In 1987, Capcom released a game called Street Fighter, a game that, at the time, wasn't very popular. Four years later, however, Capcom released a sequel to the original Street Fighter known as Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior, and in a twist no one saw coming, the game's popularity exploded. It went on to become the most influential fighting game of all time, allowing it to generate seven different iterations of itself over the years and to sell over 15.5 million copies to become the best-selling fighting game of all time. Then September 30th, 2019 rolled around.
On this day, Nintendo's half-year report claimed that Street Fighter had been surpassed by a beloved fighting game of the company's own design. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has now sold over 15.7 million copies, surpassing Street Fighter 2 across all of its iterations to become the newest best-selling fighter every released. Ultimate has also helped the Smash series as a whole become one of the highest-grossing video game series of all time, which was expected considering the game only took 11 days to sell over 3 million copies.
From the very beginning, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate placed itself as a cut above the rest of the Smash Bros. titles because it opted to use every fighter ever released in a Smash game. The game presented itself as the magnum opus of the Smash Bros. collection and has been profiting wondrously because of it. One of the biggest appeals of the Smash series is its conglomerate of characters, which plays on a number of different fandoms to bring in a greater variety of players than any single property could do on its own. Despite all of this, it's still surprising to hear that it took less than a year for Ultimate to surpass Street Fighter 2 in sales.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the newest king of fighting games and deservingly so, but while it may hold the title monetary-wise, it doesn't erase what Street Fighter 2 has done for the genre. There is a reason the game is still considered the most influential fighting game of all time. The very concept of combos wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the game's conception. It's also interesting to point out that Street Fighter helped shaped Ultimate, lending the game both Ryu and Ken, the franchise's protagonist and deuteragonist, respectively. In the end, both games offer their own special brand fun to players all around the world.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is out now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.
Source: Digital Trends