I just wanna say, while I’ve never actually played SF The Movie: The Game…it AT LEAST looks 100x better than Tattoo Assassins.
Don’t boss me. Also, stay tuned to Capcom’s Phoenix Wright forums this week for some relevant stuff (pending legal approvals).
PS-- while I’m at it, there’s plenty of solid evidence (hard, science-y evidence even!) that fighting games are still very viable as a genre.
I’m not sure how such a sad sack “the sky is falling!” mentality set in amongst fighting game players (this mentality has been around for over 15 years, despite the genre’s strides), but it’s not well-grounded in reality. Get happy and go play a game!
xo,
Seth
TWO KENS
We did the first Ken shoot in Australia, as scheduled, though he ended up getting a double dose of digitizing by the time we were through. Its probably safe to say that any Street Fighter fan that saw the film version of Ken would agree that Damien Chapa was not exactly the best match for our red shoto brother. After returning from Australia, we began cleaning the Damien Ken up and putting him in, though we werent super happy with the results. We had a dilemma: not only did our digitized Ken not look like the Ken we knew, he didnt exactly move as fluidly as him either. Ken was hugely popular; how could we not deliver a great Ken?
As things turned out, Chun Li was never captured in Australia, so we had a pickup shoot slated to happen in Chicago for her. Since we were going to have the camera and equipment rented out already, we captured two additional characters in Chicago: Sheng Long, and a second Ken.
Our project lead/lead designer found our second Ken; Im not sure where. He was a young guy barely out of high school I think, if at all, but he had martial arts training and most importantly: long blond hair. His costume was a red gi, though it did not feature the torn sleeves and pant legs. Instead, his long sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. The shoot went well, and we approached Capcom with the idea that we sub in second Ken for Damien Ken. Capcom ultimately decided that we had to go with Damien Ken however, and second Kens raw capture stayed on his CD. We were disappointed at the time, but looking back, Capcom made the right decision with Damien Ken in my opinion.
RAVEN???
One of the fight/stunt coordinators on the film was famed martial artist Benny The Jet Urquidez. Our Lead Designer/Engineer was a huge fan of his, and we had a hole in our schedule, so we made arrangements to digitize Benny. We went down to wardrobe, and they made a costume: Black quilted vest, red athletic/karate style pants with a black stripe, and taped up feet. His session was a bit different than the others. I believe it was the Lead Designers idea, (and a great one at that, IMHO,) to digitize Benny performing his moves set in several different styles. The plan was to include Benny in the game as the character Raven. His unique ability would be that he could change fighting styles on command. I wrote the character background, which was approved by Capcom as far as I remember, though I have completely forgotten the specifics. While we never got to put Raven in the game due to time restrictions, it wasnt too long before a Street Fighter character with a similar style switching ability debuted: Gen of Street Fighter Alpha.
Wow, I never knew Benny was supposed to be in that game! He has one of the best on screen fights with Jacky Chan ever, I think it was in Armour of the Gods. Would be cool to see some pics of Raven too.
Man, you scared me there. When I saw Raven’s name I thought you were going to say “We were big fans of the Wolfman and Perez Teen Titans comic and DC gave us the greenlight to use Raven in the game, but we couldn’t due to legal issues but Capcom did let DC make the Street Fighter The Movie comic.” 
Seriously though, DC’s comic book adaptation of the Street Fighter movie is beyond horrible…
EDIT: Man, I gotta try sketching out those designs of Sheng Long and Raven for fun one of these days when I’m not so busy…
What are you talking about?
I meant if I had heard all of this great development talk way back in 1994, I wouldn’t have been able to contain myself waiting for this game. It’s easy to look back now and say, “Wow it’s a shame it didn’t turn out like that,” but how often does that happen, games are hyped for months/years only to be crap. But we never get this kind of insight afterward either. I wish more developers would reach out like Mr. Noon has.
Back on topic, you keep talking about secret characters, Mr. Noon, had it been considered to use the 2nd Ken as a secret character like “Evil Ryu”?
On a related note, which game was it that featured Ken’s evil double?
SvC Chaos has Violent Ken.
Excellent read. I can’t wait to see your section on what you would do differently. It would’ve been very interesting to see the “other” Ken; too bad he didn’t make the cut.:sad:
I just beat the game playing with Ryu and Guile and I actually wouldn’t mind buying it if it were released on XBLA wink, wink… nudge, nudge. I don’t care how broken it is; it actually feels good to be able to “Shoryureppa” with normal Ryu for a change.
Infinites and stuff aside, I think it would be perfect for some good times (as well as some great laughs) on live.
T.HAWK
T.Hawk was never digitized. I dont have the details, but for whatever reason, Greg Rainwater did not show. It became apparent that after the first few digitizing sessions, many of the actors werent coming up to do their session with us. This was largely the reason we were not able to leave Australia after the originally scheduled two weeks and instead stayed for a month. In the end though, just about everyone was digitized, with just Ming Na and Greg Rainwater holding out. Fed up with wasting time, dealing with Hollywood personalities, and with members of our team missing their families, we headed back home. Capcom arranged to have Chun Li shot back in Chicago, but T. Hawk went missing. (At the time I figured it was no big loss in my book, I never liked T.Hawk anyway.)
DHALSIM
Dhalsim was another character that was never digitized. I dont recall there being any scheduling conflicts or contract negotiations involved, just that digitizing him posed a few problems: First, there was concern that the actor would not be able to perform the session. Second was costuming: would players accept Dhalsim in lab coat? Asking the actor to strip down to a yellow diaper didnt seem like it was going to fly. In the end, Dhalsim was such a small part of the film we figured wed skip him, unfortunately.
DEE JAY
Dee Jay was actually digitized in Australia. I feel really bad that he never made it into the game. Miguel Nunez was a really cool dude, and one of the actors that genuinely showed enthusiasm for the video game aspect of the job. Again, time was Dee Jays primary enemy, though the costuming situation didnt help much either. Initially we didnt feel that the Bison Soldier outfit that he wore in the film was going to be a great look for Dee Jay, so we aimed to recreate the costume from SSF2T as best as possible. The best we could do on short notice was a pair of plain grey athletic pants.
One more little section after this about characters that might make for a fun and interesting read, then on to backgrounds and how we developed them.
Couple of responses to questions and comments for now:
There were a few different Guile win poses. I assume you are probably referring to the hair comb one? What can I say? That was Jean Claude’s interpretation. We didn’t have a lot of time to direct him during the shoot.
Ah… Tattoo Assassins. The coin op video game industry is very small. Everyone knows everyone else for the most part. Management of I.T. knew management of Data East. We had heard that they were working on a digitized fighting game during production of SFTM, but didn’t know too many details beyond “huge budget, hollywood people involved, Back to the Future, etc.” Towards the end of SFTM, (might have actually been right after we finished,) a couple of us were invited over to the Data East offices to have a look at Tattoo Assassins.
So obviously it was not the best game I had every played, but I do appreciate the fact that I got the opportunity to play on a real TA arcade game. A pretty rare event, as I do not believe any made it out into the real world.
FWIW: It is my estimation that Tattoo Assassins shared an ailment with Bloodstorm, which I will get into when I discuss SFTM’s gameplay.
Hang in there, I hope to share a couple of goodies at the end of the thread. 
I thought about doing the same, but it seemed like it would be kind of anticlimactic compared to locating the original sketches and data.
No, we didn’t consider that really. This was before the whole Dark Hadou storyline. With the Sheng Long dragon aspect thing we did suggest that there was a power that could consume a character and take over their will, but we didn’t develop that stuff beyond that allusion in the Sheng Long description.
Speaking of “dark” characters, we did create and implement the black Super Bison in SFTM. I believe this was inspired by the final scene in the film in which we see Bison’s hand rise from the rubble after the credits. You may not have seen this character however, as you have to play tag team mode all the way through. Not sure how many people did that.
I agree. For some reason i never liked T-Hawk either, and in the movie, he was the most forgettable character. He might have had 1 line maybe, and thats it.
Dee Jay MADE it into the home version of SFTM. As did blanka.
Hate to break it to ya, but Blade was Nowhere to be found in it(in case you didn’t know).
Wait…he is SUPPOSED to be combing his hair back in the win pose? It does not look like that at all.
It looks like van Damm is just stretching out to show his abs, and “pose” for the camera.
I had absolutely no idea that T. Hawk was even in the movie until many years later. There was not a single person in the film that struck me as a giant Native American warrior.
It’s really a shame that the alternate Ken didn’t even get consideration as even a pallette swap like Blade.
Both shoto brothers were screwed in the movie. Neither actor was much like his game counterpart.
Also from what little i’ve read on places like IMDB, damien chapa(movie ken), went on to become a sleazy and hated movie director along the lines of Uwe boll(minus the recognition).
The funny thing is, a couple of friends and I were playing this on our MAME cabinet in my living room(this was the first time I ever played the arcade version) and I couldn’t help but notice that the gameplay was a lot different then the PS1 version I had played only a few weeks back. One of the guys I was playing with owns the PS1 version, but tried to tell me they were identical, which I thought was bullshit.
Now I know the truth thanks to this fabulous thread. The info is up at wikipedia as well, so I can now rub it in his face!
The juggle system in the Arcade Version is pure hilarity! Bring a bunch of SF players together one night and play; I guarantee you’ll get a shitload of laughs before you switch to a proper fighting game!
BTW Alan, what software did you use to clean up the sprites after you captured them? Where there any special considerations you had while capturing them(as in lighting, camera settings, etc.) to the computer?
Also, do you live in the bay area? I’d love to buy you coffee and chat game stuff sometime!
-A_Rival
I hear that. It wasn’t bad enough that they got poor actors to play them either, they looked like weaklings and their story was almost completely cut. Let’s ignore the fact they’re the true main characters.
Its like casting just picked the first two generic white and generic japanese guys that walked in the door.
Actually it was in Wheels on Meals, great scene though!
Benny the Jet being captured but not used in a video game…?
Now that breaks my heart. :sad:
I Like Chicken…
How did I just stumble on this today? if we have a SF:TM tourney at evo this year, I promise I’ll come.