Street Fighter the Movie Broke My Heart

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
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Wow. Very interesting read thus far. I can’t wait to hear more about the various character concepts and whatnot.

anoon, I’m curious as to who your favorite SF character is. And, if that character happened to be in SFTMTG, do you feel that the character received the sort of treatment (as far as faithfulness to the character’s original concept, assuming that the character appeared in another game) that he/she deserved?

I, personally, am a huge Shotokan (Actually, I love any character who can Dragon Punch.) fan in general, and my favorite characters are (in order) Ryu, Sakura, Sagat (He’s such a bad-ass in Alpha.) and Dan. The nice thing about SF games are that they always feature Ryu, so the games are usually pretty easy to pick up and play in that regard. Whenever I purchase the game for Saturn, I can only pray that Ryu is faithful enough to his original form that I’m able to tolerate it. :stuck_out_tongue:

By the way, this is probably going to sound very, very stupid, but I’m new to the forums and (despite being a long-time SF fan) I have no idea what ST stands for. Could anyone please clue me in as to which game (?) this refers to?

This thread really has me curious to the point where I’d like to play the original arcade game. I’m also planning on purchasing the Sega Saturn version, although it’s completely different. I used to play the original release of SFII in arcades, and I honestly miss those days. Arcades have taken such a hit in recent years, and it really is unfortunate that arcade machines are generally only scattered throughout movie theaters or restaurants where I live. I suppose that there are probably arcades in the area (including at malls), but they never seem to attract much attention from others. Very sad.

Anyway, regarding MK’s popularity, I believe that it had more to do with the violence than anything. I remember all of the controversy surrounding it, and I also remember jokingly responding with “The Genesis version of Mortal Kombat!” every single time my mom asked me and my brother(s) which game we’d chosen to rent from the video rental store. The look on her face was just too priceless. Oh, memories…

I absolutely loved the concept of fatalities, and I must say that - to this day - I play MK games for the fatalities. Yeah, their luster wears off pretty quickly, but I must say that it’s still very, very satisfying when you’re able to finish off a player who has been giving you a hard time. It’s just the ultimate way to express your victory. It’s great for trash-talking.

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Just finished reading everything so far, thanks very much for sharing this with us :slight_smile:

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Here are some pictures of my SFTM board and marquee. It plays great on my Egret II. I still have to get the pinouts for the kick harness, (Anyone have that or know where I can find that? Thanks)
I bought the board so that tells you how much I like the game. Thanks anoon for making it! I hope you make another fighter for us hardcore guys!! Your story is da’bomb!

http://photo.ringo.com/187/187717526O131705903.jpg
http://photo.ringo.com/187/187716713O251760506.jpg
http://photo.ringo.com/187/187716736O831486432.jpg
http://photo.ringo.com/187/187716792O180850589.jpg
http://photo.ringo.com/187/187716904O802977320.jpg
http://photo.ringo.com/187/187716968O022291916.jpg
http://photo.ringo.com/187/187717295O398141699.jpg
http://photo.ringo.com/187/187717463O171622282.jpg
http://photo.ringo.com/187/187717365O121559440.jpg

Hope my links work :slight_smile:

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A fascinating and very informative read, Anoon! You’re a good writer.

I second the people who told you not to beat yourself up. It was unrealistic for Capcom to expect you to simultaneously come up with a highly tuned up fighting engine (without giving you any code), figure out a way to have great animation AND do it all while working on your first digitized-video sprites project. . Add the time constraints you’ve mentionned in several of your posts and it just seems ludicrous. Heck, it might just not be POSSIBLE to have a really good fighting game using that technology. No offense to MKII fans, the game was fun and fairly balanced but it was significantly less deep than SF2/Z/3.

My question to you is: I know hindsight is 20/20 but, at the time, weren’t you worried about your ability to overcome all these significant obstacles? What about the programming team?

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ST = Super Turbo = Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo

That game is still featured in most major American tournaments, and still has a following both in Japan and in America. Since it’s such a common part of the fighting game scene (and lore), we can get away with such a barebones acronym. On the other hand, you could never get away with shortening an obscure game like Capcom vs SNK Pro to CP. People would look at you funny. Or … i guess … they would look at their monitors funny. But you get the picture.

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Lol, up until the next part of this paragraph, I honestly thought this thread was going to go south from the beginning. One of those “so deep in the closet you’re finding old christmas presents” kinda things. Luckily for us, its not.

But honestly, why was Chun so damn annoying. Specifically the phrase “spinning BIRD!!! kick”? I know you tried to get the voice actors to do japanese, but my God… spinning bird kick is NOT Japanese…

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Speaking of Chun, her ending is pretty amusing :rofl:

“Chun-Li has gained vengeance and justice for the murder of her beloved father at the hands of the mad Bison. With her debt to her father repaid and her family honor intact, Chun-Li returns to the United States and becomes a medical resident in a Chicago emergency room.”

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Yes… it all makes sense… you see, after she avenges her father’s death in Basically every street fighter game, she then becomes a medical resident… until one day, she ends up in China and a little girl is kidnapped by Urien. Ah… plot device… only Capcom can get away with holes this big.

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well I don’t know if you got that reference… see, Chun-Li in the movie was played by Ming-Na Wen, and Ming-Na Wen later appeared in the TV show ER… yeah.

Oh yeah, has anyone mentioned Akuma’s infinite in the corner? Roundhouse hurricane kick over and over. Wow

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Unfortunately, I did not get the reference. Not only did I save myself from SF the Movie, I also never watched ER… but, thanks for shedding some light on the situation anyways.

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Capcom doesn’t get away with it; Chun Li Zang never appears again, much less in 3S.

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SFTM was the best. xD

I’m not kidding, I loved that movie… Aside from the bad acting, dreadful story, no relavence to the game, bad jokes, Van Damme, etc. etc. The movie was the best.

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About as good as the Super Mario Bros. Movie…

lol… and Chun Li Zang… wtf… seriously… gj Capcom…

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It was A LOT better than the SMB movie, but that is NOT saying much at all.

I Loved Raul Julia’s M.Bison. One of the few movie characters that nailed it right, and one of few redeeming qualities in SFTM.

Sad that it had to be his last movie. R.I.P

All your links worked fine. So you really enjoyed SFTM:Arcade then? What is an Egret II?

When i first saw video footage of it back in the day i thought it looked GREAT, and was pissed to see the home version be totally different from the Arcade(Why Capcom?! The home version was slightly WORSE).

After finally playing the arcade version years later, it is just lousy. Perhaps I just need to stick with it longer and get used to its unique style, so it might grow on me, but I doubt it.

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Again, thanks to everyone for all of the respect for the thread! Views went from 8k the other morning to 55k this evening. Crazy.

I’m behind on writing new sections, so QA time.

Cool, thanks for the info. I’m amazed there still might be a SFTM, unconverted somewhere. I’d like to know what kind of cabinet it is in, and what the cabinet graphics look like.

I’m pretty weak on the dates, (it was 12 odd years ago or more,) so I’m going to guess… games took less time to do back then. I don’t even think that year long dev cycles were the norm. SFTM did take us longer than previous games… could have been nine months to a year? I should try to hook up with my old I.T. buddies and see if they remember.

I was more on the graphics side of things. In the beginning, my design contributions were more along the lines of move set breakdowns, new moves, character specifics, etc. The fighting engine/combo systems were largely the designs of the programmers. I lent my suggestions and lobbied for certain things gameplay-wise throughout the project which did or did not come to pass. I fully intend on discussing that later. Please hold tight.

I like to think I’m not really one to get all that star struck, but I must admit, it was a rare opportunity, and pretty cool now that I look back on it.
At the risk of sounding like a name dropper, these were the after hours elbow rubbing events we had with the cast:
1st night, Capcom held a dinner for cast and crew.
There was some sort of party on a lakefront deck or pier about a week later.
Dinner with Ken, (Damian Chapa,) Ryu (Byron Mann,) the Capcom JP guys. (Not sure who was at the other end of the table.)
Dinner with Grand Bush and his family.
Kylie Minogue’s party at some club. (Might have been her birthday?)
…so not too much celeb-time off the set.

That hoppy kick in particular was something we added after the Van Damme digitizing shoot. That dude had amazing control and balance over his body. He had his foot up at head height and could literally kick with it a dozen times in a couple seconds without the rest of his body barely moving an inch. We captured it and it became a move.

credit for that idea goes to the head of Gamestar/Capcom Chicago. He was big on this trip about having real video play. “It will blow the kids minds!!!” (Hand gesture of brains exploding out of his head included.) We were skeptical, but I have to admit, it is one of the things that people remember about the game.

Uhh… those were birds. Like as in “Spinning Bird Kick!” C’mon, the art wasn’t THAT bad, was it? :wink:

Yeah, that fan service stuff is fun.

Are you talking about the “green” (interrupt,) moves? Couldn’t tell ya. We drew inspiration from just about everywhere so it could have come from anywhere. I don’t remember how the KI moves worked, to tell the truth.

Good question. the first drafts of the script were apparently Ken and Ryu centric, as we would all expect. We got word that once Van Damme signed on, he insisted on being Guile and making him the central character. personally, I was baffled; how do you do a Street Fighter Movie without Ken and Ryu being the focus? There was early internal discussion of keeping the game true to established Street Fighter conventions, but that wasn’t to be. You pay for Van Damme, the customer gets maxium Van Dammage!

This is correct on all counts. (Though we should draw a distinction between motion capture and digitizing.) Luis is a super talented guy.

I was always primarily Ken player. I preferred his wide arc, multi hit DP over Ryu’s shallow, single hitter of the day. Later when Akuma showed up, I played him, though I got the impression he was considered “cheap” in early appearances so I tried to refrain a bit. I mainly liked him because he was so cool looking and evil, yet played like my old favorite. So, yes he was in SFTM. He turned out to be one of the better chars, though that was probably to be expected. He had just made his debut in SSF2T and owned.

Thanks for the benefit of the doubt, but IMHO, we blew it.

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Ok, so as I said, I have some catching up to do in terms of writing new sections. I don’t think I need to cover every single character’s digitizing session in full. I had begun a section on items of miscellany: A character that we digitized but didn’t use, a word on background graphics, perhaps some of the software and process we used… whatever else I can think of.

After that, I think it’s probably about time to try to delve into my estimation of “What went wrong?” perhaps followed by “What would I do differently?” for fun.

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This is the best thread on this site in several years. Great stories, anoon! Props! :tup:

You talk about how you were in the right place at the right time to be involved in the project.

I recall back then that the scene was starting to get a bit stale. Super wasn’t very well recieved (but I really liked it, personally) and Super Turbo, while maybe the best SF ever, didn’t draw in many new players - it was really a game for the hardcore players. The computer AI was absolutely ruthless to newbies.

Everyone at that time had been chomping at the bit for SF3 for a good 18 months and people were starting to lose patience. I even remember a magazine had “STREET FIGHTER 3” on the cover and I snatched it up. But I quickly realized it was bogus. The feature article was about what this magazine thought might show up in SF3 when (or if) it came out. They had not one shread of real inside info or evidence that the game was even being made. That shows how desperately people wanted it, though.

Then the SF Movie came out and it wasn’t horrific but it did seem to have “cash in on the hype” written all over it. Arcades had started to close up and the scene was clearly winding down with a lot of disapointment all around.

I mention all this as a hardcore fan from the golden age days to point out that SFTMTG was in the wrong place at the wrong time when it hit the arcades. Many of us players were already feeling “abandoned” by capcom and lamenting the demise of the golden age. SFTMTG just cemented in our minds that capcom had totally lost sight of what we, the fans, wanted.

So, yeah, I won’t lie - I do consider SFTMTG to be a mediocre game. But what made me totally loathe it was all the other things going on at the time.

In a nutshell, you just happened to show up when the bitter breakup was in progress, and you were the “other guy”. At first you thought you were something special, getting all her attention, but then later you realized she was just getting with you to get back at me.

We were both victims, man. That bitch played both of us.

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I’ll probably be in Tokyo again this weekend… I’ll see if I can get some photos of the arcade game in Akiba.

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Wow… great fucking read… :tup:

You teach me how to make games, I’ll teach you how to breakdance… fair trade?

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anoon, you mention that your digitizing technology wasn’t fast enough for the actors to perform their moves at full speed.

My question is: why then were you using direct-to-PC capture technology? Why not record to film, VHS, or BetaMax, and then digitize the footage later, when it didn’t have to be in real-time? I assume there’s probably a reason why that wouldn’t have worked well 12 years ago.

Awesome thread, btw. Street Fighter The Game: The Movie: The Game is one of my favorite games to name-drop. It was copied 11 years later, when they added Johnny Depp to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which I affectionately refer to as Pirates of the Caribbean The Ride: The Movie: The Ride.