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Why Street Fighter One sucks
With all the hype surrounding the upcoming release of Street Fighter 4, I thought it might be a good idea to look back on how the series began... and how god-awful it was to begin with.Most people are aware of the meteoric success of Street Fighter 2. Released in 1991, it was an instant arcade smash, and went on to spawn countless sequels - most of which included the indistinguishable words "hyper", "turbo" and "super" in their titles.
But the Street Fighter brand wasn't always such a mega-success. The original Street Fighter, released back in 1987 was... well, it sucked. It sucked big time. Indeed, it sucked even more than Balrog sucked as a playable character in Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition.
This might come as a bit of a shock, but it's true. The first Street Fighter only featured two playable characters, Ryu and Ken. And both had an identical moveset of three moves. This gave the game a total moveset of, you guessed it, three moves.To its credit, SF1 did have some pretty graphics. But the gameplay, unfortunately, was atrocious. The controls were clunky, the character movement was jagged, and the single player mode was so insanely difficult that it was hard to beat the first couple of opponents, let alone win the championship.
The original Street Fighter arcade board also shipped with buttons that reacted to different pressure (ie. a hard button press would equate to a hard punch). A good idea, but the boards were poorly built and the buttons broke. A lot.
To cap off all these problems, the Ryu of SF1 had red hair, and was therefore a whimp.
But, you may ask, if the game was really so terrible, why did it go on to spawn the biggest fighting game franchise in history?
This is the tough question. Looking at some of the other games released in 1987, many of them went on to spawn famous gaming series. Games like Zelda, Metal Gear, Double Dragon, Contra, Final Fantasy, Mega Man and Phantasy Star all had their humble beginnings in 1987. The difference between these games and SF1, however, was that for their time, they were pretty good games (except for Final Fantasy... which sucked as well).
So what happened? How did Street Fighter 2 ever get made? It's hard to imagine Capcom, buoyed by the failure of SF1, would have been keen to finance a sequel. But that's exactly what happened. It's like the following conversation transpired in the Capcom offices:Mr Mushi (Head of Capcom Development): Mr Tanaka, I want to talk you about that game you created earlier this year. You know the one? Street Fighter.
Mr Tanaka (SF1 Developer): Uh, yes, Mr Mushi.
Mr Mushi: Now, let's not beat around the bush here. That game was a pile of shit. I mean, it wasn't fun. It wasn't playable. And from my understanding it only featured three moves. THREE MOVES. What were you thinking? Franklin Roosevelt had more moves than that, and he was in a wheelchair.
Mr Tanaka: Uh, I'm sorry Mr Mushi, I'm Japanese and I don't know who Franklin...
Mr Mushi: Everyone hated your game. Everyone. Reviewers, gamers, our shareholders. I'm surprised Capcom is still financially afloat after your retarded game, to be honest. I even heard gamers were bashing the shit out of our machines in arcades because they hit the buttons so hard. Literally bashing the shit out of the machines and breaking them. What does that tell you about the game?
Mr Tanaka: Uh... Well... that Street Fighter isn't very...
Mr Mushi: That Street Fighter deserves a sequel, that's what it should tell you. That's what it tells me. Good work Mr Tanaka. We're making a sequel. It'll be called Street Fighter 2.
And I guess that's how SF2 was created. Maybe game developers should follow this process with more crap games? Just like SF1, they could spawn awesome sequels.
6 comments:
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Ryu's hair is totally not red, it's kind of like a mahogany, which gives him a little bit of strength but not as much as future Ryu with that awesome Brown undercut.
If Roosevelt was in a wheelchair then he'd have at least five moves by my count – forward, back, left, right, sweet wheelie.
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seriously, mysterious videogame dude, you should've written about Link whipping the lovable, oafish, Gorons into a disco frenzy in the Ocarina Of Time by now.
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oh no, left a stray comma in my last post. guess my dreams of writing for this blog have gone up in smoke.
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I thoroughly endorse this website. This man is a genius.
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The last 2 posts sucked, get back to more stories about the gays.
SFI must also be given some credit for introducing the world to the badass that is Sagat.
Re Roosevelt: Yes the man had more than 3 moves, but admittedly, of those many "moves", two were "having an affair with his secretary" and "blackmailing his wife to keep her quiet about his affair with his secretary." Still, the guy did get elected to an unconstitutional 4 terms as president, plus he regularly featured in Captain America comics. I for one would like to see Capcom release a Roosevelt-themed game, possibly teaming him with one of the Kennedys ala Ken and Ryu in SFI.
Re Balrog: Whoa whoa whoa, he absolutely did NOT suck. First of all, dude was a blatant ripoff of Mike Tyson - the "baddest man on the planet"(hence his subtly being named M.Bison in Japan, and hence the names of the bosses being switched around in the American version to avoid a lawsuit). Secondly, unlike your button-mash (ie. E Honda, Chun Li, Blanka) or d-pad circlefests (Ryu, Ken), Balrog's techniques and strategies were an artform. But I'd expect an uninformed fool like you wouldnt appreciate the subtle differences between his 6 different punches or his "charge and jab" and "(identical) charge and uppercut" special moves.
That is all