Street Fighter

Template:Current-GCOTW Template:Redirect5 Street Fighter (ストリートファイター, Sutorī Faitā), or commonly abbreviated as SF, is a popular series of fighting video games in which the players pit combatants from around the world, each with his or her own special moves, against one another. The first game in the series was released by Capcom in 1987.

A brief history of fighting games

The birth of fighting games came long before Capcom's juggernaut sequel landed in arcades in 1991. In fact, the first one-on-one fighting game is considered to be Cinematronics' Warrior (1978), which featured vector graphics of two knights fighting over an overlay with a top-down perspective. The next fighting game did not appear for a long time due to the decline faced by video games in the early eighties, but made a huge comeback when Karate Champ was released by Data East in 1984. Karate Champ was the first true two-player fighting game, featuring two joysticks for controls for each player. Following on the heels of Karate Champ was Konami's Yie Ar Kung-Fu, which debuted in 1985 with impressive graphics (for the time) that featured detailed backgrounds in an arena setting. Set on releasing their own fighting game for the arcade, Japanese arcade manufacturer Capcom began planning their own game featuring the best elements of both Karate Champ and Yie Ar Kung-Fu. The earliest Street Fighter video games were not rated. The first Street Fighter video game that was rated was Street Fighter Alpha. From then on, as the rating boards for video games were established, they were rated T for Teen by the ESRB, 12 and up by the CERO, and then in 2006, 12 was replaced by B, and 12+ by the PEGI, and M by the OFLC.

Street Fighter (1987)

Further information: Street Fighter (video game)

Street Fighter II series

Further information: Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II

Street Fighter Alpha series

Further information: Street Fighter Alpha

Street Fighter III series

Further information: Street Fighter III

Street Fighter EX series

Further information: Street Fighter EX

A 3D version of the series, Street Fighter EX, was released in the arcades in 1996 and was developed by the company Arika. Due to Capcom only allowing the Street Fighter characters for license, these games are not a part of the Street Fighter canon. It was later followed by two sequels and numerous updates:

• Street Fighter EX (Arcade, 1996)
  • Street Fighter EX Plus (Arcade, 1997)
  • Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha (PlayStation, 1997)
• Street Fighter EX2 (Arcade, 1998)
  • Street Fighter EX2 Plus (Arcade, 1999/Playstation, 2000)
• Street Fighter EX3 (PlayStation 2, 2000)

Arika also released a spin-off of Street Fighter EX in arcades, called Fighting Layer. The game play was very similar to the EX games, and even featured two of the EX characters (Allen Snyder and Blair Dame), but was not an actual Street Fighter game, and was distributed by Namco.

Future Street Fighter games

Prior to the Jamma show (officially the Amusement Machine Show) in Tokyo in 2005, rumours were circulating that Capcom would unveil a new entry in the series, most probably Street Fighter IV. These reports proved erroneous, however. Though Capcom dropped hints that a new "combat game" would be unveiled at the show, this turned out to be War of the Grail, a 3D battlefield game yet no information was revealed for 2 years. Several factors would seem to count against the possibility of the series receiving another installment: 2D games have decreased in popularity dramatically, and 2D fighters are now considered little more than a niche market. This is also coupled to the rising costs of producing video games in the modern industry - Capcom has reused the sprites of some of the characters in its games for over a decade at this point, unable to justify the expense of redrawing them against projected sales of the games.

Recent 2D Capcom fighters have focused more on the formula of SFA3 and the VS, series by including as many characters as possible, often from different fighting series. Examples of this include the Capcom Vs. SNK games and the more recent Capcom Fighting Evolution. Another trend is the near-extinction in arcades of traditional arcade games such as the Street Fighter series in favour of party games (witness Dance Dance Revolution and similar games). Furthermore, current-generation arcade and home hardware have a smaller amount of RAM (into which animation frames are loaded) than a new-generation 2D game would probably require. However lately, the new generation of arcade systems intends to base itself more directly on computer hardware, making arcade systems practically upgradeable computers running the game, bringing on the latest CPU and graphics card technology as well as great RAM capacity. The future game The King of Fighters XII, game announced on this year's Tokyo Game Show will be using these advantages.

Rumors of Street Fighter IV being in development were sparked in July 2005 at the San Diego Comic Convention where a Street Fighter panel was held. Representatives from Udon Comics and Capcom USA said that there is something in the works. However, given the fact that the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology was announced later on in the year, they might have been referring to that title.

Since 2004, Capcom USA now owns the rights to the Street Fighter name and license due to Capcom Japan feeling that the series has run it's course and is no longer popular in Japan despite its cult classic status in America. Because of this, such a sequel to Street Fighter would seem to be a harder task to accomplish due to Capcom USA lacking certain resources to produce such a game.

Capcom recently announced a 3D cel-shaded fighting game titled Kenichi, which is an anime-based fighting game.

Adaptations for other media

Animation and motion pictures

The series has inspired several movies.

• Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (Japan, Animated)
• Street Fighter (with Jean Claude Van Damme)
• Street Fighter II V (an anime series).
• Street Fighter (an American animated series)
• Street Fighter Alpha (Japan, Animated).
• Street Fighter Alpha: Generations, an all new stand alone installment, not connected to the original.

A Hong Kong movie version was also released in 1993 called Chao ji xue xiao ba wang roughly translated School King (and a.k.a. Future Cops), but it was an "unofficial" adaptation so the characters name was heavily changed (one notable play on words is E. Honda is changed to Toyota). Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung are in this movie, which was directed by Hong Kong director Wong Jing (famous for his God of Gamblers trilogy).

Recently Ain't It Cool News announced that Capcom has plans to release a newer Street Fighter film to coincide with the upcoming 20th Anniversary of the series in 2008. The only details about the film released so far is that it would focus on Chun-Li and may actually be based more on the game series than the 1994 film was.

In 1995 a game called Street Fighter the Movie was released in the arcades and on the Sega Saturn. It was a live-action style fighting game featuring characters from the motion picture.

Literature

In terms of literature, there have been various Street Fighter books and comics produced, including Masaomi Kazanki's Street Fighter II manga (one of the few Street Fighter manga titles translated into English), and a role playing game adaptation released by White Wolf in 1994.

Masahiko Nakahira did four different Street Fighter manga series: Cammy Gaiden (translated and released in English as Super Street Fighter II: Cammy) Street Fighter Zero, Sakura Ganbaru and Street Fighter III: Ryu Final. Two characters created by Nakahira, Evil Ryu (introduced in Street Fighter Zero) and Karin Kanzuki (introduced in Sakura Ganbaru) were canonized by Capcom and adapted as playable characters in the Street Fighter Alpha games.

Malibu Comics launched a Street Fighter comic series in 1994, but it flopped, lasting only three issues.

Asian comic book publications outside Japan were also available; that contains canon-type storylines or totally unrelated to the official backgrounds from Street Fighter Universe (Practically just borrowing characters and their special moves). These publications arose at the era when Street Fighter II was popular in the Asian continent, especially Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia (The most popular publication was from Jade Dynasty which was based in Hong Kong). Most of these publications were not yet known to be legally licensed from Capcom.

Udon's Street Fighter/Street Fighter II

UDON has been licensed by Capcom to produce an American comic book based on the Street Fighter franchise, in addition to Darkstalkers and Rival Schools. In 2005, UDON translated Street Fighter: Eternal Challenge, the first Capcom series history and art book to be translated into English.

• Street Fighter - Follows various storylines set around different series characters.
  • Ryu trains while taking on Sakura as a pupil.

• Street Fighter II - After a break of several months, Udon's second Street Fighter story arc began under the title Street Fighter II (a throwback to the game that gave the series it's popularity).
  • The main story follows Ryu as he searches for Akuma, who has just killed his master. Ryu must avenge Gouken, but avoid succumbing to the Dark Hadou -- The dark power buried in his style of martial art that Akuma has embraced.

• Street Fighter Legends: Sakura - UDON has recently created an ongoing side-story to the Street Fighter universe, focusing on the life of Sakura Kasugano and the events that happened since she and Ryu parted ways at the end of Street Fighter #14.

Collectable Card Games

On April 14, 2006 Sabertooth Games released a Street Fighter set for it's Universal Fighting System (UFS) game along with a set for Soul Calibur III. This was not the gaming companies first release for UFS, that being a Battle box for Penny Arcade released in February 2006. As the name implies, UFS is to be a universal system. There are plans to incorporate other licenses into the game, slated for December 2006, being based on SNK's King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown.

The first set for Street Figher featured cards for Chun-Li, Dhalsim, Ken, Ryu, Sagat and Zangief. A later expansion, Street Fighter: World Warriors, included the remaining characters from the original Street Fighter 2 arcade series, Blanka, Balrog, E. Honda, Guile, M. Bison and Vega. Another set, titled Street Fighter: The Next Level, was released in December 2006, parallel with the SNK release. The characters included are Akuma, Fei Long, Dudley, and Cammy. There is an upcoming set entitled Street Fighter:The Dark Path scheduled to be released February 14, 2007 along with the next Soul Calibur Set, Soul Arena.

Another trading card game, Epic Battles (released by Score Entertainment), also featured Street Fighter characters, as well as characters from other fighting game franchises, such as Mortal Kombat.

Unauthorized conversions

This game has been ported, without Capcom's authorization, to the Famicom in Asia. It has appeared in several multicarts in China. One of the popular titles was known as Master Fighter, that had several sequels (including one featuring Nintendo character Mario). Due to memory limitations of the Famicom system, the bootleg copy was unable to list all the available rosters; the only characters available are Ryu, Guile, Chun-Li, Zangief and M. Bison (M. Bison was not playable, and was misspelled as Viga instead of Vega as he was called in Japan). Another title is Super Fighter III, and due also to hardware limitations, only 9 among the normal roster of 12 are selectable characters (sans Balrog, E. Honda, and Zangief). Character names, captions and subtitles during the endings are also removed. Chun-Li's stage was redesigned as the Forbidden City outdoors rather than one of China's busy streets.

In 1992, a Korean version of the game known as SFIBM, running on PC compatibles, was released by the Hotel Keitel bootleg group in Korea. Programmed by Jung Young Dug, the first release had only Ryu and Guile available. Eventually all the characters were released (although hand drawn versions of SNK's Andy Bogard and Terry Bogard replaced Vega and Balrog in some versions). However, SFIBM is said to have been one of the inspirations for the creation of the M.U.G.E.N fighting game engine.

The gameplay was quite poor, but many of the data files were unoptimized and available for editing. After the game had proliferated to the West, Derek Liu and Brian Chan used this information to edit the files into SFLiu [1], the closest translation of Street Fighter II Turbo the game engine could allow. After adding in Balrog and Vega, they updated the files to Super Street Fighter II standards.

As more and more editors worked on the game, more patches were created. The most widespread of these patches were SFWarm by Stan Warman (Which added fantastical new features for all the characters), SFJenn by Jenn Dolari (which added the Mortal Kombat characters of Mileena and Kitana) and SFNinja (which replaced most of the roster with parody versions of Mortal Kombat's numerous ninjas).

See also

• List of Street Fighter games
• List of Street Fighter characters

External links

• Street Fighter Official site of Capcom
• Capcom Comics Official Capcom Comics website