Street Fighter II Turned 30 At The Weekend

Street Fighter II was a LEGEND ! 😀
Even inspiring Hong Kong movie makers to put Street Fighter parody on it.
If you remembered Jackie Chan as Chun Li from City Hunter movie and Future Cops with Andy Lau as Vega Fabio, they were so hilarious when Street Fighter hype was really high.
Well, here are 2 videos if you don't recall them.
https://youtu.be/wBsajdIZf74

https://youtu.be/gJF76IqE3ec

Top top game, now I do feel like an old fart!! I remember buying this from the Littlewoods catalogue for about £75 in the day and then paying it off at about £1.50 per week for next 52 weeks or so. I also remember tournament nights with 4-5 friends with plenty of ass kicking and bragging... happy days Favourite fighter, Dhalsim (bad ass Ghandi) yep that was one leg extension he had when kicking!!

I played the anniversary collection yesterday after not having played it for a while. I spent time on the first, a couple of the 2s, alpha 3 and then third strike. I like how they evolved over time. The sprites in the last version of SF 3 were very well animated. I just need a Mortal Kombat collection now.

The grey import prices for this on SNES back in the day were scandalous.

'Spinning bird kick!'

A classic game.

I will play some Ultra Street Fighter 2 online later to celebrate! 😃 Asides from being a revolutionary game, the soundtrack was INCREDIBLE!

Many happy memories of playing it at home and at the arcade machines as a child. The chip shop had a bizarre pirate version called Street Fighter 2 Blackbelt Edition where you could do fireballs in the air and all kinds of crazy stuff.

@Medic_Alert Since when did Nintendo decide the pricing of third party games? Capcom's decision surely?

I have never played a Street Fighter game. Didn't own SNES/Mega Drive back in the day. First proper console I got was PS1 and I got hooked on Tekken. My decision was made. Must try it out sometime.

Genuine classic. I played Ultra Street Fighter II on Switch at the weekend for a bit, didn't realise it coincided with the anniversary. Would have been nice if Capcom had done something.

Love this game. Spent all my college days in the arcades with this game. Just played this yesterday on the Snes mini.
Never gets old

I love the tag
Go home and be a middle aged family man. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

I really enjoy this game. I've played it on consoles from SNES to Switch (via Amiga with only two buttons!).

I am still TERRIBLE at it.

I spent the weekend playing SF Alpha 2 and 3, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and X-Men vs Street Fighter on my MVSX Neo Geo arcade cab. (Thanks Hylostick X team!)

I remember this when it was first in arcades. It seemed cool until soon after mortal kombat came out and i just couldn't go back. I was like this is lame now. What's the point if i can't rip the guys head off or pull out his heart after i beat him up?

I just think MK is better because i prefer the darker tone and the characters seemed far more interesting with complex back stories. I will give respect to street fighter though for basically creating the co op fighting genre in the first place.

@Clyde_Radcliffe that sounds like street fighter 2 rainbow edition. Was totally broken but hell fun

We need Ultra SF4 on the Switch.

SF5 would be nice too, but I’m sure Sony have that locked down for consoles.

And it still bugs me that the Anniversary collection only includes the arcade games, and none of the ports with additional characters/modes.

Back in the day, with the good ol'SNES, I had MK and MKII, KI, and a SFII cartridge (for some reason it didn't work).
So I was a MK and KI kid, but the SF series grew on me later on.

Absolutely amazing in the arcade and the brilliant SNES version was probably the first home videogame to truly capture the feel of a coin-op.
I’ll never forget how virtually every review at the time claimed the SNES conversion was arcade perfect, sure, it was a great conversion but there was so much missing, the intro, lots of speech, smaller character sprites, moves, animation frames, background / foreground differences, missing bonus stages and different endings.
It must’ve been mass hysteria amongst magazine journalists at the time, either that or many of them had never played the arcade version!

30 is middle aged now? That sounds like something a young child would say. But on topic still have found memories playing it in the arcades back then and even more when me and my brother got the SNES version and we could beat each other up virtually which was less fun for me as the older brother but I still won most of the time.

I so wanted it on C64, but I never got the chance with the small computer shops we had over here in Guernsey, they hardly stocked any games.
But then got a SNES and got into Mortal Kombat, never actually got Street Fighter, but didnt mind. FATALITY!

@Zenszulu No, the GAME is 30 years old, not the people who played it

I'm 30 and I was about 6 months old when it came out, so clearly I dont remember the launch lol

@HamatoYoshi I remember that in the reviews too. It goes to show you how times were so different back then. They focused mostly on how much fun they were having. It amazed them that the fun was identical to playing the arcade but even better since they didn't have to pump a lot of quarters into the machine. All those smaller details just didn't matter. Nowadays the fun of a game is put to the back of the line and all those smaller details are put first when passing judgement.

"Nowadays the fun of a game is put to the back of the line"

I disagree here and would argue it's the games you're picking that arent fun to you, especially when we have the AA and indie scene nowadays

Ultimately the problem with AAA nowadays is that they dont want to take risks and make 'safe' games that are most likely to sell, which just means less innovation

Nintendo may have got street fighter before us sega boys, but we got BLOOD in mortal kombat.

That subtitle.

You honest *****. Right in the feelz.

I'm a middle-aged family man, and I still love me some Street Fighter. Still remember picking up SF II Turbo for my SNES and how hyped I was. Having the 30th Anniversary Collection made me realize how awesome Alpha 2 is. It has quickly become a favorite, right alongside 3rd Strike.

If I recall correctly the reason it was so expensive at £65 was because it was the first 16mb cartridge and the extra memory cost more. 16mb, sounds crazy now.

@Ganner yes, exactly! Capcom did such great work with the SNES that it actually felt like you were playing the arcade version. Great times, great memories and glad to be part of the true golden age of gaming and experience these titles first time around.

@1UP_MARIO Oh yeah, that's the one! Rainbow Edition was an alternative name for it but it was the same version.

@Bunkerneath I had the C64 version before I got my SNES and it was hilariously bad! You didn't miss much!

I can still remember exactly where I was the first time I saw both SF2 and Mortal Kombat in an arcade, yet I can talk to someone at a party for a couple hours and forget their name.

Happy Birthday to the fighting game that started it all.

Whoever came up with the subtitle for this article is a genius.

This is the game that got me hooked on fighting games. I played it in an arcade and used all of my tokens on it. Now I'm old.....

Street Fighter II World Warrior was the reason I asked my dad for an SNES over a Genesis in Christmas of '92 despite both of my cousins owning the Genesis and my wanting one. I eventually saved up enough chore money to buy it in April or May of '93. It's the 1st game I ever bought with my own money and was worth every penny at the time.

I play street fighter 2 now and again I love it. This was the phenomenon NOW game of my youth. One of those rock n roll right band right time right place moments where it just clicked. Miss my youth, I remember as a kid going to France and buying a french game mag, couldn’t understand a word, but it had every character showing every move they did in sf2. I studied it so hard to see who my fave would be. . . Ryu xxxx

I am getting close to middle age, but when i was younger, i was more fascinated by mortal kombat than street fighter, but i have ultra street fighter iv for the xbox one, and ultra street fighter ii and street fighter coll. for the switch

I still considered Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting for Super NES as the best home port of any SFII game and still play it from time to time. That game is like the Super Smash Bros. Melee of SFII game, it got a balance roster, fair balance between movesets, no one two character overpower another and you win or lose depending on how good you are instead of relying too much on cheaps super combos or really overpower ultra moves.

@Doktor-Mandrake

While I agree with you to a certain degree (the AA-market for instance is so much smaller now, than it still was in the 2000s), I think you know that most of the time someone makes a statement like this he or she usually means the triple-A-branch of the videogame industry.

And that's a pretty legit complaint. I love Indie-games as much as the next guy and they are certainly a lot less corrupted by destructively greedy corporate influences, but they don't (and I would argue aren't able to) innovate or just cover every type of game.

And not everybody is fond of super stylized graphics.

But the AAA-industry focuses a lot on easy to advertise, but rather hollow PR-buzz-words and following money-making-trends which is the reason why you find so many insanely huge open-world-service-games and microtransactions whereever you turn your head.

And that seriously hurts the amount, the variety and ultimately the quality of what comes out of that branch.

I think, this video covers this topic pretty well, without being polemical: https://youtu.be/u68iQAp4ces

I gotta say, after first playing SF2 at the arcades, I now am a middle aged family man LOL

NINJA APPROVED

@HamatoYoshi Another perfect example of what we're talking about is Killer Instinct for SNES. Now that was a game that had massive downgrades and changes from the arcade. However, the reviewing journalists and publications explained that all those downgrades and changes were actually really awesome because we can now play Killer Instinct at home! Like SF2 that game was so amazing to finally have at home and all compromises to make it happen were accepted with open arms. A complete turnaround to present day. Present day virtually any downgrades and compromises are analyzed to death and most often under the toughest eyes of scrutiny. All generally done before the fun factor. Not to be confused with broken messes of unplayable ports etc. That's a whole other subject.

I remember how long my right thumb kept an SNES button shapped « hole » after that launch...

Shivers all over the spine everytime I see that intro, rotating mode7 capcom logo, that punch, the building scrolling...

30 years ago, I didn't think I would ever grow up to be a 30+ year old, or that I would ever ask a girl out and get married. But here I am, a middle-aged family man.
One thing didn't change. I still suck at the game.

@Migoshuro Yeah it's a real shame, tho I do think some slack should be given where due, star wars squadrons has no microtransactions and isnt a live service game either, for EA that's impressive but they still get pooped on and I dont think the games sold massively, also on steam forums people are complaining it doesnt get regular updates

And that's a part of the problem, we're living in times where people who grew up with microtransactions and live service games are in their late teens or early 20s, have disposable income and theyll happily keep buying this stuff while ignoring the few games that do go the traditional root

I do gotta praise Nintendo here, I have a love-hate relationship with the company but they dont shove microtransactions in my face.. at least not yet and I hope they never do, they make enough money from MT's on their mobile phone games

@Migoshuro In terms of graphics in the indie scene, this is why I kind of prefer the AA root, take Two-Point Hospital, it has nice modern looking graphics, but it had support of sega, team17 as well are quite invested in supporting rogue developers and helping them, including playtonic and while YL was average it's hard not to love ex rare devs

That said I do think some indie games can have that AA or even AAA feel but I get what you mean about stylized graphics, but theres a lot of modern looking stuff too especially in the AA/small budget titles

OMG, this article makes me feel old. I remember the first time I ever played Street Fighter II (Turbo), my dad had rented it from BlockBuster (back when it was a thing) in '92 for me and my siblings on a weekend. Those were some good ile childhood memories.

Happy 30th to Street Fighter 2. It was a huge deal in its time and rightfully so as it was an excellent game in 1991, and is still excellent. It was also a huge deal for Nintendo to secure the game to be exclusive to the SNES and it was a real system seller for sure. I wasn't thrilled with that arrangement since I just had the Genesis at the time, but it was quite a pleasant surprise when they brought a version to that system as well. Definitely better for more people to be able to play the game back then.

Super Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Capcom vs SNK 2, are my top 3 favorite fighting games.

@gaga64

For real. The Saturn version of Alpha 2 Gold was the best version of that game. Even better than the Arcade version.

@gb_nes_gamer

At least on PC you can get MK Trilogy and MK4
https://www.gog.com/game/mortal_kombat_123