Capcom has produced many famous franchises across its run. Resident Evil freaked people out with zombies and other monstrosities. Megaman became the company’s icon across multiple consoles, and Ace Attorney taught people how fun going to court can be. Well, virtually anyway.
However, few of their properties have been as influential as Street Fighter. It didn’t invent the fighting game genre, though every entry in it has followed Street Fighter’s lead to one degree or another. From the combos to the characters, its DNA can be seen in fighting games new and old. The series has gone from strength to strength, and here are its strongest moments.
7 The Sequel to Beat All Sequels
The original Street Fighter caught on because it named its characters, had big, bright graphics, and funky, pressure pad buttons. Still, it was clunkier to play than rival games like Yie Ar Kung Fu. The game’s directors would join SNK and try to improve on its formula with Fatal Fury. But they didn’t know their old employers were going to take things to a new level.
Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior gave players 8 varied characters to choose from, each with their own special moves, stages, and catchy tunes. The most revolutionary addition was the ability to join punches, kicks, Hadoukens, and more into chain attacks based on how they cancel or link into each other. These combos were originally a glitch, but with some tweaking, they made Street Fighter 2 quicker, more responsive, and more engaging than anything else on the market at the time.
6 Akuma Appears… If You’re Good Enough
Capcom would capitalize on Street Fighter 2’s success by spending the next 3 years re-releasing it. Championship Edition would make the four bosses- Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M.Bison- playable. Hyper Fighting would speed the gameplay up. Then Super Street Fighter 2 would add Fei Long, T.Hawk, Deejay, and Cammy, while slowing the game back to pre-Hyper Fighting levels. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo would rectify that by bringing the speed back, adding in super combos for every character, and a new secret boss.
Inspired by EGM’s famous Sheng Long April Fools' Prank, Capcom would create an actual super shoto boss called Akuma (or Gouki in Japan) as a secret character. If players beat the other characters on the arcade ladder quickly and without losing a round, Akuma would zip in, defeat Bison in one go, and test the player’s mettle. He would continue to be the series’ super-boss across multiple installments, be it as himself, Shin Akuma, or Oni.
5 The Most Famous Handshake in Fighting Games
Akuma was also the first character to take on the Marvel characters, as he was a secret character in X-Men: Children of the Atom. Still, he was the sole Capcom representative in that game. What would the X-Men do if they had to take on the rest of the Street Fighter cast?
Enter X-Men Vs Street Fighter. Its faster, more frenetic take on Street Fighter’s gameplay, the tag gameplay, and the hyped-up super combos would make it a must-play game. Seeing Ken blast his opponents away in a pillar of fire, or Cyclops and Ryu joining forces with a double laser attack was hype enough on its own. It would only get more wild as it would lead into the Marvel Vs Capcom series.
4 Alpha 3 Wins Out
Inspired by Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie, Capcom’s actual follow-up to Street Fighter 2 would go in a more anime-inspired direction with the Street Fighter Alpha games. Alpha 1 was fair, though fairly slow by today’s standards. Alpha 2 brought the speed, more characters, and better presentation overall.
The series peaked its popularity with Alpha 3 in 1998. It was bolder, with moodier music, and M.Bison at his most powerful as an end boss. The game would get released on a wide swathe of consoles, adding extra modes and characters like Guile, Final Fight 2’s Maki, and Eagle from Street Fighter 1 with each big re-release. It was successful, though the series wouldn’t reach its level again until 2008.
3 It’s the Third Strike, Y’all
Street Fighter 3: New Generation was a disappointment. It had some neat ideas and silky-smooth animation, but the gameplay was clunky compared to the Alpha games. Nor did it have any of the old favorites except for Ryu and Ken. Where was Cammy? Or Charlie? Who’s this ninja girl, and why is she so broken? Its follow-up, Second Impact, tweaked things and threw in Akuma, but it still paled next to Alpha 3.
Then, in 1999, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike would come out with a funky hip-hop soundtrack, the best gameplay of the bunch, and a returning character who wasn’t a shoto. Chun Li would come back and kick her way back into top tier. Still, it would take a few years for it and its unique characters like Alex, Elena, and Dudley to catch people’s hearts. Roughly 5 years in fact.
2 Evo Moment #37
While Third Strike was a cult favorite, it was also unpopular with hardcore fans around the early 2000s. They felt the game killed off the Street Fighter series outside of crossovers, with Alpha 3 and Marvel Vs Capcom 2 being much more popular. Then at Evo 2004, two players would go head-to-head and inadvertently make Third Strike a must-have title. All they did was demonstrate a gameplay feature. Street Fighter 3 introduced a way to avoid taking chip damage by pressing forward in time with each hit to ‘parry’ it.
It’s easy enough to do with slower strike, but much harder to do with quick flurries. Nonetheless, when Daigo Umehara’s Ken was left with a pixel of health against Justin Wong’s Chun Li, he had to master them to counter her Hoyokusen kick super. To everyone’s surprise, he managed to parry every single one of the super move’s 17 hits, then snatch victory from defeat with a combo of his own. It’s become known as Evo Moment #37 and gave Third Strike viral success. It was popular enough to become a Trial Challenge in the game’s PS3/360 port.
1 Street Fighter Goes Forth
Despite this, fans had given up hope there would ever be a new Street Fighter. Any ‘new’ game was likely to be a re-release, a compilation, or a mishmash of old assets. Yet it was after such a mishmash, Capcom Fighting Evolution, that led to Street Fighter 4. Kind of. That game’s director, Yoshinori Ono, pressed Capcom higher-ups to make a new fighting game and, after much urging, got the go-ahead. The final result was 2008’s Street Fighter 4. The chunky 3D graphics gave fans pause, thinking it might be more of a novelty like the EX series.
But the game ended up being a success, gaining Super, Arcade, and Ultra updates. It brought back all the classic SF2 characters, and some of SF3's now-beloved cast. Newer characters like Juri Han also caught on, appearing in future entries. Plus, one executive producer got vindication. Takashi Nishiyama, one of the SF1 and Fatal Fury devs, was the head of SF4’s co-developer Dimps. Without his company’s help, the game might not have been made. Then the new fighting game boom that produced Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Guilty Gear Strive, and more may not have happened. Perhaps karma exists after all.