This slightly bad video game still has a sequel, and it changed the face of the industry forever

In the 1980s, video games were still in their infancy, and creators sought to innovate by learning to take advantage of the different technologies available to them. Despite the emergence of home consoles and microcomputers at the time, arcades remained an essential place to live incredible experiences. Many publishers in Japan are engaged in a fierce battle, each looking for a loophole that can bring the competition to its knees. While shooting games called shoot’em ups are well established, companies are turning to other genres.

This is the case with Capcom and artist Takashi Nishiyama. “ One day we had a meeting between the development and marketing teams at Capcom. It took at least two hours and I had a hard time concentrating as a creator. I was stunned and when I came to I had scribbled some ideas and sketches on a piece of paper. Right at this moment The idea of ​​Street Fighter came to my mind. » While daydreaming, he begins to draw two characters fighting face to face with a video game interface at the top of the page. Capcom producer Yoshiki Okamoto discovered the draft and found the concept very interesting. This is the birth of the cult media license.

Kung Fu Master

Takashi Nishiyama is not inexperienced, quite the contrary. Actually The origin of the Kung Fu MasterA famous fighting game that he developed during his time with publisher İrem. Based on Hong Kong martial arts movies, the game was a huge success in arcades. Adapted to game consoles, this game is now a great video game classic. Wanting to turn the Kung Fu Master universe (where the hero advances by facing waves of enemies) into a face-to-face fighting game, Nishiyama didn’t know it yet, but he was preparing to lay the foundations of a revolutionary game. game.

Armed with this outline, the contact develops a more detailed document and receives the green light from management. He later gained the support of Hiroshi Matsumoto, a man who would have a significant influence on the creation of Street Fighter. The duo then begins working on the characters, the moves to be introduced, and also, which is unusual, the script! What Nishiyama wishes for is Adds personality to every fight noting the type of martial arts practiced (boxing, kickboxing, shorinji kempo, etc.), their family ties, and even details about their daily lives. Nishiyama even goes so far as to take inspiration from Bruce Lee’s posthumous film Operation Dragon to give the game scale.

Draft…

By imagining character fights using many different martial arts, Nishiyama and Matsumoto developed an idea that would be used in many media: video games, movies, comics, novels… By the way, this is first and foremost a matter of gaming, and it is enough to have a concept with its features. not! Nishiyama has another idea that would hit the mark: Imagine special moves with exaggeration compared to reality. Fireball, mega uppercut, spin jump… the Japanese creator is holding nothing back! “ The idea for Hadoken (the special attack that allows you to shoot a ball of energy) comes from an anime. », Takashi Nishiyama admits. “ I was inspired by the Albator and the missiles that had to be charged before being sent into space to destroy enemies. » You are not dreaming, in fact the Japanese designer imagined this “fireball” attack, in which the character should attack in the style of Kamehameha from Dragon Ball, by losing Albator to the Space Corsair. We learn something every day!

At the exit, The aptly named Street Fighter is unfortunately light years away from its creator’s wishes. Due to reduced budget, all playable characters disappeared! Players can only play as Ryu and Ken! Moreover, the animation suffered strange reflections, which was the fault of a programmer whose job was as a systems engineer and who worked for an external company, not Capcom! Takashi Nishiyama literally pulled his hair out to give him the advice he needed to create good animation, but it wasn’t enough. Street Fighter, which is very average, not to say bad, will gradually fade into general indifference. But this is just a postponement…

Seeing that shooting games were losing popularity with the public in the late 1980s, Capcom decided to rely on the success of works such as Double Dragon. This cooperative game is making a lot of money, and the Japanese publisher wants its piece of the pie. A fighting game project begins, but comes to an abrupt halt when a chip shortage (tied to the memory of electronic arcade cards) occurs. Initially inspired by the competition, Capcom developed Final Fight, a fighting game in which heroes progress through the settings by hitting everything that moves. Actually, Final Fight was called Street Fighter 89 because the Japanese publisher wanted a sequel to the first Street Fighter. Once it was finished (and the memory chip issue was resolved) they decided to make it a reality.

…to his masterpiece

After hundreds of hours of playing the original game, the developers revealed all of Street Fighter’s flaws. To eliminate the problem of missing characters, they chose to rely on 12 characters from the start (8 warriors and 4 bosses). To save time and nod to the past, they rescued and modernized Ryu and Ken before combining the wrestler Zangief, the greenish creature Blanka, and the leaping Vega. Creating the fighters was no easy task (artists weren’t getting much sleep and rivalries were blooming within the same team), but most of the work was focused on the enjoyment of the game, the musical atmosphere, and the visual production.

Designed by a team of approximately forty people (half of whom were responsible for graphics), Street Fighter II benefited from a considerable budget and much more efficient memory chips. Extraordinary in Arcade, the game will be adapted for Super Nintendo in 1992 and bring the “arcade home”! A true social phenomenon required tremendous effort, but the entire Capcom team aimed for one thing: perfection. Composer Kazunori Yamada recalls: “ The Super Nintendo’s capacity was limited. So if there was an “Aaaaaah” sound, we couldn’t put the whole sound. Instead, we made a small “ah” sound and repeated “ah”, “ah”, “ah”. This gave the same sound without the full file. We had to find tricks like this to integrate all the audio elements… “.

Comes in a package with Super Nintendo, Street Fighter II became the locomotive in console sales and remains an emblematic work of its time. Accessible to novices and incredibly deep for purists, this game has literally turned the world of video games on its head. Twenty years from now we’ll still be talking about this. But in the beginning it wasn’t actually won… Hadôken!