bridging the gap between Street Fighters I and II, the Alphas fleshed the old characters' backstories out and introduced new ones. Guile's doomed friend Charlie (Nash in Japan), whose murder he fought to avenge in SF II, was a playable Guile-like fighter with crazy Guile-like hair. Precog Rose held a special connection to Bison, employing Soul Power against his Psycho Power. Pink gi-wearing wimp and egomaniac Dan Hibiki started life as a slap against SNK's "weaker" fighting games, but became a handicapping fan favorite for his mastery of the infinite taunt and a finishing move that let him take out opponents by blowing himself up. SF I's Birdie (now a black and blonde punk), Gen, Eagle and Adon made comebacks after eight to ten year absences.
In what would become the first of many franchise crossovers, Funamizu also brought in Guy, Sodom, and eventually Rolento and Cody Travers himself from his old Final Fight games. Maki would join them in a portable port of Alpha 3.
Launched in 1995, Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dream also introduced Dramatic Battles, allowing players to double-team Bison with Ryu and Ken, though they shared the same life bar. Akuma reappeared in 1996's Alpha 2, which added more team matches, ditched chain combos for custom combos - rapid attacks chosen by the player - and beefed up the blocking mechanics, while an Alpha 2 Gold added Survival and Akuma modes (all Akuma, all the time), but never left Japan.
The first two Alphas hit big, pleasing old and new fans. Capcom, however, felt there was room for more than one Street Fighter series.
Specifically, Capcom wanted to counter the growing popularity of 3D polygonal fighters with a 3D polygonal fighter of their own. They turned to one of the original Street Fighter II planners, Akira "Akiman" Nishitani and his recently formed development company, Arika (his name spelled backwards) to co-produce it. Together, Capcom and Arikia put Street Fighter EX on the market in 1996, and it rapidly bombed.
Nishitani knew how to pull maximum performance out of the old SF engine, and the game did perform beautifully, but the 3D fighters looked shoddy when placed alongside the competition. New features like chained super combo Super Cancels didn't really sell, and special Guard Breaker attacks came as quite a surprise to defensive players. The story seemed largely absent, and while some new fighters like sailor-suited schoolgirl Sakura caught players' attention, explosives-happy Doctrine Dark, blank slate Cycloid-B and clueless vigilante super-hero Skullomania didn't excite anyone. Two updates - EX Plus and EX Plus Alpha - soon arrived, and soon disappeared.
By now, Yoshiki Okamoto and Noritaka Funamizu - Capcom's first two video game hires - were almost all that was left of the only original SF II team. When Capcom finally decided to move franchise forward, a full decade after SF II, neither was involved.
Instead, Capcom tapped a producer working under them on scrolling beat-em-up Battle Circuit. Tomoshi Sadamoto's job was nothing less than remaking a classic, only without its popular recurring cast. The decision was made to drop everyone, from every Street Fighter game, and start fresh with a completely new roster.
When word leaked, fan outrage prompted them to rethink their position slightly. Ryu and Ken went back on the list.
But the lead role still went to Alex, a Manhattan-bred wrestler looking for some payback on Gill, a God-complexing super-being, and the new final boss. Gill's tournament was a veiled search for candidates to mutate, brainwash into obedience, and add to his cultish armies. Naturally, the strongest fighters in the world signed right up. They included ninja girl-in-training Ibuki, gentleman boxer Dudley, and African capoeira specialist Elena, who only wanted to make friends by beating them senseless.
Otherwise, the newcomers felt a little too plain, or else a little too strange. Blanka and Psycho-Powers aside, Street Fighter had always relied on relatively human combatants. The new generation was heavy on genetic mutants and oddballs, starting with red, blue and Speedo-wearing Gill himself. Lab experiment Necro (and his Dhalsim-like powers) and jaundiced 140-year-old master kareteka Oro, who fought with one arm tied behind his back, least he accidentally kill potential students, didn't come close to normal. Worse, the moves and controls all felt very familiar. It wasn't tough to find analogs for each new character in previous Fighters.
Super moves were now Super Arts, and players chose which one they wanted to take into battle. The big new addition was the parry system, which let skilled players deflect anything from fast jabs to a massive Super Arts combo without even taking the normal chip damage. It also opened up a split-second window for a free whomping on the attacker.
Sadamoto kept everything moving at a hand-drawn sixty-four frames per second which, claimed some, actually served to slow the action down. The beautifully animated moves couldn't be broken for combo fun. Others embraced III as the best-looking game yet, and took those perceived limitations as tactical choices, no different from Hyper's fast-forward fighting.
Street Fighter III - New Generation debuted on February 4, 1997. Fans expected a whole new experience, taken to the next incredible level by the franchise that ignited their love of competitive fighting games in the first place. What they got was another Street Fighter that boasted mechanics separating it from Alpha and EX without truly surpassing either. 2nd Impact, a rushed sequel, arrived in October with a few more new fighters, the return of Akuma/Shin Akuma, grapple defenses and EX Specials (combos with that special EX touch). It wasn't enough.
Finally, Street Fighter sequels had gone up a notch in the Roman numerals, introduced a completely new cast, and transitioned to 3D... and nobody cared.
Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting
Capcom's response was to go backwards.
Funamiza got the nod once again. Street Fighter Alpha 3 released in 1998, cramming in every single fighter from the II and Alpha series, and none from III. Some even got new forms like Evil Ryu, an Akumaish version of the franchise hero where "the surge of murderous intent" had awakened. There were thirty-five playable characters and all the previous combo and combat modes were available, along with a new guard meter that depleted as you took hits, an evolution of EX's Guard Breaker system. In a franchise known for giving players options, Alpha 3 threw in the kitchen sink, and a fully stocked kitchen to go with it. As Okamoto's last brush with Street Fighter before staring Flagship, a division within Capcom concentrating on Resident Evil sequels, it proved a fitting swan-song.
The next year brought Street Fighter III 3rd Strike and Street Fighter EX 2, a huge visual improvement over the first EX. While it still stayed locked on the 2D plane, the 3D avatars looked sharper and performed even better thanks to improved hardware, and firmly established the EX series' reputation for insane combos. 3rd Strike put Chun-Li back in the game, pallette-swapped prototype Necro for production model Twelve, and snuck in mysterious stranger Q, but didn't win gamers back. In 2000, EX3 became the first Street Fighter available for the PlayStation 2, and made tag-team fights as a basic game mode, complete with their accompanying tag-team combos.
And that was pretty much it. Alex made appearances elsewhere, and Arika's proprietary EX characters would show up in Arika-produced games Fighting Layer and Fighter Maker, but it was done. Alpha, EX, and III had all run their course. As a stand-alone franchise, Street Fighter was no longer being made.
Capcom's problem, one that existed as far back as The New Challengers, was this: players wanted new games with new characters to master, but dropping beloved fighters in favor of new blood only earned them resentment from long-time fans. Going too far in either direction made things too repetitive or too unfamiliar. Alpha 3 had successfully beaten that issue, but only by going huge and including everything.
The solution was to give fans what they wanted - the familiar and the new - in one big fantasy league rumble.
Back in 1995, Capcom had licensed two fighting games based on Marvel Comics best-known superheroes: X-Men: Children of the Atom and the more board-based Marvel Super Heroes. In 1996, they combined franchises for X-Men vs. Street Fighter. The 1997 follow-up opened up the floodgates with Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. In the geektacular off-canon storylines, Ryu could stomp Cyclops, Spider-Man webbed up Ken, Dhalsim and Captain America created an international incident, Chun-Li became an honorary X-Man, and Zangief and Colossus defended Mother Russia side-by-side. 1998's Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of the Super Heroes and Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes in 2000 expanded the roster even further to include Darkstalkers, Mega Man, a host of random Capcom characters and a small handful of originals.
The fighting mechanics, often dependent on tag-style matches, split gamers in terms of popularity, but using Dan Hibiki to school the Incredible Hulk had endless appeal. Clearly, this was the way to go.
Further inspiration came when Japanese magazine Arcadia did a cover spotlighting Alpha 3 vs. King of Fighters '98; it was widely misread as the title of a single game, rather than a comparison. A huge fan response prompted longtime rivals SNK and Capcom to sign a deal to make crossover fighters, to be produced independently by both companies.
SNK, already under strain due to deliberate under-financing from their new owner, pachinko maker Aruze, concentrated on titles to prop up their flagging Neo-Geo Pocket portable system. SNK vs. Capcom: The Match of the Millennium was the Capcom/SNK deal's first product in 1999, developed by Dimps... a company founded by Street Fighter's original creators, Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto. A slew of poorly selling Card Battle games followed.
Capcom's efforts were much more successful, but the terms of their deal sent those profits Capcom's way. SNK retreated from the American market in 2000, the same year Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight released. A few months after Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium hit arcades 2001, SNK declared bankruptcy.
And then Street Fighter went silent again. Ports to the home market still peeled out with regularity, but no new iterations were on the horizon. A new 3D fighter, Capcom Fighting All Stars, was scrapped after one disastrous test in 2003. A resurgent SNK Playmore put out SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos that July, but used the King of Fighting control scheme. Interestingly, Dan served as a mini-boss, and Red Arremer from Ghosts 'n Goblins appeared as a hidden boss.
This was the end of an era. After seventeen years and much soul-searching, Noritaka Funamizu and Yoshiki Okamoto, the last members of the original Street Fighter II team still at Capcom, decided it was time to move on. Both tendered their resignations within a few months, Funamizu to start the Craft and Meister (producing various Dragonball Z titles), Okamoto to found Game Republic (Folklore, Genji: Days of the Blade). The last game to release under Okamoto's reign was 2004's Capcom Fighting Evolution, a salvaged version of Fighting All Stars, and it was universally panned on release for a poor roster - four characters each from II, Alpha, and III - cheap animations, and dull gameplay.
Fighting Evolution was also the game were a longtime in-house music and sound designer made the jump to producer. His name was Yoshinori Ono.
To Live is To Fight
Street Fighter II's team had dispersed, but one member of the original Street Fighter's design crew was still around. Keiji Inafune's star had risen at Capcom since taking a rush design job back in 1987 and turning in Mega Man. Now he was head of Capcom R&D.
Coming off the well-liked Shadow of Rome, Ono was assigned to the fourth installment in Inafune's Onimusha series, 2006's Dawn of Dreams. When the time came to put in the prerequisite unlockables, he included hidden costumes that let demon-killer Soki and his cohorts dress up as Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and Guile.
Ono was a big Street Fighter fan. His first assignments at Capcom were Street Fighter games. When players and press reacted positively to the Street Fighter skins in his Onimusha project, he took that feedback straight to Inafune. If people were that excited about a few costumes, it only meant they were hungry for a new game... and if it happened, Ono made it clear he wanted the gig.
Inafune agreed. Street Fighter IV was on, with Ono in charge.
While Namco X Capcom put a dozen or so Street Fighter staples in the middle of an action/tactical RPG, a colossal amount of market research and inter-company debates hashed out IV's broad strokes. None of the previous artistic styles would be used. The roster would put focus on fan favorites over newbies. Most critically and controversially, Street Fighter would not leave its 2D plane of combat, though its combatants and their stages would go the full 3D, and HD to boot. Dimps came aboard as a co-producer, bringing everything full circle.
Those decisions made, Ono started sweating the details. His plan took the franchise back to basics, evoking the best elements from the best II-era games... specifically, Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Super Combos morphed into cinematic Ultra Combos and their "Revenge Gauge," fed primarily by taking damage. But Ono wanted to de-emphasize non-stop combo vs. combo play and bring the more tactical elements back; the answer was Focus Attacks, a way of absorbing incoming damage and returning it with interest. That served as both counter and deterrent to infinite chain-comboing players.
Ono had always tried to take a strong interest in the titles he worked on, even if they were inherited mid-stream from other producers, as was Capcom Fighting Evolution. Street Fighter IV, on the other hand, was his passion project. Beyond all the pressure, he just wanted to see the franchise he personally loved done right... to take what Street Fighter was, and what it should be, and make that the game.
Street Fighter IV was officially announced in October 2007, ten years after III's debut, instantly doubling the pressure on Ono, then doubling it again as media focus narrowed on him personally. All the while, IV underwent an incredible amount of adjusting. Ono tweaked everything to get it exactly right.
It arrived in Japanese arcades in July, 2008, with a few sneak previews in American markets. The editorial staff of Arcadia made it their Game of the Year.
A few late 2008 releases could barely hope to divert attention. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes, pitted street fighters and Onimusha's Soki against anime properties Gatchaman, Casshern, and Tekkaman, among others, but only in Asian markets. Backbone Entertainment (of Death Jr. fame) slid Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix onto Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, designed by their resident (and renowned) SF tournament competitor David Sirlin. Remix successfully remastered the old game with new hi-def avatars, and further whet appetites for IV.
The twelve SF II characters are back for IV. Ryu and Ken's sensei, Gouken, is playable for the first time. Joining the old guard out on the street: a luchador, a karate man on the John Candy diet, a French amnesiac who uses multiple styles because he can't remember his own, and a American spy who's low-cut suit and tie definitely don't adhere to CIA dress codes. Akuma and the Four Devas are in, but the new big bad is Seth, a senior Shadoloo cyborg with a deadly gift for mimicry. Another six familiar faces - some voted in by popular demand - will make the cut when IV comes to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC in February 2009, and online combat will finally let home players take on an endless string of live challengers, just like in the arcades. The few advance console reviews to pop up so far have been overwhelmingly positive.
As for the future, it's sounding like Capcom wants Ono to go for Round 2, if not more. He's expressed interest in bringing both Darkstalkers and Marvel vs. Capcom into the 21st Century, and in bumping IV up to a V if his first turn does well. So far, it has.
The legacy in his care is no small thing. The original SNES port of Street Fighter II is still Capcom's best-selling game, nearly seventeen years later. A direct line can be drawn between two players duking it out on a Street Fighter cabinet and millions competing online today in contests of skill, where a perfectly timed movement delivers a precise attack to your intended target. COG fighting Locust, Spartans fighting Spartans, Soldiers fighting Terrorists, Alliance fighting Horde... it began with Street Fighter. Capcom's simple entry into the fighting game arena changed the landscape, and eventually changed what it means to game.
Like Ryu himself, now you forever search for new opponents. Not for glory or riches, but simply to feel the thrill of personal combat, wanting nothing more than to learn new skills and put your strength to the test. Above all, you fight to win.
But don't forget: there are many guys like you all over the world.
