Final Fight, Fatal Fury, STreet Fighter 2

This is a wrap-up of a few more 16-bit fighting games of the early 90s era.

SF2 is universally known as a pop-culture phenomenon, but as the name implies it’s a sequel. The original Street Fighter was released in 1987 as an arcade game (which included a widely-released 6-button standard version and a limited release “pressure pad” version which often broke). It had mixed reviews, was not predicted to lead to greater things and became known unflatteringly for its alleged limited and repetitive gameplay, and the technical glitches/tight coding parameters preventing special moves from being performed, which led to reports of frustrated teenagers destroying machines with roundhouse kicks and the like. It’s nevertheless acknowledged as the originator for the whole street-fighting game phenomenon and the root from which SF2, Final Fight and Fatal Fury all stem. This gameplay video is my first direct interaction with the original SF1 and there’s a fascination to it which much be akin to boomers getting to see the original Beatles lineup with Paul Best playing in Memphis in 1942 or whenever it was. You’ll wanna scroll to 6:11 on the video clock to see a boxer named Mike who must’ve been inspired by then-up-and-comer MIke Tyson, fighting in front of Mt Rushmore, and the Japanese-accented English overdubs of the text between each fight (“what strength, but don’t forget there are many guys like you all over the world”)… Later on, you fight in China with a “bargagain” store in the background, and then the plane flies to the next stage in “England” and presents the Union Jack, I’m sure that would’ve gone down great in Thatcher’s 80s United England, sensational stuff. But moving right along…

Final Fight was released in the arcades in 1989/1990, and is seen as a forerunner to the breakout success of Street Fighter 2.

I don’t recall actually playing this one myself, but I watched a playthrough and it’s definitely something I would’ve liked. Bitvint called the arcade release “the beat’em-up that defined a genre”.

Fatal Fury I did play. Decent enough music, not outstanding, but decent. There were 2 releases in the 16-bit era and I remember they were both pretty fun games. You’d have to call Geese Howard one of the memorable baddies of this time, there was just a stern cockiness about him (and if you wanna do a deep dive, this guy has done a whole article just on Geese Howard in honour of his 70th birthday. That’s dedication). Infact the whole game had a cheesy comic-book feel and tried more than most games to lean into American culture, but still came off as an amusing Japanese impersonation of such.

Street FIghter 2 might’ve been the first game I ever played (before owning a console). It was definitely my first game on an arcade machine. My parents had taken me to Melbourne Central (Which at that time we called Daimaru, in honour of the Japanese department store that was the main tenant of the complex.The glass cone built over the shot tower was completed in 1991, the year SF2 was released, and later featured in the 1997 Jackie Chan film Mr Nice Guy). Up on one of the mid levels near the shot tower there were some teenagers crowded around this arcade machine, and they looked like they were having a bloody good time. Lo and behold it was Street Fighter 2. I asked my parents for a go and (I would’ve been about 4 years old), incredibly, they obliged cheerfully. I was given some assistance being elavated to joystick/button pushing level (so about waist height for an adult), had a characted selected, and began mashing away at the keys. I think this would’ve been in 1992. I recall vividly that I did surprisingly well in this bout, as the teenagers were all really impressed and I was getting the hits in clocking whoever the other opponent was. I can’t remember who I played as that day. But Street Fighter would be a background feature for the next few years. The one I usually rented out was Super Street Fighter 2 for Sega Mega Drive, which included some expansion characters. My mate Francis had the Nintendo version (SF2 Turbo) so I played against him a few times at his place. And I think I had a few goes at their polygon 32-bit version released in the arcades. By that point I think their place on the fighting-game throne had been superseded by newcomers like Tekken, but by that point it’s cultural legacy was locked in. They even made a movie with Jean Claude Van Damme! (… and Kylie Minogue. It was apparently crap, I only watched about half of it on tv once).

The Guile theme is considered pretty memorable. Vega was my favourite character. I did also like Blanka and M Bison. The baddies were more fun for some reason. Dhalsim was a pretty major nuisance who nobody wanted to play as, in fact it was considered poor form to select him as his stretchy hands were too much of a cheat. It’s just not cricket as they say. Ken and Ryu were always good value as was Guile. Chun Li was an annoying cow and can probably be assumed to have subsequently moved to Australia where she disenfranchised the local Aussie population with shoddy property speculation, product-dumping, bogus-vaccine production, honey-trapping politicians and corporates into treasonous activities against their own nation and various money-laundering schemes all in the name of the CCP. Cammy was fun and a babe (in the Street-Fighter movie she was portrayed by Kylie Minogue, with Van Damme starring as Guile). Sagat and Zangeif were pretty boring. Balrog was an odd homage to Mike Tyson once again. E Honda had the pretty awesome 1000-hand slap which I think inspired the best-looking graphic-art cover for any of the versions of the game (See the Nintendo Turbo version on the right).

I really don’t know what else to say about all this, other than that it clearly made a pretty big impact on me, as did the wider fighting-game craze of the 90s. Please peruse the assorted pics for a trip down memory fightin’ lane.

The classic SF2 title-sequence shot.

SF2: Yankee white-trash Ken is clocking his Japanese doppleganger Ryu with an uppercut.

My fav SF2 cover-art, the Turbo version. E-Honda is turbo-smacking Sagat with a thousand simultaeneous fist palms. I’ve done some martial arts and I can attest this is hard to do in real-life and I’ve never seen a sumo do it.

Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue in the much-maligned Street Fighter movie.

Street Fighter 1 cops a bad rap but it’s undoubtedly an innovater and a pioneer. Bonus points for the dev team for the great Engrish.

Final Fight.

Released in 1989 in the arcades by Capcom and originally titled Street Fighter ‘89

Just a badass poster. 1989 surely lit the fuse for the 90s fighting game explosion.

Fatal Fury 2 gameplay screenshot

Do we have lines like this to thank for the pickup artist subculture?

Thems fighting words. Geese Howard Throwing down the gauntlet in Fatal Fury.

Found on the internet is a Fatal-Fury Sega cartridge shorn of its plastic housing. Thats a pretty simple PCB dseign compared to even an early smartphone. two big ICs, a litle IC and solder pins so big you could possibly even fix them with… a regular soldering iron!

The standard international poster and front cover for the Fatal Fury game.

The NeoGeo console version looks to have opted for a more Americanised look. As Japanese and American pop culture interacted to maximise global market share, several interesting fronts of negotiation opened up over what cultural nuances would work better where.