Michael Chang STS 145 Game Review February 22,2001 Street Fighter 11: The Origid Warrior A young male sees the letters “SF” together and thinks not of the Golden Gate Bridge or Ghirardelli Square but of a video game. Although SF abbreviates the great city of San Francisco to most, to the young male hanging out in an arcade, SF was an abbreviation not for the city or place but for a lifestyle. To that kid, SF stood for Street Fighter, In particular, that kid and all his friends at school were fascinated by SFII, the sequel to the original but less popular Street Fighter. SF11 launched into arcades everywhere and became one of the most popular and influential games ever. Even after a decade of sequels and literally hundreds of clones, the classic game is still a favorite of the gaming community. Before Street Fighter 11’s time, arcades were dominated by hybrid video games that featured both side-scrolling action and fighting. Such games included Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game and Final Fight. Capcom and other game developers such as Data East and Konami had long been building games for the one-on-one fighting genre by stripping down the side-scrollers for their most satisfying elements: fighting and beating “bosses” who governed each level. The fighting genre’s game-play still retained the side-scrolling genre’s succession of levels and characters. However, per fighting game level, no obstacles lay beyond or before the boss, and no onscreen weapons or objects cluttered the action. The invention of the genre spawned Yie Ar Kung Fu, Karate Champ, and the original Street Fighter. However, due to their limited controls and the limits of video game hardware, the fighters featured game- play essentially like that of side-scrollers. Without the extra features and action in their side-scrolling counterparts, fighting games were feable. It was not until SFII’s release that the genre won a mass audience. SF11 was the brainchild of Yoshiki Okamoto, a legend among game designers. Now the head of the Research & Development division there, he has pushed the company to new heights with the additions of the Street Fighter franchise as well as the hugely popular Resident Evil franchise. Okamoto’s video games roots, however, are remarkably much more humble. Dropping out of college only months before graduating, Okamoto was lured into the video game business as an artist and software designer for Konami, a Japanese software publisher responsible for such huge hits as Contra and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Indeed, he found good fortune in designing his own software hits like Time Pilot. However, his short-lived career at Konami ended in a clash with a Konami superior over philosophical and artistic differences. Okamoto’s next stop was his destiny: Capcom. In March 199 1, Capcom debuted SF11 as a continuation of the saga of the original Street Fighter, in which Ryu and Ken trained in the art of Shotokan Karate. Competing to be “strongest street fighter in the world,” they eventually fought their way to victory. Ultimately, Ryu defeated the reigning champion, Sagat, and left a permanent scar in his chest with his own mystical Dragon Punch. SF11 represents the next chapter in Ryu’s quest to perfect his martial art. The game introduces a new tournament which showcases seven other competitors and four champions to overcome. Each competitor has his or her driving force to compete, ranging from avenging a friend’s death to winning freedom from slavery. At the heart of this tournament is its host, M. Bison, the ultimate fighter with mystic skills to rival any of the main characters. At his side are Balrog, Vega and Sagat, each of whom adds a layer of mystery and difficulty to thegame. However, in the original version of SFII, Capcom neither revealed those characters’ origins nor allowed allowed players to use them. Street Fighter I - Ken, left, battles Ryu Street Fighter I1 - clearly better textured and drawn as obvious from the backgrounds, objects, shadow and movement However, Capcom did allow human players to choose from one of eight fighters: Ryu, Ken, Guile, Blanka, E. Honda, Chun Li, Zangief and Dhalsim, all with unique fighting styles and diverse geographic backgrounds. As was typical of fighting games, all matches were individual, pitting player against computer or player against player. Each character in the game had over 30 moves in addition to a range of special moves executed through special combinations and keystrokes. It was this variety of moves as well as the grace with which players could pull off those moves that made SF11 a watershed game. Up to its release, SFII’s predecessors all suffered from choppy game-play and imprecise controls. In particular, players could manipulate the original Street Fighter using only a joystick and two buttons, one for punching and one for kicking. Only as the game started accumulating popularity did designers experiment with a new, six-button layout, three for varying strengths of punches and three for varying strengths of kicks. In spite of this innovation, a slower processor and limited memory hindered the game, and players could only execute powerful, “special” moves sporadically.Imagine the frustration of a player backed into a wall in anticipation of unleashing a towering fireball to catch and defeat his opponent only to realize that the CPU just failed to read the elaborate joystick motion. Instead of a fireball, a mild punch sputters out, It barely grazes his opponent, who in turn takes advantage of his vulnerability to end his life. Game over, insert another quarter (or two or three) to continue, What was the point of repeating play if one could not even repeat a move? To the relief of fans, Capcom addressed this problem when they returned to the 16-bit CPS arcade board recently developed for Final Fight. The increased memory capacity allowed for larger sprites, fluid animation and most important for serious garners, fluid controls. The new control board could discern the difference between holding a joystick back two seconds and holding it three seconds. Diagonal motions too became a factor, allowing players to jump forward and not just straight up. Once players discovered a special move, they could master it with practice rather than attempt to replicate it in vain. With such ability, therefore, a player could come to master characters and overcome other
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