Street Fighter II

aka: SF 2, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior
Moby ID: 6239
Arcade Specs
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Description official descriptions

Street Fighter II is a fighting game. Players select from one of eight characters: Ryu, Ken, Blanka, E. Honda, Zangief, Chun Li, Guile and Dhalsim to do battle with. They must then use their combat strengths to defeat the other seven fighters followed by four boss characters: M. Bison, Vega, Sagat and Balrog. Each character represents a certain country and has his or her own reasons for wanting to win against the others.

Each character has his or her own selection of basic fighting techniques based on three styles of punches and three styles of kicks. The effect of each of these changes depends on the characters orientation (ducking, airborne or standing still). Street Fighter II has a "button combination" style of gameplay used to unleash powerful moves specific to each character. These include the ability to project fireballs, channel electricity or capture the opponent in a tight suplex.

Spellings

  • ストリートファイターⅡ - Japanese spelling
  • 스트리트 화이터 II - Korean spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Arcade version)

33 People (29 developers, 4 thanks) · View all

Planner
Character Designer
Programmer
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 48 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 195 ratings with 8 reviews)

All killer, no filler

The Good
Street Fighter II was the first and perhaps greatest fighting game of the 1990s. We all had fun playing Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, and maybe even Clay Fighter, but Street Fighter II was pretty much the be-all and end-all of competitive gaming for many years after its release.

There's not much to say about this game that most gamers of the 23-32 age bracket doesn't already know. The characters are memorable and beautifully drawn, the music is lively, and the gameplay itself couldn't really be much better for the era it was produced in. Arguably improved upon by Street Fighter Alpha III, the combo system of Street Fighter II was rudimentary but functional. There's not a lot of showboating that can be done, and that's a good thing if you're not the showboating type of player.

Your basic fights are a mix of throwing fireballs, coming down from a jump with a solid kick, a little aerial combat, the occasional ground throw, and an even rarer aerial throw. No move took off more than the one-third damage of Zangief's Spinning Pile Driver, and that was virtually-impossible to execute for anyone other than the best players.

Single-player mode is satisfying, challenging, and features four memorable bosses: the effeminate Spaniard Vega, Mike-Tyson clone Balrog, 7-foot Muay Thai expert Sagat, and the reprehensible supervillain M. Bison.

The Bad
About the only thing to dislike about Street Fighter II is getting your ass handed to you by a friend. It was such a complete game, and the fighters were so well-balanced, that there was really no excuse for losing.

Another thing I didn't like was that when I visited the United Kingdom back in the early nineties, there were no arcade versions of it to be found. It's tough being 13 years old, stuck on a decrepit island with no SF2 to be found, especially when you're hooked on it from playing it every day for the past six months.

The Bottom Line
This is my second-favorite fighting game of all time, after the flashier and sexier Marvel versus Capcom 2. It is certainly worth a download for ZSNES (a Super Nintendo emulator) if you haven't played it since the nineties.

SNES · by Chris Wright (85) · 2007

At a time when people thought the S in SNES meant "slowdown", Capcom stepped to the plate.

The Good
How many of you were as enthralled as I was the first time EGM ran an early picture of Guile in Blanka's stage with an article about this "16 Meg monster" hitting the SNES in the future? Did you grab for an earlier issue and try to compare it to the arcade?

Reigning around half a decade over a span of 5 versions, Street Fighter II was the biggest thing to hit the arcades since Pac Man. With huge sprites, detailed animation, and the pseudo-3D effect of layered backgrounds coupled with warping floor sprites, a home version seemed like a pipe dream to many fans, including myself. Needless to say, the surprise screenshot and confirmation of a home conversion were enough to send an obsessed fan into shock.

Weighing in at a hefty 16 Megs (Excluding Neo-Geo, it was the biggest home game to date. Super Street Fighter II would double that a few years later.), Street Fighter II brought the phenomenon home.

The visuals took only a small hit, but you'd be hard pressed to notice. The characters are big, colorful, and well animated. The vast majority of animations made it in (we'll get to the omissions later). Almost every detail in the backgrounds were retained as well.

The sound is wonderful, though not everything is here (again, later). Everyone shouts their little saying for their special moves, though it seems that Capcom slipped a little something extra in. Unlike the arcade version, the speed and pitch at which they spout their signature lines (such as "Hadouken!" and "Sonic Boom!"), is different based on which strength of attack button is used. Use jab for a fireball, and "Hadouken" is said slower and deeper. Use fierce, and it's said at normal speed. Needless to say, a savvy player can learn to judge when they should jump in to attack and when they should block, leaving a little less room to be caught in the face with a surprise fast fireball. This home version of Street Fighter II is also the bassiest. When a fierce punch connects and the bass is cranked, you're going to know it. It really added to the experience.

The music turned out very well on the SNES. In some cases, I actually prefer the way it was arranged for the SNES. No complaints here.

The gameplay is where this game shines. I can't think of a single combo from the arcade that won't work here.

The Bad
So, missing animation frames. There's not too much to complain about. Ken and Ryu's jumping straight-up Short was altered (same type of kick as jumping straight-up Medium kick), but I can't remember any other moves that may have been changed due to space considerations. One of Zangief's win poses took a hit. Like I said, not much that you're going to notice, outside of a few moves and some altered ending sprites (corrected to match the arcade in later versions, like Turbo and Super).

In sounds, the glaring ommission is "You Win!" You see it on screen, but you don't hear it. We loved mimicing the announcer, so that was kind of a drag.

One odd thing about the gameplay, you could counter Guile's flash kick with Ken and Ryu's jumping short (flying knee). This is the only version I have ever seen this possible in. I got used to using it, which would backfire on me at the arcades.

The Bottom Line
I bought this at the same time as my SNES. The SNES was $99.95, Street Fighter II was $81. Sounds like alot, but this game was an investment. This wasn't something you played through and set aside. Street Fighter II went to my friends' houses, where we'd play all night and complain about our thumb hurting the next day. It turned a room full of kids hanging out into an arcade competition. Every few minutes, you'd hear "NEXT!" "NOOOOOOOOOO!" and "I got winner!" Street Fighter II wasn't a game. It was a pasttime.

SNES · by DarkBubble (342) · 2006

A great game, too bad I suck at it.

The Good
The graphics are pretty good for the Super Nintendo, I especially like the very detailed backgrounds that have actual animations. The fighters look pretty good as well and you can clearly who and what they are (except for Blanka, I have no idea what he is supposed to be).

The game requires a certain amount of strategy and you have to understand all the different moves the characters can perform. I know so because I played it and I sucked horribly. I am new to the Super Nintendo, so my first reaction was to tap random buttons like a monkey in a space simulator. Randomly tapping buttons or spamming the few attacks you do know will get you so far, but it won't help you beat the entire game.

The settings in which you fight are all very nice and varied even though Japan shows up quite a lot, the same goes for the fighter although (oddly enough) there aren't any Japanese in the roster. Who would you like to play as; the Indian guy with elastic arms, the schoolgirl with upper legs you can only get from bicycle pumps, the overconfident sumo wrestler/torpedo or the Green Goblin? There are roughly a dozen characters you can play as and every single one of them has his or her own map.

This game is a guaranteed favorite on parties (although the guy who plays as Dhalsim is going to end up with so many feet up his ass that he'll be coughing up shoelaces for three months), it's fast, it's chaotic and it's a lot of memorable fun. There is also a lot of satisfaction to be found in pulling off one of the special moves and making everybody go "wow".

There is an options menu where you can change quite a lot of the settings, even the difficulty can be changed (you can even put it on zero).

The Bad
I just really suck at fighting games, Super Smash Bros. aside, I just can't figure out how to play them. Each character has his or her own moves and you have to study all these special moves, people keep recommending me to use a joystick which is even more confusing then the normal SNES controller and that schoolgirl keeps kicking my butt. The only way I managed to make it as far as I did was to take Dhalsim and stick to the corners where I just spammed punches and kicks.

The game is all about travelling around the world and challenging fighters, but the design of the map and the locations of all the countries is completely cocked up. Here is a quick geography lesson; Brazil isn't located in Australia, There is only one Japan and America isn't an island in the sea above Japan.

The Bottom Line
This review is very hard for me to write because I just don't know what a good fighting game is supposed to look like. My only experience with them is from playing Super Smash Bros. which is so unique in it's gameplay that you can't use it as a proper comparison. I had fun with Street Fighter II, so the average gamer might have the same. Fans of the genre will sadly have to find their consumer advice somewhere else.

SNES · by Asinine (957) · 2011

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

C64 version

One interesting quirk about the Commodore 64 version of the game is that the special moves printed in the manual for each character were just plain wrong.

Modul size

Street Fighter II for Super NES was the first game for the console to feature 16 Megabits (2 Megabytes) of memory. At the time, the biggest games released for both Super NES and Sega Genesis had 12 Megabits.

Ryu and Ken

Something few people (at least nowadays) realize about Street Fighter II is why on the original release Ryu and Ken where carbon copies of each other. Sure, the tradition of having two very similar main antagonistic characters is present on pretty much all 1-on-1 fighting games since it works as a standard dramatic component, but the reason for said tradition's creation on SF2 was purely practical: the original arcade version of the game didn't come with different palettes, so there was no way to have two players controlling the same character without getting confused. Thus having Ryu and Ken available was the only real way in SF2 to have a fair and completely even fight.

Sheng Long

Remember the Sheng Long controversy? Whenever Ryu won a match he would say his trademark phrase just as anyone else, but his was a little more cryptic than the others: "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance" Who the hell is Sheng Long?? That was what most western SF2 players though. The answer as usual was in a botched translation effort: Sheng Long is the chinese pronunciation of Sho-Ryu, as in Sho-Ryu-Ken, aka the Dragon Punch. Ryu was saying that you had to master his technique in order to beat him, but for some odd reason that we'll never know English, Chinese and Japanese got all mixed up in some poor translator's head and the "Sheng Long" was phonetically transcribed as it was, and coupled with Ryu's cryptic message gave the impression that he was talking about some hidden character.

The rumor flew around from day one (among other famous SF2 hoaxes like the one about you being able to ride Guile's Jet or beating up the bystanders in some stages), but it really spread like wildfire when as an April Fool's joke EGM published an article about how there really was a secret character named Sheng Long unlockable via ungodly gaming prowess (beating all characters in "perfect" matches). Regardless of how ridiculous the rumor was, every kid out there poured coin after coin in the SF2 machines and spent hours in front of the home versions in an effort to unlock said character.

References to the game

  • In the music video Juicy, by The Notorious BIG, he has a couple of homeboys play Street Fighter II for SNES on a big screen. Even in the song, after the chorus, he starts the third verse by saying: "Super Nintendo, SEGA Genesis, When I was dead broke, man I couldn't picture this!"
  • In the 1993 movie City Hunter starring Jackie Chan, there's a part where Jackie, who is playing private eye, fights villains on a shipboard. Accidentally he gets smashed into arcade machine... with Street Fighter II running on it. After electric shock he transforms into Honda, then Chun-Li, Guile, Dhalsim (stretching limbs included) and fights an enemy who transforms into Ken.

References

In Zangief's ending former Russian prime minister Mikhail Gorbachev does a cameo.

Sales

According to publisher Capcom, Street Fighter II has sold 6.3 million copies worldwide since its initial release (as of June 30, 2016).

Street Fighter II games

Street Fighter II is the first of no less than five Street Fighter II games:

  • Street Fighter II - the original that started it all.
  • Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition - allowed you to play the boss characters Balrog, Sagat, Vega and Mr. Bison.
  • Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting - introduced new moves, faster game speed and different colors for the character costumes.
  • Super Street Fighter II - this one introduced characters Cammy, Fei Long, Dee Jay & T. Hawk and added even more moves.
  • Super Street Fighter II Turbo - final and most polished version, this one introduced secret character Akuma.

SFLIU

Since the (US Gold) DOS version release was rather late, some PC enthusiasts 'released' a home-made clone of the game in the meantime. Though not being an exact 1:1 copy, the project (referred to as SFLIU, more details on http://syste.ms/sfliu.html) features the basic fighters' moves and specials and even allows for the specific arcade sound effects (like Ryu screaming out "Hadoken!") to be played via PC speaker, a feature not implemented in the official US Gold release. Unfortunately, the SFLIU graphics and gameplay are poor compared to the real thing, but some hacks and patches that came later on provided some new innovating moves not found in the original Street Fighter game.

Awards

  • Commodore Format
    • July 1993 (Issue 34) - Modern Classics: Beat-'em-ups
    • November 1994 (Issue 50) – #19 The All-Time Top 50 C64 Games
    • November 1994 (Issue 50) – #9 The Bottom 10
  • EGM
    • July 1992 (Issue 36) - Game of the Month
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Best Game of the Year
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Best SNES Game of the Year
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Best Video Game Ending
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Hottest Video Game Babe (Chun Li)
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #3 (Titles That Revolutionized Console Gaming) (Arcade version)
  • Game Informer
      August 2001 (Issue #100)
    • #22 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #30 Top Game of All Time
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1993 – #3 Best SNES Game in 1992
  • Retro Gamer
    • October 2004 (Issue #9) – #27 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
  • The Strong National Museum of Play
    • 2017 – Introduced into the World Video Game Hall of Fame
Information also contributed by Apogee IV, JayBee, Mumm-Ra, PCGamer77, Robbb, Virgil, WildKard and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alexander Schaefer.

SNES added by Richard Firth. Wii added by Corn Popper. Commodore 64 added by Shoddyan. Wii U added by ResidentHazard. ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Atari ST added by Martin Smith. Arcade added by The cranky hermit. Browser added by glik.

Additional contributors: Roedie, Shoddyan, Mumm-Ra, Alaka, Freeman, samsam12, CalaisianMindthief, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto, Victor Vance, FatherJack, SoMuchChaotix.

Game added May 4, 2002. Last modified March 8, 2024.