Happy 20th Birthday, Street Fighter II: WW!

nesjess

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Cheers to the fighting game that forever changed arcade/home console gaming and became an epic franchise.

I know most of you golden age boys couldn't care less about this game, but for those of us who grew up playing in arcades of the late-80s and early-90s, this was THE game.

Here's my story from my Arcade Crusade gallery:

If I had to guess what game I dropped the most quarters in as a kid, it would probably be, hands down, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior and all the subsequent variations that came out the following years.

I remember watching my brother play it with a crowd of kids just huddled around watching. They would prop their quarters on the top of the control panel or on the lower marquee bracket to signal that they were next in line to play. It wasn't long after that when I started to play and my brother would show me the ropes. I even remember visiting South Korea around that time and playing hacked versions of the game.

No other arcade game from my generation has made such a cultural and revolutionary impact than Street Fighter II. It's been almost 20 years since it came out and the Street Fighter franchise is still going strong with no signs of slowing down.

I'm glad I was able to pick this up with the help of another collector. It is in a Dynamo HS-1 cabinet (needs work) and has all original art. Every time I coin-up and start a match, it brings me back to the days of playing with my brother. Good times.


Share your memories and stories! :)

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Man I feel old now lol. This game was huge for me growing up and I have to say Champion Edition is my favorite version. I'm surprised that I still don't have one of these in my collection yet, but I'm holding out for the big blue dedicated Champion Edition cab. :cool: I can still remember how jacked I was that World Warrior was coming to the Super Nintendo! I must have spent hours looking over the screenshots from Gameplayers magazine. Finally the day came and Toys R Us had it in stock. I managed to get my parents to run me over there so I could buy it. They hadn't even had time to unbox them before I got my copy.

Thanks for sharing your story and pics.
 
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Street Fighter II just so happens to be one of the 50 greatest arcade games of all time. ;)

Whether it was thumb blisters from gamepads or leg cramps from hours in the 'cade, SF2 was one of my all time favs as a kid and as an adult.
 
What I remember most about the arcade version was there was always at least one button that didn't work right on the control panel of almost every machine I played on. Once the version for the SNES was released, me and a friend played it almost everyday after school for about a 6 month period. One scene I'll never forget was being on vacation in West Palm Beach, FL and the arcade we went to had at least 30 SF2 Turbo cabs lined up shortly after it's release.

I ended up playing the Mortal Kombat series a few years later a lot more in the arcades than the SF2 series, but the occasional time I run past a SF2 arcade machine, I'll drop in some quarters and give it a couple of plays. Sadly, I haven't seen one in the wild since the late 90s.
 
Although I consider myself a "golden age boy" I definitely appreciate SF II WW.

The game that brought Chun-li into existence should be worshipped.
 
This is one of the games that was a big inspiration for me to get into the industry. The game that nearly got me failed out of college was the game that got me thinking about the gaming industry. Fast forward 10 years after it came out I got a chance to work at Capcom USA in the US game development studio on a PS2 game. Building custom joysticks also introduced me to the principles needed to make/design a good performing Guitar Hero guitar...

I had spent hundreds of dollars playing it in the arcades in the early versions. I probably was one of the very first guys to build arcade hacked joysticks using Happ parts and wooden boxes for the SNES version of this game also.

I have so many versions (legal) across so many consoles and arcade boards. I'm not really a fan boy but it's just that good of a game. I can't wait to teach my twin boys (5) someday how to play this game. I'll have to dye one of their hair blond.

Little do people know that this was originally pitched by Okamoto as a sequel to FF. SF didn't do well in the arcade so they would never get an official SF sequel on the books so it was pitched as a FF sequel which did do well in sales. Okamoto and team totally worked on this in secret often times doing cat and mouse games hiding from the Sugimotos (owners) what they were doing.

When they finally showed what they were working on it was amazing and they finally were able to fully focus on their revolutionary fighting game.

The real thing that broke open the gameplay was the algorithms they created to parse button inputs so that combos could be created/strung together. This key development changed gaming and paved way for new gameplay to be introduced for the industry where ad hoc combos were created and not scripted (Killer Instinct)

Top 50? I say top 5!
 
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I specifically remember playing SFII: WW (picked Blanka) for the first time at a movie theater. I was about 11. I was blown away by the graphics and amount of buttons.

Also I distinctly remember the buttons being yellow/orange/red. Once I found KLOV about a month ago I looked up all the pics I could find on SF 2 cabs and none of them had the yellow/orange/red buttons. I figure when the conversion kit was installed maybe all they had for buttons were yellow, orange and red so they threw those in there?
 
More like #1. It blew everything out of the water when it hit the scenes. Virgin SF2 tale time:

My first experience with WW was during a special school event at the mall arcade. It was some sort of fund raiser/keep kids off the streets on a random night deal where we paid 5 bucks and were locked into the arcade from like...7 to midnight. Free pizza and soda and everything on free play.

It was just before the weekend and I was wandering towards the back where the less popular/old/dead games were. They had also just received a couple new machines and placed them in this back row getting them ready for the coming weekend. Of course, one of those machines was Street Fighter II. No one gave two shits about it or even really knew it was back there. There was one older kid on it playing Ken and he had gotten up to Balrog. I hit start and wound up breaking into his game. That annoyed the shit out of him.

So I am looking at the control panel and I am completely lost. Every game until then was maybe 1 to 2 buttons. 3 buttons was getting complicated. Here I was staring at SIX buttons! It was totally intimidating. I remember asking which one was the "jump" button and the older kid just calling me a "retarded fag". Hrm.

Then I look up at the character select screen and I'm thinking, "I'm gonna play that Boxer character...he looked cool."...and I am flipping through the screen like crazy looking for him. WTH? Was I imagining things? I know I saw a boxer on the screen. WTF is this shit? I ask the older kid, "Where's the boxer character?"

Annoyed sigh. "Hurry the fuck up."

Time runs out and the cursor lands on Chun-Li. A chick?!? Damn it.

The game starts and what do I do? I mash the buttons like fucking crazy. Low and behold, that is actually beneficial since her lightning legs kept coming out. I wind up beating the older kid with 100% pure "dumb ass being random". He gets pissed and takes off.

I wind up playing the game by myself for the rest of the night. Mashing the night away. It felt like I had found some gem in the rough that no one knew about. I spent the following day excited to go back to the arcade and play my secret hidden game sitting in the "who gives a fuck" area of the arcade. Saturday comes and I ride the bus for 20 minutes through town just to get to the mall. I walk into the arcade and...

...big ass crowd surrounding the SF2 machine, which had come out of the shitty row and was front and center near the entrance. Damn it! End story.

SF has been such a huge part of my life experience. In the game industry. The tournament scene. Some of the friendships I gained from fellow players. Arcade collecting. There are a lot of people that dismiss this game. A good chunk of those people are either from the previous generation of arcade gaming and had their favorite machines phased out over the fighting game craze or remember having to deal with all the really crappy conversions ops did to classic machines just to milk some more SF2 cash. I can sympathize, but they are also underrating a major...and I mean major...milestone. This was the 90's Pac-Man and it was, IMO, just as influential and just as huge. These machines were everywhere...and I mean EVERYWHERE...and for a period of time there was always at least 2 people on every machine I ran into.

It was an era where high score based gameplay was told to take a hike...all that counted was that you could stay on the machine and beat your rivals (and not wind up physically beaten). ;)
 
Great game with huge rammifications for the industry in general. Happy birthday, SFII!

(Also, does anyone have a list of arcade release dates for 1981? We should be celebrating some 30-year-old milestones soon. Like oh, say, Donkey Kong!)
 
(Also, does anyone have a list of arcade release dates for 1981? We should be celebrating some 30-year-old milestones soon. Like oh, say, Donkey Kong!)

Yeah, I was thinking of that one too, but I decided not to post about it as I don't think I could do it justice. As much as I love the game and have a huge appreciation for it, I wasn't even born when it came out. :)

Though, I hope Nintendo does something to celebrate it. As far as I know, nothing happened or is planned. Just passed like another day. Sad.
 
Sosage +1

When people just don't get this game, I'm like.... "you'll never get it then." Times had changed and they may just be unable to forgive all of those Defender conversions to SF2.

IMHO all top 5 games off all time can be argued up or down depending on what perspective you may have on the scene. Definately one of the most instrumental games ever. Games had gotten pretty boring at the time that SF2 hit and it changed everything again.

Tournaments sprung up... I mean real tournaments where you saw someone get their ass beat down and not some silly HS beat. That's what I really call a tournament.

I was there for this finish!


In SOCAL we I used to go around with the best guy in our crowd to all of the renown arcades down there looking for the best talent. A total subculture had formed around this game. It was amazing.
 
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Sosage +1

When people just don't get this game, I'm like.... "you'll never get it then." Times had changed and they may just be unable to forgive all of those Defender conversions to SF2.

IMHO all top 5 games off all time can be argued up or down depending on what perspective you may have on the scene. Definately one of the most instrumental games ever. Games had gotten pretty boring at the time that SF2 hit and it changed everything again.

Tournaments sprung up... I mean real tournaments where you saw someone get their ass beat down and not some silly HS beat. That's what I really call a tournament.

I was there for this finish!


In SOCAL we I used to go around with the best guy in our crowd to all of the renown arcades down there looking for the best talent. A total subculture had formed around this game. It was amazing.

That was a badass ending on that video. I miss my SF tourneys up at the house.
 
Street Fighter II for me was on the SNES. It was the first fighting game I had ever played, aside from Karate Champ on the NES. What a huge improvement.

It was also one of the first arcade games I owned. I don't remember which version, but it was probably just plain old WW.

I'll have to dye one of their hair blond.

Awesome... just awesome. Would you be Gouken, in that case?
 
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and the stupid computer only gives Daigo a B grade.... LOL such a FAIL in scoring.

I always wondered how that grading system worked. It always made me feel like I really sucked even after beating the COM. Maybe I do suck. Haha. Perhaps, it was a way to trick players into playing the game more to try and get better. But if Daigo only got a B after that, something has got to be wrong. Maybe because he was almost beat? I don't know.

But back on topic, more stories fellas, I know you have them. It's been great to read the ones so far.
 
I was there for this finish!

I was actually directly behind Seth during that...it was insane. The entire room knew the super was coming and expected Daigo to at least eat the chip damage. We were half correct. :)

Sidetrack: That video was a crazy moment in time for me, because I had written the first mainstream American-based article on Daigo and Justin Wong a couple days before the event (on Gamespot somewhere). I had spent years trying to push the game press to cover Evo/B4/5 and this happened to be the year I got CNet interested in an article. I was kind of bummed before this incident because I got the impression most people still didn't give a crap about who these guys were when the article went up...that changed pretty quickly. :)

Very unique sub-culture compared to the other little gaming groups. Its roots have a lot more in common with billiards, imo, than anything else. Shady places, roaming groups going to different areas to challenge each other...some cash hustling on games (money matches are the norm now days)...you have to prove you're better right there, in the moment, face to face with your opponent standing right there. There's really no other culture like it in video games.

edit: I don't think anyone ever figured out the rating system.
 
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When I was a kid, my stepmom worked at a burger joint in front of a Food Lion. We walked everywhere, she didn't drive. So anyways, my brother or my sister and me or somebody walked down to meet her when she was going to get off work, and we went to the grocery store one day. We were going in to pick up some things, and there at the end of the check out lines, was a Street Fighter II: The World Warriors arcade game, probably in a dynamo style cabinet of course I didn't realize that at the time.

I'd never seen anything like it... there were two guys playing it, and I can remember standing there watching it and how amazing the graphics were. At the time, we had just got a Nintendo! I know, a little late, but still. I think it was still a quarter back then. I was into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the time, lol, but had never even seen the arcade game... this was the only arcade game within walking distance of our house.

I can remember playing the thing, and I always picked Blanka because he was the most interesting to me, and I figured out quick how to do his electrical thing, or somebody showed me, can't remember. I would sit there and just watch the attract mode if I didn't have any money, or watch the other people play and see somebody get to the bosses. At the time of course, you couldn't pick the boss characters, so you woudln't see them unless you got that deep in the game. M. Bison was like LEGENDARY if you got that far, that was unbelievable. He was even mysterious, he seemed to only have 3 or 4 moves, and the torpedo thing he did was awesome. Even the way he threw his cape off when the match started was awesome.

Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Game. Can't say enough how awesome it was.
 
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