Street Fighter

About

Street Fighter is a series of Japanese fighting games featuring a roster of playable characters with a variety of fighting styles from around the world. In addition to video games, the franchise has spawned animated and live action films, manga comic books and card games.

Gameplay

The player has the option of competing against a computer-controlled opponent or against another player in a series of matches consisting of three rounds lasting 30 seconds each. To win, the player must defeat an enemy by depleting their energy bar, which knocks the character unconscious. Special moves can be executed by performing a series of control pad and button combinations.

History

Designed by Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto, the original Street Fighter^[1] game (shown below, left) was released by Capcom as an arcade-only title in 1987. In the game, the character is given control of the Japanese martial artist Ryu^[2] to fight through a total of 10 opponents in a worldwide martial arts tournament. The game was ported to many home consoles, including the TurboGrafx-CD (under the name Fighting Street), Commodore 64 and MS-DOS computers. In March of 1991, the sequel Street Fighter 2^[6] was released (shown below, right), which became the first one-on-one fighting game to offer a range of characters for players to choose and assume control. The game featured a similar plot line to its successor, having the protagonist fight in a worldwide martial arts tournament before fighting the four final boss characters.

In April of 1992, the game was updated with the Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition, allowing players to assume the roles of each of the four boss characters. On September 10th, 1993, Capcom released Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers, featuring updated graphics, music and new playable characters. On February 23rd, 1994, Street Fighter II Turbo was released, including new attack combos and the hidden character Akuma (shown below, left). On June 5th, 1995, the game Street Fighter Alpha was unveiled in arcades (shown below, right), which was animated in the style of the games Darkstalkers and X-Men: Children of Atom.

On September 9th, 1996, the tag team-style game X-Men vs. Street Fighter came out in arcades, allowing players to fight using characters from Marvel’s X-Men franchise against Street Fighter characters. On November 30th, the game Street Fighter EX was released, which included polygon characters and changing 3D backgrounds. On February 4th, 1997, Super Street Fighter III: New Generation^[8] was released in arcades (shown below, left), followed by Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike in October 1997 and May 1999 respectively. On July 18th, 2008, Super Street Fighter 4^[9] (shown below, right) made its debut and was later ported to the Xbox 360, PS3, PC and iOS.

Online Presence

The Street Fighter series has a large presence on the /v/ (video games) board^[13] on 4chan, as well as other community sites like Reddit^[14] and Tumblr.^[15] The official Capcom website StreetFighter.com^[27] contains promotional reading materials for several games in the series. There are numerous fansites dedicated to the franchise, including Street Fighter Devotion^[16], Street Fighter Online,^[26] Street Fighter Media^[17] and Fighting Street.^[18] The Street Fighter II: Champion Edition web browser game is available to play for free on the flash game website Kongregate^[28] (shown below).

The Street Fighter Wiki^[22] contains over 1,000 entries related to the video game series. The art-sharing website DeviantART^[19] has multiple Street Fighter-related groups. As of April 2013, the official Capcom Twitter feed @StreetFighter^[25] has gained over 14,200 followers and the “Street Fighter” Facebook^[24] page has accumulated more than 1.4 million likes.

Fan Game

On May 28th, 2010 YouTuber Seow Zong Hui uploaded footage of a game he was developing titled Street Fighter X MegaMan (shown below, left). The demo showed the classic Nintendo game character Mega Man battling against the Street Fighter character Ryu. On December 8th, 2012, the video game news blog Destructoid^[21] published a post reporting that Capcom was officially backing the fan-made game. On December 17th, the game was made available for download on the Capcom-Unity website.^[30]

Fan Art

Cosplay

Parody Videos

Reception

The Street Fighter series has generated more than $1 billion in revenue on the sale of arcade systems alone. Street Fighter 2 was the most successful of the series, selling over 14 million copies on the Super NES and Sega Mega Drive, becoming Capcom’s most sold video game of all time.

Related Memes

YES! YES!

YES! YES! is a YouTube Poop meme in which the Street Fighter cartoon villain M. Bison repeatedly shouts the word “Yes.”

Guile’s Theme Goes With Everything

Guile’s Theme Goes With Everything is a video remix series in which a video is paired with the theme song from Guile’s stage in Street Fighter 2.

Shoryuken / Hadouken

Shoryuken / Hadouken is a meme involving the special moves “Shoryuken” and “Hadouken” from the Street Fighter series. In a similar vein to Fus Ro Dah from Skyrim, the images are often shown blowing away other people.