Update: The Kickstarter is now live, with a goal of £25,000. If you've got a spare £1,500, you can secure yourself an Executive Producer credit on the final film. For £500, an Associate Producer credit awaits – we imagine the £28 tier will be the most popular, which will get you a digital copy of the movie, its soundtrack, behind the scenes videos and your name in the end credits.
Original Story [Wed 23rd Sep, 2020 10:00 BST]: You don't need us to tell you that Street Fighter II is a special game. Capcom's title rejuvenated the arcade industry and turned characters like Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li into pop culture icons, and the series spawned numerous video game sequels as well as toys, comics, movies and much more besides.
The documentary Here Comes A New Challenger aims to capture what makes the game so special by exploring not only the coin-op roots of the series but also by delving deep into the history of Street Fighter on home formats, such as the Super Nintendo, which played host to what is perhaps one of the most significant arcade-to-home ports of all time.
The film is the work of Oliver Harper, who created the excellent In Search Of The Last Action Heroes, which is essential viewing for all '80s action movie fans.
You can catch the trailer above – if this seems like it's something you might be interested in, then you might want to keep an eye out for the Kickstarter campaign which starts soon.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 31
I can REALLY recommend the Making of Street Fighter 2 from Strafefox on Youtube.
Such a Quality in his Works.
Street Fighter 2 was definitely changed the world.
It inspired an indie game with Street Fighter gameplay style in Evoland 2.
SF2 was a phenomenon in the 90s. I was spending outrageous amounts pumping coins into the arcade, that was until mum forked out $140 or so and bought me the SNES port. Amazing game. Those were the days.
@WCB I had pretty much the same experience. Being the youngest of 4 brothers really played a role in the competitiveness when we got the SNES version. Amazing times.
Never heard of it. Presume it was better than Street Fighter 1?
A really great arcade game and it translated well into the ports. SOR 2 is still my favorite but Street Fighter is very close as well.Its a shame Sega didn't use that phrase "SOOOOOONIIIIC BOOM!" as Sonics intro.
@WCB
You paid $140 for SF2?
@Zidentia
Maybe another Currency, here in Germany a new top Game was about 120 to 140 Bucks.
My Copy of Mortal Kombat has a big Sticker on it with 140 DM, at least not on the Dragon
What a game - without the internet those playground debates were never ending!
@WCB
$140 for the SNES port back in the 90’s ?Lol ..If I do recall I think it was going for $49.99 here in the US ..
Oliver Harper is one of my favourite Film Historians; definitely gonna grab this doc when available. (His Last Action Heroes doc was terrific) Highly recommend you folks watch his retrospectives on YouTube if you haven’t already.
@Zidentia Mum did. Bless her soul.
really want to get this on my SWITCH one day but for now I need to upgrade my skills in MK 11 and SSBU by a lot
Back then: Everyone I knew and every place I go to had a copy of Street Fighter II of some kind: my Genesis friends, my SNES friends, my Game Boy friends, my mechanics, my drug store, my cousin's place, my laundry place, my favorite buffet, etc.
Today: Only my die hard cousin had Street Fighter V and it's not even on console. I ask my Genesis friends who still playing games today about Street Fighter V and he says what's a Street Fighter V?
Oh how the Street Fighter legacy fall so low now. Everyone knows Street Fighter II, only a few die hard knows Street Fighter V. What a way to slowly kill your franchise Capcom.
Great game. This and WWF (none of that WWE malarkey, thanks very much) re-enactments in the playground were the stuff of parents nightmares in the early 90s. Not convinced I need a documentary on it though, especially at those prices. A fighting game enthusiast can see its legacy clearly, and the recent compilation of all versions of 1-3 has an excellent archive to give as much info as you could want.
Oliver Harper’s retrospective documentaries are some of the best I’ve seen in a long time. I always watch his videos on YouTube and feel as if they’re a great film course on beloved films and cult classics. Definitely donating some coin for this production! Can’t wait to see it once it is completed.
@DreamStar It launched at $75 in my part of the U.S.
@AndyC_MK84 oh ok I'll give it a try and put it on my Christmas list and hope my mom gets it for me also is the game harder or easier than MK bc in MK I have a lot of problems pulling off moves on the XBOX and SWITCH without the D-pad
@DreamStar Years later sure - at launch however the game was more expensive in the US (and around the world I'm sure) than your typical SNES game. I remember seeing it at toys r us for 80.00 or so.
@AndyC_MK84 thanks this might convince me to give it a shot.
I can still remember when I rent SF II for SNES in a local video store when I was 14. After the weekend I spent all my time on earning money to buy this game.
But I have mixed feelings about this docu. There are already so many good ones out there.
I will sooo be watching this.
Street Fighter II is one of the true gaming icons and legends, a game that's still amazing to play even today (and imo still the pinnacle of the fighting game genre), and one of those few games that really has earned the accolade and right to the claim of giving proper rise to an entire genre (yeah, a few fighting games came before it, including the original Street Fighter, but no one really gives a proper crap about any of the fighting games that came before Street Fighter II). Street Fighter II is to fighting games what Super Mario Bros. is to platformers and Doom to fps games.
Best wishes.
@impurekind One particular thing that it seems like SFII influenced was special moves requiring movement combinations.
I do recall even back in its day some letters in magazines, that sort of thing wasn't really fair that you'd have to read magazines and such to learn what all the moves are in order to properly play the game. You know, information that isn't given within the game itself.
But I suppose since the game was otherwise considered well-made people were willing to overlook that learning curve.
I'm supposing that was why Smash went its direction with controls that are leave the difficulty in learning how to skillfully play the game, not learning how to control their chosen character.
I hear Primal Rage was the game that got people talking about bad move lists.
@AndyC_MK84 You're right but if it's like 20$ I won't have as much hesitation.
I always preferred Mortal Kombat over Street Fight, but you can't deny the legacy of Street Fighter II.
@Lony85 I think UMK3 was really good. The best fighting game ever in my view. But MK4/Gold was forgettable. So were the 3D games.
But SF2 is really awesome. If you can master the techniques of the game. I tried but I was not able to.
I love this, but £25 for a digital download only is a joke.
@Deanster101 No.
@KingMike I'm pretty sure some arcade cabinets actually had the specials detailed on them, and the gaming instruction manuals that came with the console versions did similarly, as I recall.
But, regardless, this discovering the specials through actually playing the game and trying new stuff was an intentional part of the design, actually creating a playground discussion culture around said game, and as such it was actually a positive feature of the game and not a negative as it seems to me you are trying to paint it.
Smash Bros. may not have stuff you have to discover so much, but I would pick Street Fighter II's far, far more intuitive and logical controls every single day of the week, 100%. Smash often has moves that really don't have much correlation to the button/stick press you are doing, whereas Street Fighter II does almost every single time. In Street Fighter II pressing down and punch will do a low punch--totally makes logical sense--in Smash that probably does some totally weird special move unique to each character that often has literally nothing to do with punching or even a downward action (not that Smash really has a dedicated "punch" button anyway).
Basically, if you're trying to bring Smash into this and set it up as the super fighting game, you will never, ever, be able to provide any argument whatsoever to convince me of that. But, hey, a whole lot of people in here are probably already on your side--so there's that.
Take out the fact it's got a crap load of iconic Nintendo characters in there (and all the collectibles and mini games and all that other crap that really has zero to do with the core fighting game, and that could be in any other random Nintendo Icons collection, in the form of a racing game, Mario Kart, or platform game or whatever), which is where 99% of its appeal actually comes from imo, and Smash really isn't a particularly brilliant fighting game as far as I'm concerned. Decent but not amazing. If it had a bunch of completely unknown characters in place of Nintendo icons, I think that would be far easier for more people to see the point I'm making here (much like ARMS, for example, which is decent but not amazing, yet would seem much better if every character was one of Nintendo's iconic characters instead). But Street Fighter II did more with a handful of characters that were basically completely and utterly unknown at launch, almost instantly becoming the most groundbreaking and influential fighting game ever created--precisely because it was an utterly astounding and nigh-on perfect execution of a fighting game at its core first and foremost. There's a reason nearly every fighting game since followed very closely in it's footsteps, and certainly far, far more than have ever copied the Smash formula (because most companies don't have all those iconic characters, and they knew the underlying game isn't quite as strong and appealing without that element).
Smash is great and all for those people that are into it. Street Fighter II was defining, paradigm-shifting, icon creating, and brilliant, and still is.
@xxx128 Ono has left so there's genuine reason to be cautious. However, 4 was great and 5 ended up being really good too. As long as they've learned from the mistakes of 5's launch they should be fine. I had it from launch and bought into it like with Splatoon 1 on the premise of stuff being added over time, and for the first few years it was perfectly possible for a regular player to earn the majority of the dlc through completing in-game challenges - not any more, sadly. I've enjoyed its gameplay for the entirety of the last 5 years though, so despite Ono's departure I'm looking forward to VI. My main hope is that it's multiformat and cross-play. Online-focused games being tied to a single format isn't great long-term unless your game's called Mario Kart.
@impurekind Wasn't trying to say Smash is absolutely better. Just that particular aspect, of how pick-up-and-play the controls are.
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