I was lucky to grow up with free access to the two Street Fighter II cabinets my dad owned in his small arcade, which means I developed a fundamental love for this game early on. However, after trying the first Street Fighter as an adult, it’s hard to believe these games are just one generation apart.
1987’s Street Fighter Invented a Massive Genre
The one-on-on fighting game genre that’s so massive today, didn’t really exist in 1987 when the first Street Fighter hit arcades. Yes, there were beat ’em up games, but Takashi Nishiyama came up with the idea for Street Fighter from the boss-battle sections of those games. Essentially, Street Fighter was a “boss rush” game, where your player character would only fight a few tough enemies one-on-one instead of a stage full of small-fry with a boss with a big health bar at the end.
However, since a second player can hop in and fight you directly, Street Fighter invented the modern fighting game as we know it. That wasn’t its only contribution either. The best-of-three round system, special attacks using combos, and the six-button layout for weak, medium, and strong kicks and punches were all present and correct.
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There was a version of the game that used two punch pads instead of buttons, so the strength of your hits determined the power of the attack, but I suspect this was a pretty awful way of playing the game.
The Game Was Super Hyper Ultra Clunky
Playing the original Street Fighter via the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection on Switch, using my 8BitDo Arcade Stick, it’s clear that this game is rough.
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It’s entirely forgivable in the sense that the developers were literally carving out a new genre, but Street Fighter just feels awful to play. Ryu, our hero, doesn’t respond well and feels incredibly laggy and floaty. It’s obvious that the developers were going for a more semi-grounded type of movement. The way a real Karate champion would move, but then, occasionally, characters do something superhuman.
The pace of the game is much slower, more on the side of games like Karateka than the fighting games that would come later. The first game was indeed a big success in arcades and players at the time were obviously blown away by its new concepts, but today there’s no real reason to play it other than historical curiosity.
Somehow, Street Fighter II Perfected the Fighting Game in Under 4 Years
Street Fighter II was released in March of 1991—about three and a half years after the first game. Yet, there’s an enormous chasm between these two games. SFII is basically perfect from a fighting game perspective.
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You Don’t Need an Arcade Stick for Fighting Games Any More (But I Still Love Mine)
Fighting games have changed with the times.
Each character feels responsive, yet different to control. Combos, blocks, and moves are hard to master, but once you do master them you feel in total control. While the balance between characters isn’t perfect, it’s darn close and later versions of SFII would keep tweaking balance, speed, and other aspects of the game.
It’s mind-boggling to me that a development team could so carefully and completely understand what didn’t work in their first game, and then perfect it to such an extent. It’s no wonder SFII became such a massive, timeless hit, while people barely know the first game existed today.
SFII Is Still Just As Good Today As Ever
Street Fighter II is still a fantastic fighting game to play today. I keep going back to it, despite many other Street Fighter games and other games in the genre have been released over the decades. I love Tekken, Dead or Alive, Mortal Kombat, and numerous other fine fighting games as much as the next person, but SFII still feels like the pure exemplar of which every other fighting game is just an imitation.
It’s still challenging but fair, and even the graphics have aged gracefully. Certainly compared to the first 3D SF game—Street Fighter EX. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of playing the many variants of SF2, or marveling at how it was possible for a sequel to fix absolutely everything that was wrong with the previous game.
8Bitdo Arcade Stick for Switch
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Arcade Stick
