I read the whole thread and it’s probably my favorite thing I’ve ever read on SRK. Really interesting stuff, especially since I usually thought games with digitized graphics were kinda special. I miss the early to mid-90s. The games, the movies, TV…sigh…
I like the second part.
I remember that. For some reason that song pops into my head occasionally.
Van Damme and Raul Julia interviews on the movie.
<-------------
This thread has to be one of the most interesting things I’ve ever found on the internet. Seriously.
I have truly enjoyed this thread. Anoon, you are the man!
There are Mugen versions of SFTMTG Blanka and Dee Jay floating around. Did these leak?
Console versions.
Oh right
This has been fascinating, Anoon! Thanks for posting your info the “movie” game.
Honestly man, I’d give my left leg to be part of the 2d fighter tradition. Regardless of the game, what I wouldn’t give to work on a 2d arcade fighter. I even thought Time Killers was neat when it first hit the arcades, they’re all gems and all add to the legacy I think. Thanks for posting, this has been interesting, and be proud that you got to add to the genre.
people can slag of sf the movie but I’d rather play sf the movie then 3s
I had fun with playing this in the arcade, it wasn’t crap in my eyes
the console versions sucked though
STREET FIGHTER THE MOVIE, WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
On many occasions over the years, Ive thought about what we should have done differently with SFTM.
For starters, we should have stayed truer to the film in terms of character design. That would have meant costumes DIRECTLY from the film. If Sagat wore a suit in the movie, he should have appeared that way in the game. Cammy should have worn her fatigues or officers uniform. We took some liberties with costumes in an attempt to keep them truer to the original game and to facilitate the digitizing process in some cases, but ultimately, we were hired to make a game based on the movie. What we ended up with was an odd amalgam of movie and game based costumes. This would have meant better communication between our group, Capcom JP, and the movie studio.
In terms of the roster, Akuma should have been hidden, if included at all. Greg Rainwater should have been coerced into performing his digitizing session with us so wed have a T.Hawk. Dee Jay should have appeared, as well as Dhalsim. We should have cleaned up the Blanka footage and included him as well. A non-transformed Carlos Blanka would have been interesting too. I would still include Blade, though a better name, or even Bison Trooper would have been a better choice, as well as excising the silly Gunloc reference and his palette swap clones. This would have made for an extraordinary amount of work however. More character artists would have been required.
As far as animation goes, I initially asked for the original Street Fighter character art so that we could alter our digitized content to match the source material. If this request made it through our organization and back to Capcom, I do not know. It appears as if the team doing the console versions took this approach, and as a result I think their game is better for it. Gaining access to those materials should have been a top priority. Matching the animations would have really helped with the over all Street Fighter-ness of the product, (though I would look to increase the over all frame count of each animation.)
Perhaps reducing the color count in the characters would have been of benefit. Our characters were from palettes of 256 colors. I heard that Mortal Kombat 2s characters were 64 colors. I think that bought them a few advantages. One, our characters shimmered a lot from frame to frame. With fewer colors, hopefully some of that could be reduced. It would have also made manipulating the digitized images to match the original character art a bit simpler as well.
As far as game play went, I would still have argued against the excessive air juggles. Air juggles went on to great success in the VS. series, but that style of play is definitely different from what makes Street Fighter, Street Fighter. The day I found E.Hondas infinite juggle should have been evidence enough to tone it down. I only scored a 143 hit combo because I was too bored to keep it going.
Hit stun is a small feature that has a big effect on the feel of a game. On each hit, the game pauses for a split second. It really adds to the impact of each strike. From what I recall, SFTM either did not have, or had very small measures of this feature and as a result the attacks lack any real bite.
Priority was a hot button issue. Much like the great throwing debate, I had to prove my position on the matter. I claimed that Street Fighters fighting was entirely rules based; that is: The result of any move vs. move conflict is always consistent. SFTM did feature that quality. Late in the project I proposed a priority table system for each character versus character scenario. The owner of I.T. set me up with a laptop and I stayed awake for many consecutive days filling out those tables. Im told the tables were put in, but Im not sure to what extent. It didnt seem like a lot of programming time was devoted to implementing them correctly, and there wasnt enough time left on the project to fully test it. Consulting Capcom and attempting to get their source code so that we might remain true to the classic Street Fighter game play should have been another top priority.
SFTM shared one thing in common with Bloodstorm: balancing issues. In either game, it seems there are no moves that have any real distinct disadvantage in any given situation. It is as if every single move was programmed to be the best move. As a result, game play deteriorates into a spastic button mashing contest and special move fest. There is no pacing, no strategy. I would have liked to have seen this addressed. Balance does not mean equal. In my experience, many designers do not understand this.
Throws should have been implemented correctly!
The pseudo 3D environment effect would have been something really special. I do not know the performance limitations or restrictions that accompanied it, but that technology would have really gained some attention for the time, had we been able to implement it successfully.
So there you have it: the big ticket items we should have addressed. Would all of this have made the product better? I sure would like to think so, though who can say. Game development is a long and wildly unpredictable process.
CONCLUSION
Street Fighter the Movie. Probably one of the biggest opportunities one could ever have been handed. It?s easy to look back on it now and laugh, (or cry,) over what could have been, but we did the best we could, given the situation. Unfortunately, it just was not good enough.
On a positive note, I like to think that many of the things we tried were indeed decent concepts and did eventually evolve into systems and features we now know and accept in other games of the genre. While there is no direct proof, one might speculate that a handful of SFTM ideas lived on:
-Reimagining characters from older games: (Retsu, Lee proposals?Gen, Eagle, etc.)
-Character crossovers: (Mega Man proposal?The VS. Series)
-Fighting style switching: (Raven?Gen)
-Dark/Super characters: (Super Bison?Evil Ryu, Shin Akuma, etc)
-?Possession?: (Sheng Long?s dragon manifestation?The Hadou)
-Ken and Ryu differentiation: (SFTM Ryu favored punches. SFTM Ken, kicks. ?Ken gained numerous extra kicks in later Street Fighters.)
-Female ninja: (Geki proposal?SF3?s Ibuki)
-Air juggling: (SFTM?the VS. series, which went on to be very popular in the U.S.)
-Throw counters: (Counter, Reversal, Slammaster?Tech Throws/Throw softening
Though Street Fighter the Movie is largely considered the darkest chapter in the Street Fighter story, I still am deeply grateful that I had opportunity to play a part in the history of one of the greatest game franchises of all time.
I hope it has been as much fun to read this as I have had retelling and reliving it all. It has been very rewarding for me to read the responses and answer the questions.
Thanks!!!
Alan Noon
Don’t be so hard on yourself. The ones with the big opportunity where the movie makers. The movie sucked and you had to make a good game of it, that’s not a big opportunity. You did your best, as you said, and no matter what, the look and story of the game would have sucked anyway.
Thanks for all of the information Anoon. Take a bow man, great thread!
Since your original post (and a segment on Alphaism radio, thanks Worthless and Mizuki), I’ve been playing SFTM:TG a fair bit. It’s certainly fun to play, simply because some of the stuff you can do is ridiculous (I love Sagat’s Tiger Knee -> Fierce -> Tiger Knee -> Fierce -> TK -> TK -> FP etc combos, along with the EVIL EYE PATCH), but there are definitely things I don’t understand. Balrog reflects fireballs when blocking? Throw reversals and “slammasters”?
I guess the biggest disappointment is that it’s not fit for tournament play - which is arguably the point where a true Street Fighter should be. As you say, lots of moves are just too good - and plenty lead to easy infinites. Artistically I think it has many interesting features, but as ever the gameplay is key…
Again, thanks for bringing all this info to light, it’s very rare to see such insight into the development process of games.
Cheers,
–flux
Is that the end? :sad: