My Look Back at Street Fighter II

As you all SHOULD know, Street Fighter IV is coming out. Who knows when that time will come though. I get so excited just looking at pictures and reading the EGM article over and over again. I’ve been a fan since I first played Street Fighter II in the arcades back when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I even went back and bought Street Fighter compilations for the PS2 off of Ebay. Ahhh… Street Fighter II… I even remember which arcade I played it at. (Long post after the jump)

I was visiting my Great-Grandparents in Marysville, CA and there was this mall in the next town, Yuba City. It was a new mall at the time and it was the first time I saw an arcade center inside of a mall. The best part was that there were probably around 2 or 3 other people inside that arcade center. I think the cabinets were still only costing a quarter a game back then so the $5 my mom gave me was more than plenty for me to play with. Street Fighter II was actually one of the last games I played so I was already down to two or three quarters in my pocket. I naturally picked Ryu the first time I played and I was button mashing like crazy. When I threw my first Ha-Dou-Ken, I believe I stood there in shock. I had no idea there were special moves in the game and I had no idea how I even performed the move. I ended up putting the my last quarters in the machine and wasn’t able to throw any more fireballs. I probably was able to perform a Sho-Ryu-Ken but I probably didn’t notice it like I did with the fireball.

I left the arcade talking to my brother about how cool the game was and we couldn’t wait to play it again. Back then, I probably got to play arcade games only a few times a year so I probably didn’t get to play SFII again for months. I did, however, get my hands on a magazine (not sure what it was, could have been GamePro) that showed the instructions for special moves for the game. It was so confusing to me. I didn’t understand how to perform “down, down-forward, forward + punch”. I didn’t know what that meant until I saw another magazine that described the moves with arrows. I finally knew how to perform a Ha-Dou-Ken! I couldn’t wait to try it at the arcade! I remember being a super dork and bringing the magazine with me to the arcade so that I could try the moves. I was completely stuck on playing as Ryu. I never tried any other character in the arcades. What’s funny is that I didn’t even care about winning the game.

I’m sure I was pissing people off that were wanting to play the game with me standing there holding a magazine with a jackass, trying to just perform special moves and not actually fighting. They’re lucky the arcades forced a time limit on rounds. Street Fighter II was THE arcade game to play everytime I stepped foot in an arcade. Once I found out that the game was coming out on the SNES from my monthly Nintendo Power, I had to have it. The year I got an SNES from my parents for Christmas, I BEGGED my uncle to get me Street Fighter II to go along with Super Mario World. What he gave me was this huge box that looked like it could fit a regular tube TV that weighed close to nothing. I remember thinking,

“What the hell, he got me a sweater?”

I was so disappointed. Street Fighter II was THE game that I wanted along with my SNES (yeah, spoiled, I know). When Christmas came along, it was already no surprise when my brother and I ripped open the SNES. We probably sat there for 20 minutes, just staring at the box and reading all of the specs like how it had over 32 thousand colors and what not. We had some other random gifts like VHS tapes and clothing but seriously… who cares when you just got a SNES. Then we got to that big TV box my uncle gave me and prepared for the worse. Once we got that box open, there was a whole bunch of newspaper that we had to dig through. We started to wonder if my uncle was just messing with us and had our present somewhere else. We finally got to the bottom and THERE IT WAS, STREET FIGHTER II, TAPED TO THE BOTTOM OF THE BOX. I think our reaction looked a little like this:

But with Street Fighter II instead of Nintendo 64, of course. He was probably not as surprised as we were. I mean come on, he must have known what it was from the size and weight of the box. That loser…Anyway, I was finally able to try out all of the other characters! Which brought on another problem. How the HELL do I “charge back for 2 seconds”. Charge? What? Hmmm… does Blanka have to shock me first so that I can get a charge for two seconds? Damn, I probably spent an hour or two just figuring out how to perform a sonic boom. That’s what made Street Fighter great though. It was the sense of achievement once you figured out how to perform a new special move. It’s probably the same feeling when performing each new fatality in Mortal Kombat. For you newer gamers, it’s like getting an Xbox Live achievement, but multiplied by at least 100.

The bonus stages were also so fun. It got to the point where I would always get bonus points and beat up that car so fast.

Does anyone remember how difficult the bosses were the first time playing through the game? Of course, I turned down the difficulty but I still had trouble fighting Vega after beating Balrog down easily. After going on an offensive rampage on all comers before Vega, it was difficult to play defensively, especially when he’d climb his stupid cage wall in the background. That was so damn cheap. And once I got past him, I still had to fight Sagat and M. Bison. M. Bison was unbelievably hard to beat. I seriously had to stop playing because I’d lose so much. Remember EGM’s stupid Sheng Long April Fool’s joke? I totally fell for it. First off, they already claimed that it was mainly an arcade trick but I still tried it on my SNES version. I was so pissed when I found out that it was a joke and that April Fool’s lasted a whole month for me.

Does anyone remember the different endings in the game? Not the character endings, but the ending screens that you can get if you beat the game without losing a battle or even better, without losing a round. It took forever, but I was able to do both, just to get a screen with more characters on it at the end. I should get like 100 achievement points for that.

Damn, Street Fighter II was such a great game. It probably still is a great game if I downloaded it and played through it again. It’s fun just thinking back about all the time I spent with just this one Street Fighter. The fun didn’t stop there. There’s definitely more Street Fighter but I will continue this another time.

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