In 1991, Capcom released Street Fighter II: The World Warrior to an unsuspecting world, and the fighting game genre was never the same. 12 warriors each with their own personalities, styles, combos, and special moves. A combat engine that allowed for almost total freedom, allowing players to develop their own styles and combos.
I started playing the game in early 1992 right before it was announced on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and I managed to convince my folks that year to get me an SNES and a copy of SFII for Christmas. Once i had it in my hot little hands, then I could practice away from the arcade. I had tournaments with friends, gave awards to the winners. I made friends at arcades and we’d all trade secrets, tips, and stories while we crowded around the machine in the hopes of being one of the next to play one of the local champs holding court, beating by opponent after opponent, knowing that if we could somehow beat that guy, that WE’D become that guy.
It’s been 17 years since Street Fighter II: The World Warrior was released. Recently I started going back and playing it again, the arcade version, not the SNES version, and each time I do, I’m surprised at how complete a game it is. Sure SNK and Capcom themselves took the fighting game genre to wildly different places that were more advanced and sometimes more interesting than the places SFIIWW went, but as the game that ignited the fire that would be the fighting game genre, I feel like it’s held up pretty well. It’s not as fast, doesn’t have complex defense/parry systems, doesn’t have super moves, and only has 8 playable characters, and yeah, it’s quite a bit simpler, but it’s EFFECTIVE!
For only 8 playable characters, each one is very well fleshed out. There are very few, if any, truly useless moves. You’d think a standing Jab may not be the most effective move until it allows you to stop Ryu mid-fireball, or a close Forward that allows to to complete a truly sick dizzy combo. Because each character has only a couple special moves, it encourages the player to use their regular arsenal effectively. Each character’s regular and special arsenals work together like clockwork, and make for a very deep combat system. Two players could play the same character in a completely different way and still be successful. Sure there were some combos that were pretty standard with some characters, but the game’s engine encouraged exploration of each character’s movesets rather than putting the emphasis on memorizing long strings of button presses a’la Tekken or MK in 3D.
The characters are fairly well balanced too (note I said FAIRLY and not TOTALLY.) Each character has a fight or fights in which they have a clear advantage, and vice versa. Sometimes even Guile and Dhalsim are truly outgunned and no amount of broken-ness can save them.
Then there were the Bosses. Stronger than the rest of the cast, and sometimes seemingly impossible to defeat until you found the trick. I remember struggling with Vega for a long time until I figured out his weaknesses. I haven’t lost to Vega in WW since I was in 9th grade. They’re strong, but totally beatable.
To me, it’s interesting that no matter how hard a company like SNK tried, they never truly bested Capcom. They put out 5 times as many fighting games, but none of them had the strength at the core that SFII had. Forget about MK. They were great games for their time, but how many people still want to play MK1?
SFII has stood the test of time. Maybe some feel it’s outdated, too slow, not forgiving enough, but in a way, it’s still there in every SF game we play. The bones of just about ANY SF game COMES from SFIIWW! The basic engine has changed very little. Sure it’s had refinements, but at its core, Street Fighter is still the same as it was 17 years ago, and THAT is why people still play SF games. Because they know to expect a game that, if Capcom did it right, people will still be playing 10 years down the road.
