PixlBit

Apparently, yesterday was the 25^th anniversary of Street Fighter 2’s release. That would have been a much more interesting topic than the random thoughts I posted, but there you go. While I do wonder about how accurate this date is (we’re talking about a time when console game releases were done willy-nilly, to say nothing of the arcades), I do have some things to say about Street Fighter 2, and the franchise as a whole.

I pride myself as being able to say that I was there for the dawn of the fighting game genre in the arcades. While I did play Karate Champ and Yie Ar Kung Fu, the first game I really remember playing was the original Street Fighter, which only allowed you to play as a red-headed Ryu on the first player stick, and Ken on the second player. It was notable for its huge sprites and early talking, but the game itself was pretty rough. As a fun note, many people probably forget that Street Fighter had some cabinets that only had two huge, pressure sensitive buttons for punch and kick. You would hit the buttons harder to make the Jab, Strong, Fierce, etc. attacks come out, and I totally saw a guy at the arcade jack up his hand when he slammed it down and missed the button.

I was surprised to see a sequel to Street Fighter, because the first game was just so-so, and didn’t exactly set the arcade on fire. But Capcom took a chance, which was a great thing. If they hadn’t been in the habit of giving little games a second chance we also wouldn’t have Megaman, but that’s another blog entirely.

I first saw Street Fighter 2 at a grocery store. I was blown away by the graphics, and I remember selecting Zangief as my first character. At the time, I thought that his scars (from wrestling bears in the Russian wilderness) were because his muscles were bulging out of his skin. I fought Blanka and got my ass handed to me. So, I continued and tried out Blanka, only to get annihilated by Guile (who I pronounced as Geeil. I was ten, shut up.).

I decided that I didn’t like Street Fighter 2.

A few months later, my school had a field trip to a bowling lane on the UT campus. It had an arcade, and there were two Street Fighter 2 machines. They were easily the most popular cabinets, and I learned E Honda’s Hundred Hand Slap and Chun Li’s Lightning Leg that day. The game was much more fun playing against other people that knew as little about the game as I did, and it was on that day that Street Fighter 2 became a thing that I would seek out at the arcade.

I got my cousin David into the game at a place called Malibu Grand Prix, which was this huge go kart racing place with an equally massive arcade. We didn’t even know how to block at this point, so there was no strategy to speak of, other than get your opponent into the corner where they were helpless. Even so, we kept pumping quarters into it.

You have to understand, back then the language and mechanics of Street Fighter were still being defined. I credit Game Pro magazine to coining the terms “cross up” and “two in one”, but it’s totally possible that those words had been developed in the California arcade scene, which I would not learn about until many years later. Even the combo system using the aforementioned two in ones was something of an accident that would become the foundation for all Street Fighter games moving forward.

My cousin and I would buy any magazine that had arcade strategies and try and learn as much as we could, but we were still complete garbage at the game. It really wasn’t until Street Fighter 2 came to the Super Nintendo that we began to get good. I myself rented an SNES and the game and played it the entire weekend, which was my first case of the dreaded “Nintendo thumb”. David eventually got an SNES for himself, and it was at his house during summer vacation that I would start to hone my skills. David was a tough opponent, and over the course of literally thousands of matches together we became Ryu and Ken in real life.

Of course, I would later learn that, while David and I were good enough to thrash our friends and most people at the arcade we would meet, we were completely oblivious to the tournament scene that was growing out in California and of course in Japan. When I play with people like JD who came to Street Fighter way later than I did it is like night and day. Back in the 90s we weren’t concerned with things like spacing, or zoning, or mix ups. It was all about cross ups, combos, and Dragon Punches “from the grave” (read: wake ups).

Twenty-five years later, I still love Street Fighter, and hold a special place in my heart for that original sequel release. As Street Fighter V looms, I find myself excited to play it, even as I come to the grim realization that I don’t have the skill to hang with the newer players, nor do I have the time or patience to practice enough to stand a chance. It’s a sobering thought, and the fighting game scene is the only place where I truly feel like I’m getting “old” when it comes to video games. With that said, I can’t imagine a time where I won’t at least dabble in the realm of the World Warriors.