'Street Fighter II' Wasn’t Just a Game, It Was a Portal

https://frieze.com/article/street-fighter-ii-wasnt-just-game-it-was-portal

by lermontov • 6 years ago

116 82 6 years ago

frieze.com

ricardomcgowan2• 6 years ago

I know I'n not alone in saying that I never could quite master Zangief's spinning piledriver!

1996• 6 years ago

Check Hi Score Girl (by Rensuke Oshikiri) for an anime about that

cjvirtucio• 6 years ago

She could literally execute the piledriver with a flick of a finger!

mootzville2• 6 years ago

Shoryuken!

edit: I had to look up how to spell that.

yomly2• 6 years ago

Even though I am very well acquainted with Japanese the anglicised "rye-yoo" "hadooken" and "shore-yoo-ken" are deeply ingrained in me from all those childhood times spend playing sf2.

My favourite was trying to translate whatever they say on that sound engine into "tatsumaki senpuu kyaku". To this day I still can't hear it

aorth• 6 years ago

Oh my God, the hurricane kick. I can hear it too...

figomore• 6 years ago

Tiger robocop (tiger uppercut from Sagat) and Buga Vai (yoga fire from Dhalsim) were how we commonly listen these moves here in Brasil.

AltruisticGapHN• 6 years ago

I miss arcades so much :(. Some of my best memories is playing Crazy Taxi, itS. just so much better with the wheel and pedal and clutch.

But it’s also a social space, even for introverts. People would stop and watch you playing, it was easy to start a chat, or even challenge someone to a game of tekken or dead or alive.

There has to be a business model to bring them back.

mootzville2• 6 years ago

I don't see that specific business model coming back. With high bandwidth, and cheap parts the more profitable business model at the moment is online multiplayer games you can play from anywhere. You lose that in-person social aspect, but this a concern for the community not the business.

I would say Pokemon GO is a good example of an evolutionary / revolutionary game with roots in the arcade-genre. I would like to see more games like this with built-in necessity to bring people together.

yomly2• 6 years ago

A shame. A pipe dream of mine has always been to build the greatest mech sim there could be.

Maybe some mixture of peripherals, gesture tech and VR will have to be the way forward. But there really wouldn't be a replacement for getting in a cockpit-like booth complete with full haptic feedback.

blondin• 6 years ago

this is also making me wonder... are in-person arcades really better than nowadays online massive multiplayer experience?

or are we having a nostalgia episode?

mysterydip• 6 years ago

I've seen two models that I've been to recently:

- large arcade, all games set to freeplay, you pay $x for a couple hours of unlimited play

- a "barcade", cheaper entry fee and you can stay til closing time, where the games are more of a loss leader to bring people in to buy food and drinks while they play. more multiplayer games here to aid in the social aspect. also cupholders at each machine.

codingdave• 6 years ago

They are back, at least in my area. Nickel arcades, with a collection of the old games from the 80s/90s, a handful of newer games, and boatload of ticket/skill games. They typically charge a few dollars admission, and then make additional money off the insane profit from making someone spend 20 dollars to get enough tickets to buy a 50 cent toy. The nickels that go into the arcade machines mostly just cover the cost of maintenance, and give the parents something to do while their children throw nickels away to win tickets.

Admittedly, the demographic has changed - it isn't 10-15 year old kids all piling into a dark room together with the only "adult" being the 17 year old working there. It is 4-12 year old kids with their parents.

def8cefe• 6 years ago

There has to be a business model to bring them back.

Like others have said they've come back somewhat in urban areas as 'barcades,' at least until Covid-19. These kinds of businesses will be struggling for many years to come if they manage to survive at all.

sloshnmosh• 6 years ago

Me too! My friend and I were masters at the old Defender Stargate arcade game.

One of the nice things about Stargate was that the high score allowed for several characters instead of just 3 for initials. You could write almost a whole sentence if you beat the high score.

This led to some extremely heated competition as my friend would write very nasty insults about me so that when I would show up to the arcade I would see it and spend hours trying to beat his score so I could post insulting material about him on the high score.

Another friend and I mastered Asteroids and we would have extra lives/ships lined up all across the top of the screen and beyond.

Over time this would lead to some interesting things due to low memory issues like the lines that made up the asteroid rocks would come detached and strange artifacts flickering on the screen.

Years later collecting ROM’s of these old arcade games to play over MAME emulator I was astonished at just how small the programs were.

I miss the arcades of the 80’s

Mikeb85• 6 years ago

There has to be a business model to bring them back.

There is. There are arcade-bars that serve alcohol and food to cater to millennials.

mercer6• 6 years ago

I remember going to the arcades with a friend who was so good at gaming that some of these places banned him. There was one that raised the difficult to what is best described as 'insane' just because of him.

We'd play a two-player game together, and at some point I let him play Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Combat while I shyly tried another game, in the safe knowledge that he was just a few arcades over.

I still vividly remember going by myself because he couldn't join. It was terrifying, but because I picked a mostly-single-player game and I recognized some of the patrons, I managed.

Unfortunately, because I was the only red-headed white guy there, there was a moment where as I was playing some guy thought it would be funny to put out his cigarette on my leg. That set me back for a bit.

But I still consider that arcade experience as the first time I learned to venture out into the scary world, and thankfully the bad experience didn't set me back too much. After that came the Counter-Strike sessions at internet cafés and, with a gap of probably half a decade or so, being a student and actually hanging out in bars with my peers without an arcade game mediating all of it.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I imagine my next venture into the social world will probably involve table-top gaming or ping-pong. I'm just not that good at socializing without it being centered around something :).

But man, it's rare that I get a wave of nostalgia this big. I had another rare one recently when I watched the Digital Ocean "Final Fight: DF Retro revisits the arcade original, every port, and all sequels" review (https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2020-retro...). Final Fight and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs were the two arcade games that I remember being somehow significant (other than TMNT: Manhatten Project, but that was mostly because I at least knew of the TMNT. and to be fair it was an amazing game).

agumonkey2• 6 years ago

is twitch a good enough reincarnation for arcades or does the flesh still lacks ?

syspec• 6 years ago

Apparently guile is clearly the strongest character in the game, that makes some sense... but apparently at high level Dhalsim is the second strongest by consensus.

Now that's a surprise!

danso• 6 years ago

Yeah Dhalsim's dominance was something I only learned recently as an adult through random Googling. Dhalsim seemed like by far the easiest character to beat whether it was CPU or human controlled, because of how slow he was, and how fragile he seemed to be. Guess none of the people at my local arcades were top tier!

jmgao• 6 years ago

It depends a lot on the version of the game: in the last version released in arcades (Super Street Fighter II Turbo aka Super Turbo or ST), Guile is roughly in the middle. It's fairly unanimous that the top tiers in ST are Dhalsim, Claw, Boxer, and O.Sagat.

htk• 6 years ago

Nice job on the international designations to avoid mix-ups.

chris_f2• 6 years ago

"...in ST are Dhalsim, Claw, Boxer, and O.Sagat."

In the US version, there were slightly different names I am guessing. Claw is most likely Vega and Boxer is Balrog?

egfx3• 6 years ago

I’m happy to see Dhalsim nominated as the dominant street fighter. One of the most difficult characters to play as a novice but street fighter rewarded defensive play and Dhalsim is the best character for defensive players. I worked in blizzards QA department and they had a slick X-Men vs street fighter machine with additional characters like Sabertooth. I was undefeated and Dhalsim was the only character I used. In fact only one person ever took more than 25% of my life meter away. Much less defeated me.

Xenoamorphous• 6 years ago

I remember the first time I watched a video of the Super Nintendo version (in a promotional VHS tape that came with a videogames magazine), I was blown away, it looked just like the arcade!

I also remember it costing more than other SNES games, it was almost half as much as the console.

ekianjo• 6 years ago

just like the arcade

Not, not really. I mean, it was a really good port, but if you compare it side by side you can clearly see it's not at the same level:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKOd6SVmnb4

Sprites are bigger on the arcade version, and there's higher resolution overall as well.

brabel• 6 years ago

Really difficult to notice any difference when you're just having fun playing it!

83457• 6 years ago

I think the point was that when he saw it that was his reaction at the time, not that it was the truth/perfect.

bluedino• 6 years ago

I paid $99 for my SNES (with one controller) and $69 for SF2

chrisco255• 6 years ago

I remember watching a promotional VHS tape about the N64 that came from Nintendo Power magazine back in '96. I watched that tape over and over, I was absolutely enamored with Mario 64. For months after it was released, people would line up at Wal-Mart in the electronics section to get a chance to play it. No 3D game up to that point had quite nailed the exploration and freedom that Mario 64 had pulled off. The thumb joystick control (which no other system had at the time) was also part of what made it a much better experience.

stallmanite• 6 years ago

Oh my god I had the SFII promotional VHS tape! I’d forgotten about entirely. Thanks for the nostalgia.

rawoke0836003• 6 years ago

Ja the memories ! I was lucky enough that I grew up in a house filled with computers in the 80's and early 90's with enough diversity (386,486, early pentiums) to explore and have a brilliant geeky-upbringing. My dad was never really into games, but whenever we had to go on a milk-run to the local cafe, he would always give me money to go play "the fighting game" and was always "amused" at how "Dhalsim" or the "Toordoker"(afrikaans for shaman) could stretch his limbs that far !

Good times - thanks dad :)

pixelpoet• 6 years ago

Ag jussie, this is the most Afrikaans thing I've read in ages :P Grew up in Pretoria, also had some computers but thanks to the Telkom monopoly I wasn't really able to use the internet until going to UCT.

rawoke0836003• 6 years ago

Haha ja Pretoria me as well :);Urgh Telkom

richardjdare2• 6 years ago

I spent my teenage years copying pictures of Street Fighter II characters from C&VG magazine, I loved the art and music. However I was terrible at the game. I didn't truly enjoy a fighting game until Tekken.

I miss arcades, although I only got to visit them once a year when we went on our family holiday. Can you imagine waiting a whole year to play Outrun, Rygar or Smash TV? Arcade games were so superior to their home conversions that to an obsessive gamer like me, it was like going on a pilgrimage to see a painting that you'd previously only seen in a photocopied reproduction.

My finest gaming moments were playing Golden Axe and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker with a whole crowd of people watching.

edejong• 6 years ago

I just have to reply because of that last sentence. I totally forgot that feeling until now. Each rendered frame, the side scrolling, the pixelated sprites (not rectangular, but smoothed due to the CRT). Ignorance is bliss...

mercer6• 6 years ago

The interlaced, fuzzy-in-a-very-specific-way arcade experience is a huge wave of nostalgia.

mynameishere2• 6 years ago

Arcade games were so superior to their home conversions

As a general rule, this is correct, but Rygar is a glaring exception. The arcade game was a typical mindless scroller. The home version was an epic action/RPG.

dole2• 6 years ago

Arcade Rygar was more than just a mindless scroller. It may have seemed mindless or repetitive especially against the RPG, but all 25+ levels had unique artwork and layout, and the graphics and color were brilliant around that time as if the arcade industry made the leap between 8 to 16-bit.

Rygar had a rough learning curve but it was possible to get good enough to finish the whole game on a quarter or two.

You can imagine the disappointment when we got NES Rygar. Ported graphics and characters aside, it was one of those games that was damn near impossible without the Official Nintendo Player’s Guide or the mapping tenacity of a fanatic. Of course we played through it, but grudgingly.

richardjdare2• 6 years ago

Which version was that? I only played the Amstrad CPC version which was ok, but nowhere near as good as the arcade.

LaundroMat• 6 years ago

Every time I smell plywood dust I'm transported back to the arcades of my youth.

mercer6• 6 years ago

Oh shit I have that too. Why?

egfx3• 6 years ago

Arcade games were so superior to their home conversions

That is unless you had a Neo-Geo ;)

egfx3• 6 years ago

Or a TurboGrafix-16

agumonkey2• 6 years ago

Reminds me of paddle stickers wear patterns due to SF2 moves.

chris_f2• 6 years ago

Jump kick high and then sweep low was a basic strategy that would cause your opponent to lose their mind in anger if you timed it right so they could never really get back up.

slim• 6 years ago

honda would block that and slap you and consume half your health bar. but nobody played honda.. nobody but me

katzgrau4• 6 years ago

Crouch and uppercut will put an end to any of that nonsense :)

toast03• 6 years ago

Pretty easy to block that, if you know how to block, you can usually get in some hits after you block the sweep. If you're good, you can probably just counter directly, but I'm not that good.

jaynetics• 6 years ago

This type of article is why I come to HN. I grew up in a tiny German town where even the most outward looking place, the big supermarket, was completely devoid of anything from outside central Europe. Our parents wouldn't let us watch movies for grownups, but playing SF2 on SNES - at an age that would send pedagogues into meltdown nowadays - did feel like the first glimpse of the wider world in more ways than one.

I always liked Blanka, maybe because his electric touch makes him a bit of a nerd.

katzgrau4• 6 years ago

If you liked playing with E Honda, Chun Li, or Blanka - you probably owned a controller with a turbo button, ha

joeyspn• 6 years ago

For the folks who miss arcades, this has been posted several times... how to build your own Arcades on a budget with pre-built kits and a Raspberry Pi:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-raspberry-pi-has-revolutio...

katzgrau4• 6 years ago

Ah, the locations. As a kid who never had the chance to leave his state growing up, it felt like I was really going somewhere new and fun.

I Loved E Hondas stage, Balrog's Casino amd Dhalsims stage in particular.

Reminds me of the Twisted Metal series for Playstation - the excitement when you're on your way to a battle in Hong Kong!

snarfy• 6 years ago

I remember when Street Fighter I was a new arcade game. The demonstration mode would show Ryu fighting Retsu, and occasionally he would throw a fireball. The game didn't say how to do it. It would always be this random thing that happened while playing. If you play fighting games, you know the motion is pretty simple, but on SF1 it's actually pretty difficult to do on command. The input scanning just wasn't very good and you had to do the motion with just the right joystick speed and button on/off timing.

I figured out how to throw a fireball on command and became the wizard of the arcade. Shortly after I figured out the dragon punch too. I never figured out the hurricane kick. The game never showed it during demonstration so I didn't know it even existed. It would happen sometimes randomly while playing but for some reason I thought it was a glitch and not a real move. One day another player showed up from another arcade, and he was doing all three moves. He didn't have them quite figured out though as his technique was to mash the joystick motion spastically while hitting the buttons, but it was enough to figure out the hurricane kick too.

When SF2 came out, I was excited because I already knew the special moves, but then there were all these new characters I didn't know how to play. And that's when it happened: people started playing each other. That's what changed everything. The arcades were all dying, but with SF2 the crowds started gathering around. It was no longer about playing the games and getting the high score. It was about being the best competitor.

It's crazy to see it all start and to have gone to and competed in a lot of the first video game competitions. It has come a long way from arcade employees setting up home grown tournaments and giving away ticket prizes. Now we have EVO.

mercer6• 6 years ago

One day another player showed up from another arcade, and he was doing all three moves.

This was one of the arcade-specific experiences that I've never quite had at any other point in my life. MMORPGS and forums have given me some of the feeling of being at an arcade, but this was something unique.

I was perhaps too young, or for whatever reason not good enough to be noteworthy at the arcades. But (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread), my best friend was. He was notoriously good.

We'd go from arcade to arcade in town, until they'd ban him or (in one case) up the difficulty just to get him to leave.

We'd play co-op games where he carried me through and it was a kind of bonding experience I can't quite compare to anything else.

He was so good at the competitive games (in particular SF2) that people wouldn't challenge him. Why waste a coin? I sometimes put in a coin just to bait others, because the clever players knew that if you saw someone playing SF2 alone for a while, they were probably really good. He'd give me 10 cents to reimburse me :).

Whenever a new arcade opened up (usually in a shipping container, but sometimes 'real fancy'), we'd rush there and first try the new games, but then get back to SF2 and hope there were players that didn't know about him yet. It usually worked for a while.

But possibly one of the most vivid memories of my childhood was the time that, while I was faffing about on other arcades, out of the corner of my eye I'd see some other guy (it was mostly men, but perhaps that's partly culturally. women became mothers-in-training in their teens) walk up to his solo SF2 play, and pop in a coin.

I swear, when that happened, it sometimes felt like a Western. I'd notice first, on account of keeping an eye on my bestie, but others 'in the know' would nudge each other and cut off whatever game they were playing to watch the spectacle.

A crowd would form around my friend and this 'new guy', and, of course, most of the time he'd do the equivalent of drawing so quick that the other guy didn't stand a chance. Sometimes he'd play around. Pick one of the weaker characters (that monster one I don't remember). Or humiliate his new adversary by offering to play with one hand.

I think there was only one time where he struggled, and it turned out this guy was a dude from the capitol and was known there for being the local SF2 champion.

EDIT: Oh, and just to add some color to this story in case anyone liked it: I was one of the few people in town with a personal computer. My parents told me to not mention it to my friends for fear of theft. I told this friend and I will never forget the experience of having him over and playing games together. This was a 486 and we played Wacky Wheels and (I think) Doom and One Must Fall, the latter which was closest to the fighting games he was so good at (or perhaps a similar game?).

These games were clearly a step down from what we got to play at the arcades, but the fact that we could play them without having to put in coins (even if they had the 'continue' and 'credits' screens) was just mind-blowing to the both of us.

Sadly as I moved on to RPG's and RTS', he stuck with the arcades and we drifted apart in this regard. We bonded over watching badly dubbed films though, The Matrix being probably our favorite.

drx• 6 years ago

Thank you for sharing, what a nice story.

raiyu• 6 years ago

I think you hit the nail on the head. I grew up with Street Fighter and never really connected the dots as to why I love the game so much.

Sure it had pretty good graphics for the time, and gameplay was great as well.

But the real differentiator was the ability to "compete" with other people.

Not just compete, but the fact that you plopped down 25 cents and within 3 minutes one of your lost. At the time we didn't have much money, so 25 cents per game play was quite a lot. So it really came down to being great and trying to beat as many people as possible so that your 25 cents could last longer.

It was probably my first real memory of truly being competitive at life.

chrisacky• 6 years ago

Anecdotal, and I think expanding on the "portal" idea, I've just downloaded MAME + GENS for my two (young) boys (2 hours ago). The timing of this article is relevant for me.

Metal Slug, SF2, Sonic, Lion King, Toe Jam, Earth Worm, these were the first games I ever really played as a kid for me were my own portal to gaming which expanded into an early career at Uni although now it's only recreational, I can't help but think I enjoyed the gaming when I was 10 years old, than I do now.

bonzini• 6 years ago

My son loves Sonic and Super Mario. The cool stuff is that when kids come over they love them even though they don't have a nerdy father. :-)

S_A_P• 6 years ago

Arcade 1up has a table based street fighter console. It’s a ¾ sized version of a real arcade table. I bought some 7” furniture legs which made it a comfortable sitting height. Has 12 games installed from all the classic street fighter to 1942 to commando. It’s a lot of fun and I had a lot of fun showing my son how some concepts of the games he loves now(terraria) started in these games.

29athrowaway• 6 years ago

The portrayal of Brazil in that game is really bad.

As a kid, my favourite level was the Dhalsim level. Note that I am not Indian.

foxhop• 6 years ago

The first time I saw Street Fighter was inside a Burger King. My parents didn't let me play but the intro screen was mesmerizing (Ryu throws a fireball!?)

The next time was a in mall (which was torn down at least 25 years ago) just in a random ally way between shops. I spent about 75 cents of my own money.

Our local bowling ally had a Mortal Kombat arcade (torn down 5 years ago and replaced with an ALDI) which occupied my friends (I still preferred Street Fighter).

I used to carry the Street Fighter II Sega Genesis game manual with me in middle school. The manual was included with the cartridge and had art, lore, and the moves listed.

Street Fighter was a portal for me before the Internet.

My favorite game cabinet, when I can find one, is Marvel versus Capcom. I'm not good at that game, but it felt so expansive with the choices of playable characters, I spent a bit of money but I was older and friendless and not part of the scene (at this point there likely wasn't a scene).

If I had to choose one game that shaped me, it would be a tie between Mario Brothers for the NES and Street Fighter II.

toast03• 6 years ago

Ryu throwing a fireball intro was probably Super Street Fighter II? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZL4upd4QpI Or Super Street Fighter II Turbo? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc34Y3NZoK0

davedx• 6 years ago

For me it was a local chippy (fish and chips shop) just outside school. Every lunch hour about 15 kids would pile in. Some of them would maybe order a chip barm, the rest would be clutching a few 10p’s from their pocket or paper round money.

Managing to pull of some frantic fireballs or dragon punches and hang in for a few games against the bigger kids would mean the kind of adrenaline rush and feeling of exhilaration that’s hard to find elsewhere.

Sometimes you’d put a pound in, and some bastard would steal one of your games to replay you. Never put a pound in.

Toenex• 6 years ago

Ah very similar here for me too. Karate Champ at the kebab shop opposite school in 1980's North London. Winner stays on. Always got to the point where you had to decide between a potential high score and avoiding a whipping for being late.

stevekemp• 6 years ago

Chip Barm? Gonna guess you're a Bolton lad, or somewhere close?

My exposure to Streetfight was a little later in life, when I was around 16/17 hanging out at the local tattoo parlor. They had a Street Fighter 2 Champion edition cabinet tucked away at the side of the waiting-room, and I'd often play friends and random people queuing/waiting for a few hours on a Saturday morning.

tilolebo• 6 years ago

Funny, I don't think I ever played the arcade version.

I remember my classmates speaking about SFII all the time. They all played it on their SNES.

Later I got one too and would play SFII, Mortal Kombat II Super Bomberman 3, Micromachines and Mario Kart with my friends.

Good memories...

thewebcount• 6 years ago

We were too young to notice anything but the sense of limitless curiosity that it inspired, especially when we began to realize that the scenes were based on actual places.

It's funny because I got that feeling from a lot of games. It's why I loved adventure games. Some were set in made-up places, but some were from real places. (I remember playing one where part of it was set in ancient Chichen Itza, Mexico among the Mayan pyramids, for example.)

But I also remember when Street Fighter hit the scene, arcade games went downhill fast. They all became variations on the same theme of memorizing sequences of button presses instead of having goals to achieve or interesting puzzles. Going to the arcade stopped being fun for me at that point, and home computers were starting to get powerful enough to have far more interesting and involved games on them. And shortly after that networked games started becoming a thing.

'Street Fighter II' Wasn’t Just a Game, It Was a Portal

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