Street Fighter II

Gameplay

Street Fighter II follows several conventions and rules established by its 1987 predecessor Street Fighter. The player engages opponents in a series of timed one-on-one, close-quarters combat matches. In order to win a round, the player must either completely drain the opponent's health bar by landing attacks, or have more health remaining when the timer runs out. Neither fighter wins the round if they have equal health when time expires or if they simultaneously knock each other out. The first fighter to win two rounds is declared the victor.

During a single-player game, a second player may join, starting a head-to-head match. The victor continues in single-player mode.

The original Street Fighter II allowed up to 10 rounds per match; this maximum is reduced to four rounds starting with the Champion Edition. If there is no clear winner by the end of the final round, either the computer-controlled opponent will win by default in a single-player match or both fighters will lose in a two-player match. After every third match in the single-player mode, a bonus stage gives a chance to earn additional points by smashing a car, wooden barrels, or metal oil drums. After each match, the location for the next one is selected on a world map.

Like in Street Fighter, the controls are an eight-directional joystick and six attack buttons. The joystick can jump, crouch, walk left and right, and block. A tradeoff of strength and speed are given by three punch buttons and three kick buttons, each of light, medium, and heavy. The player can perform a variety of basic moves in any position, including new grabbing and throwing attacks. Special moves are performed by combinations of directional and button-based commands.

Street Fighter II differs from its predecessor due to the selection of multiple playable characters, each with distinct fighting styles and special moves including combos. According to IGN, "the concept of combinations, linked attacks that can't be blocked when they're timed correctly, came about more or less by accident. Street Fighter II's designers didn't quite mean for it to happen, but players of the original game eventually found out that certain moves naturally flowed into other ones." This combo system was later adopted as a standard feature of fighting games and was expanded upon in this series.

Plot

According to the timeline, the story was set two years after the events of Street Fighter Alpha 3 and three years before the events of Street Fighter IV.

Sometime after gaining a new body, M. Bison uses his Shadaloo organization to establish a base in a temple in Thailand. Bison also subjugated a nearby village to establish his criminal empire, but still provided the village with essential supplies. To lure out Ryu once more, Bison takes influence from his bodyguard Sagat to announce the Second World Fighting Tournament (Sagat was both the sponsor and final challenger of the First World Fighting Tournament four years prior) organized by Shadaloo.

The fighters have entered the tournament for different gains: Ryu have competed to test and prove his own fighting skill, while Ken, Zangief, and E. Honda each entered to prove to the entire world that they are the most supreme reigning fighters in history. Some other challengers such as Blanka have entered to uncover his unknown past origin; Dhalsim have entered to raise money for his home village that was invaded and impoverished by Shadaloo; Guile and Chun-li have entered because of their own vendettas against M. Bison for murdering their respective loved ones, as well as both officers vowing to bring Shadaloo to justice.

Bison's main intent is to retrieve Ryu's body and exact revenge on the fighters who had hindered his criminal organization's efforts by luring them into Shadaloo's Temple Hideout for Bison, Sagat, Vega and Balrog to beat each one of them into submission so that nobody prevents him from starting global domination.

At the result of the Second World Fighting Tournament, Ryu became the two-time champion and earns the title of The World Warrior. At the Award Ceremony, Sagat has taken third place, and M. Bison second. However, the first place champion's spot is empty, much to the wonder of the crowd. As it turns out, Ryu has no need for ceremony, and is already on his way to seek out a new challenge, starting by training his Shoryukens under a waterfall.

Characters

The original Street Fighter II features a roster of eight playable fighters. This includes Ryu and Ken—the main protagonists from Street Fighter—plus six new international newcomers. In the single-player tournament, the player fights the other seven main fighters, then the final opponents—a group of four CPU-only opponents known as the Grand Masters, which includes Sagat from Street Fighter.

Playable characters:

Ryu, a Japanese martial artist seeking no fame or even the crown of "champion", but only to hone his Ansatsuken Karate skills with the inner power of Chi. He dedicates his life to perfect his own potential while abandoning everything else such as having no family and few friends; his only bond is with Ken. He was the winner of the previous tournament and is not convinced that he is the greatest fighter in the world. He comes to this tournament in search of fresh competition.

E. Honda, a sumo wrestler from Japan. He aims to improve the negative reputation of sumo wrestling by proving to competitors that he is a legitimate athlete.

Blanka, a beastlike mutant from Brazil who was raised in the jungle. He enters the tournament to uncover more origins about his forgotten past.

Guile, a former United States Air Force special forces operative seeking to defeat M. Bison, who killed his best friend Charlie.

Ken, Ryu's best friend, greatest rival and former training partner, from the United States. Ryu's personal challenge rekindled Ken's fighting spirit and persuaded him to enter the World Warrior tournament, as well as feeling unenthusiastic in his fighting potential due to spending too much time with his fiancée.

Chun-Li, a Chinese martial artist who works as an Interpol officer. Much like Guile, she does not enter the World Warrior tournament for any personal glory except proving that she can defeat any man who challenges her. Chun-Li's ambition in the past was tracking down the movements of the smuggling operation known as Shadaloo. Her goal now is her trail being led to the tournament by seeking to avenge her deceased father by holding the Grand Master's leader of the crime syndicate responsible.

Regional differences

With the exception of Sagat, the Shadaloo Bosses have different names in the Japanese version. The boxer known as Balrog in the international versions was designed as a pastiche of real-life boxer Mike Tyson and was originally named M. Bison (short for "Mike Bison", with "Mike" being one of the American opponents faced in Street Fighter). Vega and M. Bison were originally named Balrog and Vega, respectively. When Street Fighter II was localized for the overseas market, the names of the bosses were rotated, out of concern that the boxer's similarities to Tyson could have led to a likeness infringement lawsuit. In international tournaments, the characters are often referred to as "Boxer", "Claw", and "Dictator", after their defining traits in order to avoid confusion.

The characters in the Japanese version have more than one win quote and if the player loses a match against the CPU in the Japanese version, a random playing tip will be shown at the bottom of the continue screen. While the ending text for the characters was originally translated literally, a few changes were made due to creative differences from Capcom's U.S. marketing staff. For example, the name of Guile's fallen friend (who later debuted as a playable fighter in Street Fighter Alpha) was changed from Nash to Charlie, since a staff member from Capcom USA said that Nash is not a natural sounding English name.

Development

Although the original punching-pad cabinet of Street Fighter had not been very popular, the alternate six-button version was more successful, which began to generate interest in a sequel. Capcom began to make fighting games a priority after Final Fight was commercially successful in the United States. Yoshiki Okamoto recounted: "The basic idea at Capcom was to revive Street Fighter, a good game concept, to make it a better-playing arcade game."

Development of Street Fighter II took roughly two years and about 35 to 40 people, with Noritaka Funamizu as a producer, and Akira Nishitani and Akira Yasuda in charge of the game and character design, respectively. The budget was estimated at $2,450,000 (equivalent to $5,790,000 in 2025).

Funamizu notes that the developers did not particularly prioritize Street Fighter II's balance. He primarily ascribes the game's success to its appealing animation patterns. The quality of animation benefited from the developers' use of the CPS-1 hardware, with advantages including allowing different characters to occupy different amounts of memory. For example, Ryu can occupy 8 megabits and Zangief 12 megabits.

The combo system came about by accident:

While I was making a bug check during the car bonus stage... I noticed something strange, curious. I taped the sequence and we saw that during the punch timing, it was possible to add a second hit and so on. I thought this was something impossible to make useful inside a game, as the timing balance was so hard to catch. So we decided to leave the feature as a hidden one. The most interesting thing is that this became the base for future titles. Later we were able to make the timing more comfortable and the combo into a real feature. In [Street Fighter II] we thought if you got the perfect timing you could place several hits, up to four I think. Then we managed to place eight! A bug? Maybe.

During development, Nishitani proposed various concepts for the game that were eventually scrapped, including a dual-monitor arcade cabinet, a "10 player battle royale" mode, a "chain deathmatch" with the fighters' arms bound, a tower stage where falling from a ring out leads to player death, and an underwater stage with limited air supply.

Updated versions

Street Fighter II spawned a series of revisions that were released in arcades, but were later ported to various platforms, as individual releases and also in compilations. Each entry refined the play mechanics, graphics, character roster, and other aspects of the game:

Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, released in March 1992, rebalances characters' power levels, allows both players in two-player matches to select the same character (distinguished by alternate costume colors) and lets players choose the four previously computer-only boss characters.

Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, released in December 1992, increases the playing speed and gave some characters new special moves. It was created as Capcom's official response to a wave of unauthorized modifications for arcade cabinets of Champion Edition that appeared throughout 1992, such as Street Fighter II': Rainbow Edition.

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, released in September 1993, used the more advanced CP System II which allowed for updated graphics and audio. It introduces four new characters, but relieved the speed increase of Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo, released in February 1994, combines the improvements of Super Street Fighter II with the previous Turbo (Hyper Fighting) edition. It allows for a selective game speed, introduces powered-up special moves called Super Combos, and adds a new hidden character.

Later home console ports further reinvented elements from the arcades:

Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition, released in December 2003, allowed players to choose one of five styles for the game, each based on the previous Street Fighter II iterations' unique characteristics. It was later given an arcade release, and is a part of the collection of video games at the Museum of Modern Art to represent the Street Fighter II subseries as a whole.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, released in November 2008, is a remake of Super Street Fighter II Turbo using high-definition graphics.

Ports

Super NES

Street Fighter II was released for the Super Famicom on June 10, 1992, in Japan, followed by a North American release for the SNES in August and a European release in December. It is the first game released on a 16-megabit SNES cartridge. Many aspects from the arcade versions were either altered or simplified in order to fit into the smaller memory capacity. This version has a secret code allowing both players to control the same character in a match, which is not possible in the original arcade version. The second player uses the same alternate color palette introduced in Street Fighter II: Champion Edition. The four Shadaloo Bosses are still non-playable, but the code enables their Champion Edition color palette. Tatsuya Nishimura, who had recently joined Capcom from TOSE, arranged the soundtrack with assistance from Shimomura, Abe, and Sakaguchi.

The North American SNES version was re-released in November 2017 as a limited edition item to celebrate the anniversary of the Street Fighter series.

Home computers

U.S. Gold released versions of Street Fighter II for home computers in Europe: Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, and ZX Spectrum. These were developed by Creative Materials, except for the ZX Spectrum version which was developed by Tiertex Design Studios. The MS-DOS version was also published in North America by Hi-Tech Expressions. These versions suffer numerous inaccuracies, such as missing graphical assets and music tracks, miscolored palettes, and lack of six-button controls due to these platforms having only one or two-button joysticks as standard at the time. Though officially advertised by US Gold along with the C64 and ZX Spectrum conversions and anticipated in magazines, an Amstrad CPC version was never released.

Tiger Electronics

This standalone handheld machine was missing Chun-Li and Dhalsim.

Game Boy

The Game Boy version of Street Fighter II was released on August 11, 1995, in Japan, and in September 1995 internationally. It is missing Dhalsim, E. Honda, and Vega. The graphics, character portraits, and stages are based on Super Street Fighter II, although some moves (ex: Blanka's Amazon River Run) from Super Street Fighter II Turbo are included. Because the Game Boy only has two buttons, the strength of punches and kicks is determined by the duration of button presses.

Compilations

Street Fighter II, Champion Edition, and Turbo are in the compilation Capcom Generation 5 for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, which was released in North America and Europe as Street Fighter Collection 2. All three games are in Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1 for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, and in Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded for the PlayStation Portable. In 2011, all three games were released on iOS devices as the Street Fighter II Collection, though the compilation was later delisted from the App Store. In 2018, Street Fighter II was one of the many games included in the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection for the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Windows.

Reception

Commercial

By 1994, Street Fighter II had been played by an estimated 25 million people in the United States alone, across arcades and homes. All versions of Street Fighter II are estimated to have grossed a total of $10.61 billion in revenue, mostly from the arcade market. As of 2017, it is one of the top three highest-grossing video games of all time, along with Space Invaders (1978) and Pac-Man (1980).

Street Fighter II was not immediately successful in Japan, as most arcade players were initially playing it solo, rather than multiplayer as originally intended. Yoshiki Okamoto was disappointed with its initial performance, and was told he should have produced another solo beat 'em up like Final Fight instead. After Japanese arcade magazine Gamest began publishing articles informing readers about the "battle play" feature, the game began gaining considerable popularity in Japanese arcades. In Japan, Game Machine magazine listed the game as the second most successful table arcade cabinet of March 1991, outperforming games such as Detana!! TwinBee and King of the Monsters, before Street Fighter II topped the charts two weeks later. It went on to become the highest-grossing arcade game of 1991 in Japan, and then became the highest-grossing arcade game of 1992. Street Fighter II Turbo became the highest-grossing arcade game of 1993, with Street Fighter II Dash (Champion Edition) at number four and The World Warrior at number nine.

Street Fighter II was similarly successful in the Western world. In the United States, the game was more immediately successful as it exceeded expectations in test markets, with individual machines earning $1,300–1,400 per week. Capcom USA sales representative Jeff Walker predicted it would "become the kit of 1991", and RePlay magazine said it showed there was "plenty of life" left in the struggling arcade business. By March, it had become a blockbuster and the top-grossing game in the United States, giving a large boost in earnings for street operators. It topped the RePlay arcade software charts from May 1991 through August 1992, for a total of 16 months. On the Play Meter arcade charts, it was the top-grossing video game during January–February 1992 and May 1992. Street Fighter II was the highest-grossing arcade game of 1991 in the United States, and one of the top five highest-grossing arcade conversion kits of 1992 (below Champion Edition). Its success was considered phenomenal. By 1992, it had turned around the convenience store segment of the coin-op industry and become the best-selling arcade game in ten years. Electronic Games noted in its October 1992 issue, "Not since the early 1980s has an arcade game received so much attention and all-out fanatical popularity." It was similarly successful in Australia, where it was performing strongly after 16 months on the market, with Leisure Line magazine noting in 1992 that not "since the days of Space Invaders (1978) has a game had such longevity".

Critical

The original arcade version of Street Fighter II was awarded Best Game of 1991 in Gamest's Fifth Annual Grand Prize, which also won in the genre of Best Action Game (the award for fighting games was not established yet). Street Fighter II placed No. 1 in Best VGM, Best Direction, and Best Album, and was second place in Best Graphics below the 3D Namco System 21 game Starblade. All the characters except M. Bison (known internationally as Balrog) are on the list of Best Characters of 1991.

Street Fighter II Dash was awarded Best Game of 1992 in the Sixth Annual Grand Prize, as published in the February 1993 issue of Gamest, winning again as Best Action Game. It placed No. 3 in Best VGM, No. 6 in Best Graphics, and No. 5 in Best Direction. The Street Fighter II Image Album is the No. 1 Best Album in the same issue, with the Drama CD version of Street Fighter II tied for No. 7 with the soundtrack for Star Blade. The List of Best Characters only had Chun-Li at No. 3.

In the February 1994 issue of Gamest, both Street Fighter II Turbo and Super Street Fighter II were nominated for Best Game of 1993, but neither won (the first place was given to Samurai Spirits). Super ranked third place, and Turbo ranked sixth. In the category of Best Fighting Games, Super ranked third place again, while Turbo placed fifth. Super won third place in the categories of Best Graphics and Best VGM. Cammy, who was introduced in Super, placed fifth place in the list of Best Characters of 1993, with Dee Jay at 36 and T. Hawk at 37. In the January 30, 1995 issue of Gamest, Super Street Fighter II X (known as Super Turbo internationally) placed fourth place in the award for Best Game of 1994 and Best Fighting Game, but did not rank in any of the other awards.

The Super Famicom (SNES) version was critically acclaimed. Famitsu's panel of four reviewers gave it scores of 9, 9, 9, and 8, adding up to 35 out of 40. This made it one of their five highest-rated games of 1992, along with Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride, Shin Megami Tensei, World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and Mario Paint. They later gave the Turbo update a score of 36 out of 40. This made Street Fighter II Turbo their highest-rated game of 1993, and the twelfth game to have received a Famitsu score of 36/40 or above.

The arcade game was well received by English-language critics upon release. In March 1991, RePlay said that "the graphics and sounds are tops" while praising the "solid" gameplay, and it was considered the top game at the American Coin Machine Exposition (ACME) that month. In May 1991, Julian Rignall of Computer and Video Games gave it ratings of 94% for graphics, 93% for sound, 95% for playability, and 92% for lastability, with a 93% score overall. He criticized the original Street Fighter for being a "run-of-the-mill beat 'em up with little in the way of thrills and spills" but praised the sequel for being "absolutely packed with new ideas" and special moves. He noted the "six buttons combining with 8 joystick directions to provide more moves than I've ever seen in a beat 'em up" and praised the "massive, beautifully drawn and animated sprites, tons of speech and the most exciting, action-packed head-to-head conflict yet seen in an arcade game," concluding that it is "one of the best fighting games yet seen in the arcades" and a "brilliant" coin-op. In the June 1991 issue of Sinclair User, John Cook gave the arcade game an "addict factor" of 84%. He praised the gameplay and the "excellent" animation and sound effects, but criticized the controls, stating players "might find the control system a bit daunting at first [with] a joystick plus six (count 'em!) fire buttons [but] it's not that bad really". He concluded "this is bound to appeal to you if you like the beat 'em up style of game." Jeff Davy of Your Commodore praised the game for its large sprites, character animation, varied opponents, character moves, and two-player mode. Computer and Video Games later referred to Street Fighter II as the "game of the millennium" in 1992.

Legacy

Sequels

The Street Fighter II games were followed by several sub-series of Street Fighter games and spinoffs, including Street Fighter EX, Pocket Fighter, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, and Vs. series. A prequel to Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Alpha, was released in 1995. The direct sequel to Street Fighter II, Street Fighter III, would be released in 1997. Capcom released Street Fighter IV for the arcades in July 2008, followed by Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in February 2009 and Microsoft Windows in July 2009. Street Fighter V was released for the PlayStation 4 and Windows in 2016. Street Fighter 6 was released for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S in June 2023, an arcade version was released in Japan in December 2023.

Other media

The characters joined the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero lineup in 1993, as Hasbro bought their toy rights.

An unofficial South Korean animation, Street Fighter, was produced by Daiwon Animation in 1992 and features the cast of Street Fighter II. The Hong Kong movie Future Cops has a renamed cast of Street Fighter II characters.

Two film adaptations were released in 1994: Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, a Japanese anime film produced by Group TAC; and Street Fighter, an American live-action film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

A U.S. Street Fighter cartoon follows a combined plot of the live-action movie and the game series. An unrelated anime, Street Fighter II V, features younger characters similar to The Legend of Chun-Li.

Capcom sponsored IndyCar driver Kenji Momota at the 1992 Indianapolis 500, providing a Street Fighter livery for his No. 88 car, which failed to qualify.

Impact

Street Fighter II is regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time, and the most important fighting game in particular. The release of Street Fighter II in 1991 is often considered a revolutionary moment in the fighting game genre. It has the most accurate joystick and button scanning routine in the genre, allowing players to reliably execute multi-button special moves, and its graphics use Capcom's CPS arcade chipset, with highly detailed characters and stages. Whereas previous games allow players to combat a variety of computer-controlled fighters, Street Fighter II allows human combat.

The popularity of Street Fighter II surprised the gaming industry, as arcade owners bought more machines to keep up with demand. It was responsible for introducing the combo mechanic, which came about when skilled players learned that they could combine several attacks with no time for the opponent to recover. Its success inspired a wave of other fighting games, which were initially often labeled as "clones" or imitators, including titles such as Guardians of the 'Hood, Art of Fighting, Time Killers, Mortal Kombat, and Killer Instinct. Street Fighter II also influenced the development of the combat mechanics of beat 'em up game Streets of Rage 2. However, Street Fighter II also received criticism for its depiction of street violence, and for having inspired numerous other violent games in the industry.

Street Fighter II was the best-selling arcade video game by far since the golden age of arcade video games, bringing an arcade renaissance in the early 1990s. Its impact on home video games was equally crucial, becoming a long-lasting system-seller for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Since then, up until the late 1990s, numerous best-selling home video games were arcade ports. In 2005, Electronic Gaming Monthly ranked it the ninth most important game since they began publication in 1989, stating no game "did more to prop up arcades" in the 1990s and it was the first killer app for the SNES.

The game popularized the concept of "face-to-face", tournament-level competition between two players instead of just high scores. This enabled the competitive multiplayer and deathmatch modes found in modern action games. John Romero, for example, cited the competitive multiplayer of Street Fighter II as an influence on the deathmatch mode of seminal first-person shooter Doom.

It is an innovation in revision series, with Capcom continuously upgrading and expanding the arcade game instead of releasing a sequel. This furthered the practice of patches and downloadable content found in modern video games.

Popular culture

Street Fighter II has been frequently sampled and referenced in hip hop music, by artists such as The Lady of Rage, Nicki Minaj, Lupe Fiasco, Dizzee Rascal, Lil B, Sean Price, and Madlib. This started with Hi-C's "Swing'n" (1993) and DJ Qbert's "Track 10" (1994) which sampled Street Fighter II, and the Street Fighter film soundtrack (1994) which is the first major film soundtrack to consist almost entirely of hip hop music. According to DJ Qbert, "I think hip-hop is a cool thing, I think Street Fighter is a cool thing". According to Vice magazine, "Street Fighter's mixture of competition, bravado, and individualism easily translate into the trials and travails of a rapper." The "Perfect" sample was used by Kanye West and Drake in The Life of Pablo (2016). UK rap includes grime DJ Logan Sama saying, "Street Fighter is just a huge cultural thing that everyone experienced growing up [with] such a huge impact that it has just stayed in everyone's consciousness." According to Jake Hawkes of Soapbox, "grime was built around lyrical clashes [and] the 1v1 setup of these clashes was easily equated with Street Fighter's 1 on 1 battles." Grime MCs such as Dizzee Rascal were sampling Street Fighter II in 2002, and Street Fighter II has been sampled "by almost every grime MC". It became an integral part of BBC Radio 1Xtra DJ Charlie Sloth's Fire in the Booth freestyle segments, using samples such as "Hadouken", "Shoryuken", and the "Perfect" announcer sound.