If you wrote a story based on "Street Fighter II"

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1

…how would you organize the tournament? Who would fight against whom and what would the schedule look like?

For example, one could go with the standard KO system where all of the 16 fighters fight one opponent each, so that eight remaining fighters compete in the quarter finals. Then four fighters compete in the semi-finals and two are in the final.

Udon did it a bit differently: They started with the 12 non-grandmaster fighters and used the KO system as well until three fighters remained. Then there was a little variation: Each of the three remaining contestants fights against one grandmaster, Balrog, Vega and Sagat. And whoever beats his grandmaster opponent may then compete in the final which will be a three-on-one, two-on-one or one-on-one against M. Bison. (In the end result, Cammy had a double KO against Balrog, Ken beat Vega, but dropped out of the tournament voluntarily, and Ryu defeated Sagat and was about to fight Bison when Akuma jumped in, killed Bison and Ryu fought Akuma instead.)

So, let’s say you would do another conversion of “Street Fighter II” from scratch, let it be a comic or an animated movie or whatever, where you actually display the tournament. (So, no simple walking around looking for opponents like in the anime. We’re talking about the actual tournament here.) How would the battles go? Who would fight against whom in your version of the story?

2

The thing about fighting game plots? Not too great. You’d have to focus on one or two “segments” (i.e. Chun-Li/Guile/Cammy being cops and Ryu vs Evil stuff) because frankly most of the character’s plots are garbage throwaway stuff.

3

It depends. I think the “Street Fighter II” manga by Masaomi Kanzaki is very well done. With the Udon comics on the other side, I like everything except the tournament arc.

But however, this thread is not about devising a fleshed-out storyline or the style of an author’s tale. It’s just about the bare tournament schedule in the story.
This: http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs49/f/2009/220/0/b/Street_Fighter_Tournament_by_UdonCrew.jpg is the schedule of the Udon comic. (I couldn’t find the version with the results.)
Then they did an alternate version for their game here: [media=youtube]Py9kemu8CIo[/media] (The schedule can be seen at 0:39.)

And I’m curious what other people would come up with. I have devised an own schedule (based on the original “Street Fighter II - The World Warrior”, without the four new characters and without Akuma), but since I’m writing a story (shortstory/novel/whatever) about the game and I don’t want to spoiler it, I can’t publish it yet. (However, vasili10 has seen it. Just in case anyone might fear now that I started this thread to get ideas for the schedule and steal it from you for my story. My own version is already created and set in stone. I just ask the question out of curiosity about what other people would make up.)

4

Same here. I have hopes of doing something someday, even if it is just a bunch of cheap doodles making a comic, so I don’t want to spoil much. Here is my idea with no names. My layout starts with three groups of four characters each (the non-bosses). The winners of the first two groups would fight Balrog and Vega respectively and then fight each other. The winner of the third group would fight Sagat. The winners of these two last matches fight each other to see who fights Bison. It’s a bit similar to the Masaomi Kanzaki layout.

I think that SF1 and SF2 have BY FAR the best stories of all SF games, so I’d really love to make this.

5

Hey, that’s interesting. Yeah, I’d definitely read that.
The advantage of my version is: Since it’s not a comic, but just a 10-20 pages long written story, this is not just something that I hope to do in the future, but something that most definitely will happen. I only write occasionally, but I guess I will have it finished by the end of the month.

Believe it or not, but I use the grandmaster battles in exactly the same way. Because, yeah, I got some inspiration from that manga as well.
The Masaomi Kanzaki manga could have been the definite old-school version of “Street Fighter II” if it wasn’t for all the things that were changed from the original storyline: Blanka trying to become a member of Shadoloo, Vega being the murderer of Chun Li’s father, Guile having to kill a brainwashed Charlie, M. Bison being the winner of the previous tournament while Ryu scarring Sagat with a Dragon Punch is a completely unrelated event.
And of course the fact that it’s not a worldwide tournament, but an event held in a metropolis on an artifical island. (Somehow, no external work seems to get this right. For example, EvilRyuGuy on YouTube who retells the story as well, lets all the tournament battles happen in Thailand.) But at least that idea was still better than the version in the Udon comics. Their version with Bison’s private island completely ripped-off the original “Mortal Kombat” setting. They even included the island sinking into the ocean after the death of the host.

My story, on the other hand, attempts to be completely in harmony with the game. But, as I said, it’s about the original “Street Fighter II - The World Warrior”. So, while I try to make it harmonize with the game, I don’t care for the current canon. In my version, I will completely disregard everything that came after the original “Street Fighter II”. So, in my story, there will be no Dark Hadou, no Akuma who jumps in and kills Bison, and Charlie’s death won’t be depicted the way it was displayed in “Street Fighter Alpha 3”. And of course, the four new challengers from “Super Street Fighter II” won’t be there either.

Would you send me your schedule in a private message? I could send you mine. I have no problem showing it to individual people, I just don’t want it open on the internet before the story is published.

6

It’s an interesting move to leave the four new challengers aside now that they are established. I like the idea of going back to the roots, as I think SF1 and SF2 had really good stories. The problems started after the release of SF2, when Capcom realized the media monster they had and tried too hard in two senses: bringing lots of useless character relations and trying to give Ryu a greater role by either relating him to Bison or replacing Bison as the main villain.

7

If it was my I’d just write a story about how Ryu travels around the world, encounters each fighter individually and defeats them. But one loss is not an automatic disqualification so when it comes to the final match against the 3 more fighters can be present for the big finale. And they could even fight some people Ryu has beaten too because again you need more than one loss to get tossed out.

There’s also a lot more Street Fighters participating in the tournament so everyone has a chance to beat up no names and advance.

The closest thing I can think of that’s like that was the Mobile Fighter G Gundam anime. Of course my story would be a lot more serious. So yeah I guess like Masaomi Kanzaki’s manga, only with the globe trotting aspect and an even stronger focus on Ryu.

Funny but I guess the Pokemon anime always works this way too. But more serious and no real circle of friends for Ryu that he travels with. Just friends he makes during the tourney.

8

I know this is an ancient thread, but I had some ideas for the semi-finals matches: Guile vs. Balrog, Chun-Li vs. Vega and Ryu vs. Sagat. Not sure where to put Ken…

9

Even with the changes already mentioned, I think Masaomi Kansaki’s Manga is the best depiction (outside of the SF2 game itself) of classic SF2. I think Kansaki was smart in what he changed, as in the big picture it really doesn’t bother me, it can get kinda odd if one looks at the changes listed (as DRW did a few posts above) but overall I don’t think they disrupt the story or distract me from it, its cohesive, cool and action packed while staying true to the tournament aspect of the game and (for the most part) the characters. All in all it feels like Kansaki’s Manga captured the Street Fighter 2 spirit right to the core.

10

[quote=“DRW, post:5, topic:138630”]

To be fair, I don’t think the bolded (Udon) is that different from Kansaki’s artificial Island “Shad”, as Shad was basically M. Bison’s island too, the main difference from Udon’s (I would guess) is that in the case of Shad, Bison wasn’t so openly dictatorial, both to the Island itself and to the world about his ownership of the Island, instead he was masquerading his iron grip on Shad as “Chief of Police”; what I am trying to say is that Shad was also Bison’s private island, just not as openly and as an “in your face” way as he owned the island in Udon Comics (forgot what they called it there, if they ever did).

11

There’s a little problem with this matchup: In Ryu’s ending, you see M. Bison standing on place 2 and Sagat on place 3 of the winners’ podium. This means that Ryu has to be in a position where he would only face Sagat right before Bison.
In your constellation, Ryu would face Sagat earlier and he would have to win against Chun Li or Guile before reaching M. Bison, rendering his ending impossible.

Ken should probably lose to Ryu.

The main difference is that Shad was an island with its own infrastructure. They had houses, factories, streets, cars, casinos, trains, a stadium, newspapers and all that stuff. People lived and worked there, it was a real city. It just happened to be located on an island.

The island in the Udon comics was just an empty island with some of Shadoloo’s buildings on them. There were maybe 50 people on this island, and all of them worked for Shadoloo. There wasn’t a public, there weren’t civilians.
That tournament was entirely a private event. There was no audience apart from the fighters themselves. It was much closer to Shang Tsungs’s tournament.

The tournament in Masaomi Kanzaki’s manga was actually a street fighting tournament since the fighters battle each other in the streets and other random locations, with cheering onlookers, just like in the game.

The tournament in the Udon comics had nothing to do with street fighting.

Ironically, the previous tournament, which you only see in a short scene in the very first issue, where Ryu defeats Sagat: That looked like a typical street fighting tournament. So, I don’t know why the second one was presented as a “Mortal Kombat” ripoff, right with a boat that has to bring you to the secluded area and in the end, the whole island sinks into the sea.

Besides, had Masaomi Kanzaki tried, he could have easily incorporated the stages from the game and claimed that they are locations on the island (with the island itself being purposely shaped like a world map): The Chinese market, the Russian fatory, the Air Force hangar and the temple court: Those are all things that could exist on Shad.

12

Make it about a U.S. Army Captain who trained shotokan during his youth, who wants to honor his teacher by winning an underground tournament in Hong Kong, while wooing an American journalist and evading CID officers in the process.

13

OK I now get what you mean in terms of the diferences between Udon’s Island and Shad (Kanzaki’s), I guess it really shows I read that Udon arc quite a long time ago and only once while I tend to revisit Kanzaki’s quite regularly hehe. Now, regarding the bolded, that would’ve been cool if Kanzaki actually tried it. I guess we can argue that he kinda did it with “Little Las Vegas” (Ryu Vs. Balrog)? Or when he added a cage to the Chun-Li and Vega fight (I admit that second one is kinda pushing it, as the location bears no resemblance to “El Mesón de la Taberna” from Vega’s Stage).