I made a brief mention of Capcom's original Street Fighter (1987) in my previous Final Fight article, and thought it only fair to give it its own few moments in the spotlight, despite the fact that the game's legacy has been completely eclipsed by its far more successful younger brother Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991).
At the time Capcom released Street Fighter into arcades, very few one-on-one fighting games had appeared anywhere. While games like Konami's Yie Ar Kung-Fu (1985) had begun laying the groundwork for the fledgling genre, Street Fighter marked the penultimate step in the evolution of the fighting game as we know it, and whose conventions would be firmly established in the early '90s. This is undoubtedly the main reason for the original Street Fighter being relegated to mere footnote status in the annals of gaming history; it's a game that perfectly demonstrates a genre balanced right on the cusp of breaking into the big time, and as a result has dated in a way many other games of its time have avoided. After the advances brought in only a few years later, its a hard game to find truly enjoyable over twenty years on.
Street Fighter essentially plays like a proof-of-concept for its monumentally successful sequel. Almost everything you remember from the later games is here, but executed in a decidedly half-baked manner. Anyone who's never played this first chapter in the series will likely ask the same questions when they first fire it up: "Why do I have to play as Ryu?", "Why is he ginger?", "Why does the game control like shit?", "Why is it so hard to throw a hadouken?" and "Who the hell is Joe?". Really, the answers to all of these questions boil down to the fact that Capcom were still trying to figure it all out when the game was made.
Stylistic oddities aside, the issue of Street Fighter's controls is an interesting one. When the game was first released, Capcom came up with a novel method of controlling the on-screen action. While Ryu (and Ken in two-player mode) was moved around with a standard joystick input, punches and kicks were dictated by pressure-sensitive pads rather than the now standard six-button setup. Tapping lightly would result in a light attack; a moderate hit would give a medium attack, and a solid smack would deliver a heavy blow. Naturally, this significantly increased the difficulty of play in comparison to a traditional button configuration. Later releases reverted back to a standard control scheme (as is also mandatory when playing the game through MAME), the knock-on effect being that the resulting gameplay becomes far too easy. Once you've mastered the special attacks (which doesn't take long), you'll tear through pretty much every opponent with relative ease – the only seeming increase in difficulty comes when fighting the final boss (Sagat in his only pre-scar appearance). Additionally, the fact that it only takes two or three hadoukens to down most opponents means that the challenge is frequently non-existent. Factor in the brick-smashing bonus rounds which originally required a real hammering if you wanted a good score – here all that's required when using standard controls is tapping the hard punch button as quickly as possible.
At this juncture you may be asking if there's any reason to play Street Fighter at all. Other than its value as a historical curiosity, I still enjoy a playthrough every once in a while for one simple reason: the game is hilarious. Other than the fact that Street Fighter is extremely rough around the edges in terms of gameplay and contains some amusing early imaginings of now well-known characters, one of my favourite aspects of the game is the digitized "Engrish" announcer voice that pops up sporadically throughout the course of the game. While the enthusiastic call of "LOUND WAN!" at the start of every brawl never fails to elicit a snigger, the real stars of the show are the short dialogues that appear whenever you're either victorious or defeated in battle. A loss will result in "You've got a lot to learn before you beat me. Try again keed! EH HE HE!", while winning two rounds against an opponent gives the immortal "What strength! But don't forget there are many guys like you all over the world" – clearly the best piece of dialogue in the entire history of video games.
I'd be lying if I said that Street Fighter is a good game – clearly it isn't, especially with the benefit of hindsight. However, it's definitely worth checking out for anyone interested in the history of arcade gaming, particularly that of fighting games. If the worst comes to the absolute worst, you still can't fail to find at least some amusement in the game, even if it is for completely the wrong reasons.
