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Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991) is a highly popular fighting game created by Capcom. It centers on two characters, Ryu and Ken (the two main characters from the original Street Fighter), facing the evil villain M. Bison (Vega in Japan).

Today, Street Fighter II is routinely listed as one of the greatest video games of all time. It is widely considered to be the game that created the fighting game genre, although Karate Champ and the first Street Fighter preceded it.

The game featured a line up of eight characters which a player could choose from to battle all the other fighters around the world. Once the other characters had been defeated, four boss characters could be battled.

Overview

Street Fighter II, released on Capcom's CPS-1 arcade board in 1991, was one of the most popular games of the early 1990s, shaping the direction of arcade games for nearly a decade to follow. It is widely acknowledged as the premier fighting game of its era, due to its game balance with regard to the timing of attacks and blocks, which was unparalleled at the time; and due to "special moves" in which experienced players could execute complex fighting moves (special moves) by moving the joystick and tapping the buttons in certain combinations. Of course, this was not anything new and exclusive. These complicated fighting moves were given names, such as the Dragon Punch and the Hurricane Kick, which provided a framework for players to have conversations about their games. It also introduced the convention of "cancelling" or "interrupting" moves into other moves, which enabled a player to create sequences of continuous hits. Rumor has it that this ability to "cancel" moves into other moves was the result of a programming bug. Regardless, it gave the game much greater depth than it would have had otherwise. Also, this was the game which introduced to the gaming world the concept of the combo, a sequence of attacks which, when executed with proper timing, did not allow the opponent to interrupt the combination. Mastery of these techniques led almost directly to the high-level competition which has been a cornerstone of this type of game ever since. The game features eight fighters that players can choose from: Ryu, Ken, Blanka, Zangief, Dhalsim, Guile, E. Honda, and Chun-Li), plus four bosses (Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison). The character known as M. Bison in the original Japanese game was considered a legal liability by Capcom USA, his backstory and appearance very similar to that of Mike Tyson as, of course, was his name. In order to pre-empt any lawsuits on the part of Tyson, the names of all the bosses except Sagat (who had been around since the original Street Fighter), were re-arranged, something which has since caused no shortage of confusion when attempting description. For the sake of reference, the Japanese bosses Balrog, Vega, and M. Bison became Vega, M. Bison, and Balrog, respectively.

Street Fighter II was followed by a slew of other games of similar design, some by Capcom, some by other companies. One of the most well-known competitors to Street Fighter II was Mortal Kombat, followed shortly afterwards by Virtua Fighter. SNK, however, developed a reputation for fighting games very soon after Capcom; Art of Fighting, The King of Fighters, and Fatal Fury are the three most notable examples, the first Fatal Fury game being released within months of SFII. Fandom between the two companies' games is often extremely divisive. SNK, having continued development of its fighting games such as The King of Fighters which continues to this day, may be said to hold the upper hand in many countries in terms of popularity, one notable exception being the USA. The reasons for this are many and varied, but SNK's insistence on releasing its games on the then expensive Neo-Geo home system (an SNK MVS arcade machine in all but name) and the distribution and promotion of these games outside of Japan everywhere except in the US could be part of it. Capcom gained a reputation for fairly rapid and reasonably faithful home conversions of its popular fighting games early on. Nonetheless, the Neo Geo arcade system was pretty accesible, and The King of Fighters having been always a very popular and well made game is still so popular (it is the most widely played fighting game until this date) that it continues to obtain new releases, all of them with immense success. The last completely new Street Fighter game to be released was Street Fighter III in 1997. The characters from the Street Fighter universe have appeared in numerous other Capcom fighting games.

Updated versions

Street Fighter II': Champion Edition

Street Fighter II': Champion Edition (called Street Fighter II Dash in Japan) - Champion Edition included several significant updates :

1. All 4 boss characters (Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison) were playable.
2. Players could choose the same character to fight against each other, using palette swapping to differentiate the clone.
3. The backgrounds of each player's stage were re-colored (a theme throughout most of the revisions).
4. There were various bug fixes for serious glitches (such as Guile's Handcuffs), as well as some balancing of the characters.
5. Added the ability to execute reversal attacks (special attacks either when blocking or rising from the ground that would cancel the animation frames and give higher priority)

Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting

Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting was released in response to an explosion of modified bootlegs of the Champion Edition which were becoming popular amongst arcade operators (for more information see Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting). Changes included:

1. Faster gameplay.
2. Many characters gained new moves, and several that could now be performed in mid-air.
3. All characters were given new color palettes, which served as the default palettes.

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers was the first Street Fighter game that Capcom would release on its CPS-2 hardware. All prior Street Fighter games had been released on Capcom's CPS-1 hardware. The arcade version of this game also included a variant that allowed eight arcade cabinets to be connected together for simultaneous tournament play. This version contained the most extensive changes introduced in the series:

1. Four new characters were added (Cammy, T. Hawk, Fei Long, and Dee Jay).
2. Boss characters received updated regular move sets, to put them on par with the original 8 (and 4 new characters).
3. Boss characters also received more personalized endings (as opposed to the SF2CE/Turbo boss endings of scrolling text and the four bosses' faces).
4. Some characters received new animations for standard punches or kicks (for example, Vega has the ability to do a standing kick and a jumping claw strike whereas before he could only do a crouching claw swipe while standing up and could only kick while jumping), while others received new animations for existing moves that were not present in the previous incarnations (for example, Zangief's animation for a "missed" Spinning Pile Driver).
5. Each character could be selected with one of 8 different color pallettes.
6. The original 12 fighters received updated animations and audio.
7. The speed introduced in Hyper Fighting was reduced.
8. A combo counter (a first despite combos being in the game since the original), as well as point bonuses for first attack, combos and reversals.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo: Grand Master Challenge

Super Street Fighter II Turbo: Grand Master Challenge (Super Street Fighter II X in Japan) was a slightly updated version of Super Street Fighter II. This version introduced:

• 1. The addition of the "SUPER" bar. This allowed character to build up and unleash a very powerful special attack (typically a special attack with more strength, and the character gained "shadows" of the previous frames of animation.
  2. The speed was again raised from Super SF2, to close to Hyper Fighting levels.
  3. Intentional Air juggling (a series of attacks that could hit an opponent while airborne) (Note: a glitch in Champion Edition allowed Dhalsim to be air juggled under certain conditions).
  4. The ability to tech or "soften" non-multi hit throws (teching allows a character to land on one's feet instead of on their back, resulting in less damage).
  5. A new secret character (Akuma).
  6. Alternate versions of each character that played very similar (but not quite identical) to their Super Street Fighter II incarnation without the super bar or the ability to tech throws, they are also identifiable by the fact that they are the new default colors.
  7. The bonus stages (where players try to destroy all the objects in the stage before time runs out) that were present in the series since Street Fighter II are removed. Bonus stages would not re-appear in any Street Fighter related game until Street Fighter III.

Hyper Street Fighter II

Hyper Street Fighter II was a slightly arranged version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo with the ability to choose every playable versions of all the characters within the SFII series. This game celebrates the 15th Anniversary of the Street Fighter series.

Ports

These are the major ports of the Street Fighter II games made for consumer devices and is not comprehensive.

Street Fighter II

Street Fighter II for the Super NES was the most popular port of this game and was the game that put the system ahead of the Sega Genesis in the early part of the 16-bit era in the US, until ports of Street Fighter II: Champion Edition (dubbed Special Champion Edition ) and Mortal Kombat put the Genesis back in the lead later on.

The supposed 16-bit console war between SEGA and Nintendo fighting to get exclusive licensing deals for their respective systems was the source of all sorts of rumours at the time, when no console had any version.

Several home computer versions of Street Fighter II were released by U.S. Gold, with versions developed for the Commodore 64, IBM PC and Commodore Amiga with varying levels of success caused by the hardware limitations of these platforms at the time it was developed. In particular, the ZX Spectrum version of the game was released following a campaign by readers of Your Sinclair, and was amongst the last full-price games released on that computer, but remained severely constrained by the limited colour palette and speed of that platform. Unfortunately, none of these home computer versions were done by Capcom (they were done by Western developers) and it is quite obvious that the gameplay in these versions was interpreted (i.e. remade) from the Western developers' playing of the game rather than porting the actual combat engine from the original source code of the arcade game. Thus, none of them played anything like Street Fighter II regardless how they look and sound.

Street Fighter II': Champion Edition and Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting

Street Fighter II' for the PC Engine was the first console to receive the updated Street Fighter II and was ported by NEC. The game is contained on a standard PCE Game chip and features graphics comparable to the more powerful SNES port which came later. A 6 Button PCE Controller was created specifically for use with this game. It was never released in the US for the Turbo Grafx system.

The Mega Drive/Genesis port, known as Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition, contained both Champion Edition and Hyper Fighting — as did the SNES release of Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting. The Sega version received the Special Champion Edition subtitle because it was intended to be a port of Street Fighter II': Champion Edition to be released in the fall of 1993, about one year after the SNES version of the original SF2.

The Genesis was to be the only US console to receive a SF2 game that allowed people to play as the bosses, but 5 months before its release Nintendo announced an exclusive deal with Capcom to port the newer Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting to the SNES for release before the Sega version of the game. However, their contract only extended exclusivity to the name and presentation of the game allowing Capcom to add Hyper Fighting mode to the Sega game as a bonus, giving both versions of the game the same features. The legacy of this contractual obligation is apparent in the games as the Sega version presents the Champion Edition intro, attract mode (only presenting Champion Edition gameplay and color scheme) and title screen and defaults to Champion Edition mode, while the Nintendo version contains the Hyper Fighting intro (though missing the fight in front of the skyscraper), attract mode (presenting Hyper Fighting gameplay and color scheme) and title screen and defaults to Turbo mode.

Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition for the Sega allowed the selection of game speed by increasing 'stars' at game start, up to 10-star speed (as opposed to an estimate 4-star speed that the original arcade featured. The SNES Version has the 4-10 option, but requires a controller code to activate Stars 5 to 10). Gameplay was faster than the arcade versions.

In Brazil, there was an official port of Street Fighter II' for the Sega Master System, developed and published by Tec Toy. Though this version had collision detection problems, missing moves, missing characters and played slowly, it was still very popular in that country.

Street Fighter II': Hyper Fighting (the American arcade version never had the word Turbo in the title) has also been released on the Xbox 360's Live Arcade service featuring online play through Xbox Live and a new 'Quarters mode' which allows players to watch, and challenge others to matches. The order in which the players fight is represent by a quarter. This was done to re-enact the arcade scene of the 1990's. The game was released on August 2nd, 2006 for a cost of 800 Microsoft Points and has become the fastest selling game on the Xbox Live Arcade service.

Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II Turbo

The SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis received a port of Super Street Fighter II a year after their respective SSF2T port, but was a commercial failure at retail and a financial hit to Capcom who had overestimated consumer demand. This was a sign that the audience was not willing to pay for annual updates of SFII, especially when Super Street Fighter II Turbo already superseded Super Street Fighter II in the arcades and fixed many of the complaints people had of SSF2. There was also endless speculation that Capcom would release Super Street Fighter II Turbo in less than a year, causing people to wait for what was thought to be the inevitable SSF2T release though no port was ultimately released.

The 3DO received the first console port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, followed years later with a Dreamcast port released only in Japan. Super Street Fighter II Turbo was ported to the IBM PC by Eurocom (released by Gametek) in 1995 and was the first truly ported version of a Street Fighter game for a home computer, helped by the fact that PC hardware have started to become powerful enough in 2D graphics and sound capabilities to reasonably duplicate the results of dedicated 2D game machines like the CPS-2, from which the original game was developed for. Up until this release, home computers received interpretive remakes of past Street Fighter games that did not play like the arcade games they were based on. In 1997, the PlayStation received a port of both Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II Turbo along with Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold in Street Fighter Collection.

Retro Collections

The Street Fighter Collection was released both in the US and Japan in late 1997 on the original Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn. It featured near arcade perfect versions of both Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II: Turbo as well as Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold.

A second collection, titled Street Fighter Collection 2, was in the US in late 1998 on the Sony Playstation and featured the first three major Street Fighter II titles: Street Fighter II: The World Warriors, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition and Street Fighter II’: Hyper Fighting.

Street Fighter Anniversary Collection was released in 2004 for the Xbox and PS2, including a version of SSF2T which had the ability to select different "revisions" of each character (Championship Edition Version, Hyper Fighting Version, etc). This release contained both Street Fighter III and Street Fighter II: Anniversary Edition. Capcom also included the censored version of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie as a bonus.

2005 saw the release of Capcom Classics Collection on the Sony PlayStation 2 and Xbox and it also featured the first three major Street Fighter II titles: Street Fighter II: The World Warriors, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition and Street Fighter II’: Hyper Fighting as well as a multitude of other Capcom games. The versions contained in this collection are actually ports of Capcom Generation vol. 5 (released in North America as Street Fighter Collection 2) for the PlayStation and the Sega Saturn, complete with its special modes including versus mode, CPU battle mode, training mode, and more. Even the cast artwork and information is the same as Street Fighter Collection 2, but there is some new unlockable artwork that was not featured in that collection. One complaint about the game is that the load times from Street Fighter Collection 2 were ported over, which is unusual since the each game should be able to fit into the system RAM of the PS2 and Xbox in their entirety. Perhaps the best feature for fans is the Street Fighter Deluxe mode in all three versions of the game, which allows players to battle with characters from different versions of the game, for example, matching Champion Edition Ken vs. Turbo Chun-Li. The Deluxe mode is not unlike the concept found in Hyper Street Fighter II and Capcom's Vampire Chronicle.

2006 will see the release of Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 for the Playstation 2 and Xbox and will contain Super Street Fighter II Turbo.

On December 25th, 2006, Street Fighter II for SNES was added to the Wii's Virtual Console channel.

Control Methods for Ports

As a result of the different ports of Street Fighter 2, it is often played with control pads, instead of the arcade-style joysticks for which it was originally designed to be played with. Some of these control pads, such as the official Super Nintendo pad, feature only four face buttons, leaving two attack buttons on shoulder buttons. Most, if not all, home releases of Street Fighter II have allowed for players to configure the buttons as they see fit.

Subsequently, whereas some players find the game easier with this control method, others have found that purchasing an arcade-style joystick for their home system makes it significantly easier for them to execute many of the game's special moves.

Characters

The characters in Street Fighter II were all associated with different countries around the world, although some countries had more than one representative.

Original eight

These were the eight World Warriors available in the original Street Fighter II. The characters other than Ryu and Ken have made their debut in the series.

• Ryu - Japan
• Ken - United States
• E. Honda - Japan
• Chun-Li - China
• Blanka - Brazil
• Zangief - Soviet Union
• Guile - United States
• Dhalsim - India

Bosses

Four boss characters (listed in order faced) were only encountered after defeating the other normal fighters. They were not playable characters in the original Street Fighter II, but they have been playable from Champion Edition onward. Three of the four characters had their names changed for the western version; see individual entries for the explanation.

• Balrog - United States (M. Bison in Japan)
• Vega - Spain (Balrog in Japan)
• Sagat - Thailand
• M. Bison - Thailand (Vega in Japan)

(Note: M.Bison is not a native of Thailand, as his origin is unknown, but simply fights there in this series.)

The New Challengers

These four new characters were introduced in Super Street Fighter II.

• T. Hawk - Mexico
• Fei Long - Hong Kong
• Dee Jay - Jamaica
• Cammy - England

The Secret Characters

• Akuma (Gouki in Japan) first appeared in Super Street Fighter II Turbo. He was not given a country of origin. Akuma is a secret character in the game, and is only playable through a secret code.

Other media

Street Fighter II was adapted into two different movies in 1994, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (a Japanese anime released in the U.S. courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment) and an American-produced live-action film, simply titled Street Fighter. Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, Kylie Minogue as Cammy and Raul Julia as M. Bison, the film effectively incorporated the main cast of the video game and wrapped them into an action adventure very reminiscent of the classic adventure films of yore. Director Steven E. de Souza's take on the premise: "I especially loved films like The Longest Day, The Great Escape and The Guns of Navarone. What made those films great wasn't the random violence. It was the clear-cut struggle between forces of good and evil, leading to an ultimate showdown."

Although the live-action film tanked at the box office and was largely considered a flop, it has gained a sizeable cult following and has even seen numerous DVD releases, complete with a plethora of special features and bonus content.

There was also a US Street Fighter cartoon, which followed the plot of the Van Damme movie, and an anime titled Street Fighter II V.

SFII in pop culture

• The late Notorious B.I.G plays Street Fighter II in the Juicy video. He also references it in "Welcome to Jamrock remix".
• The 1993 Hong Kong movie Chao ji xue xiao ba wang (Future Cops) featured SFII characters.
• In the movie The Perfect Score (2004), Roy (played by Leonardo Nam) talks about how he played SF2 for hours and wanted to grow up to be Blanka.
• In the movie City Hunter, Jackie Chan's character collides with an arcade machine and randomly transforms into various SFII characters, along with his opponent.
• Dan Haigh, the bass player in the post-hardcore band Fightstar, can be seen in the video for "Lost Like Tears In Rain" wearing a T-shirt with the word Shoryuken; there are also the now legendary instructions to perform the move written in small unreadable text on the T-shirt.
• One can find mention of Ryu's Hadouken in the online web comics 8-Bit Theater and Neglected Mario Characters.
• Characters in the Internet webisode series entitled Pure Pwnage play Street Fighter II and make reference to Ryu's shoryuken, among other things.
• The Hadouken is a secret weapon in the videogame Mega Man X, as well as in its PSP remake, Mega Man Maverick Hunter X. In the game, it is capable of killing any enemy in one hit but requires full health in order to be used. Similarly, the Shoyruken can be acquired in Mega Man X2, and both moves are available in Mega Man Xtreme.
• The British rock band Arctic Monkeys have an instrumental song titled "Chun-Li's Spinning Bird Kick."
• Princess Fiona executes a Spinning Bird Kick, followed by a Shoryuken, while fighting bandits in Shrek 2.
• The noise rock band "Champion Edition" (Alton, Hampshire, UK) are named in honour of the video game.
• In a Homestar Runner cartoon, "dangeresque 3", Homestar uses the Hurricane Kick, screaming, "The pipes are broken!", a mishearing of "Tatsu Maki Sen Pu¯ Kyaku". In a later video game, the 20X6 version of Homestar, 1-Up, uses this as an attack sans any vocals. In another Halloween special, the Poopsmith dresses as M. Bison and does a Psycho Crusher.
• The Maskate newspaper of Manaus, Amazonas State, Brazil, known by publishing news in a comical way is famous for references to Street Fighter. Every time there's violence between politicians or any street brawl, the newspaper uses words like "Shoryuken" and "E.Honda slaps" and "short Psycho Crusher" to describe the action. A text once said a representative was speaking when an adversary gave him a "Shoryuken".
• Housemates on Big Brother 2006 in Australia have spoken at length on many occasions over their love of the game comparing themselves to certain characters.
• In the Family Guy episode Sibling Rivalry, Peter Griffin attempts to name his children but ends up naming off characters from the Street Fighter series, specifically Zangief (although Peter pronounces the name "Zang-geef"), Chun-Li, Blanka, E. Honda, and Guile.
• In an episode of Robot Chicken, Ryu appeared in the Office Fighter sketch to defeat a lazy office worker who claimed "the report was due Thursday." In actuality, it was due Wednesday, and Ryu punished the worker with one Hadouken.
• In an issue of Deadpool, the title character asks Kitty Pryde if she's ever played Street Fighter, then proceeds to use a Shoryuken move on her.
• In an episode of Negima!?, when Negi discusses how it's impossible for him and a few of his students to be transported from Japan to Wales in just a few second, the map of the world is shown a la the character select screen from Street Fighter II.

Trivia

• Usually, each attack is supposed to have its animation play out in its entirety before another attack can be executed, thus allowing time for the enemy to recover. However, an unintended glitch in the combat engine gave birth to the combo attack. The glitch allowed the player to interrupt the current animation of a standard attack by executing a special move, causing the special move to be executed while the enemy is still recovering from the first hit and unable to block. This glitch formed the foundation of the more developed combo system found in future Capcom fighting games.
• A version of the game was planned for the Nintendo Entertainment System and a half-decent illegal version of the game was sold and noticed by several major video game magazines. However, Capcom cancelled production of the game.
• Electronic Gaming Monthly created a hoax as an April Fools' Day joke that a character by the name of Sheng Long could be unlocked.
• Capcom unsuccessfully sued Data East claiming that a fighting game that the company had made, Fighter's History, illegally copied Street Fighter. Capcom lost the lawsuit, because of Data East's earlier game Karate Champ, but most video game critics generally panned Data East's game.
• In the Super NES version of Street Fighter II, and SF II Turbo, the 2nd bonus stage that featured flaming barrels was replaced by the new, common brick breaking stage, also featured in Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers.
• A version of the Konami Code was featured in the arcade version of Street Fighter 2. During the a demonstration fight, if a player presses player 2's joystick in this order, Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, then presses Medium Punch then Light Punch, the player will get a list of statistics for that machine.

References

1. Alexis Bousiges, ed. (2006). "Street Fighter II' - Champion Edition at Arcade-History.com - A coin-operated game & machine database project". Retrieved 08 August. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
2. Alexis Bousiges, ed. (2006). "Street Fighter II' - Hyper Fighting at Arcade-History.com - A coin-operated game & machine database project". Retrieved 08 August. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
3. GameSpot Staff, ed. (2006). "Street Fighter II'". Retrieved 08 August. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
4. Chris Bennett, ed. (2004). "Street Fighter II vs. Fighter's History". Retrieved 08 August. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
5. GameSpy Staff, ed. (2003). "Data East's Hypocritical Adventure". Retrieved 08 August. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)

External links

This October 2006's use of external links may not follow Misplaced Pages's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Street Fighter II at The Killer List of Video Games
• Street Fighter II: Champion Edition at The Killer List of Video Games
• Street Fighter II Turbo at The Killer List of Video Games
• StrategyWiki's official Street Fighter II move list page.
• StrategyWiki's official Street Fighter II Champion Edition move list page.
• StrategyWiki's official Street Fighter II Turbo move list page.
• Shoryuken.com (the online center of competitive Street Fighter)
• The Street Fighter Organization at streetfighterx.org
• The Making of Street Fighter II at insert credit
• Street Fighter II hardware info at MAWS
• Street Fighter II at MobyGames
• Template:WikiKnowledge-FGM

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