Why Street Fighter II Rules

You may not know it from the well-dressed ladies man that I am now, but there was a time when I had little joy outside of video games in my life. In fact, from 1989 until 1995, the glory years of the Nintendo and Super Nintendo, my day consisted of two things: Playing video games to such excess that my parents felt compelled to hide the controllers and begging my parents to return the controllers they had hidden so I could play more video games. And, during this time period, there was one game that got my controllers hidden far more often than any other due to obsessive playing. That game was Street Fighter II.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game (God help you), Street Fighter II allowed you to select one of eight unique fighters, kick the crap out of the other seven fighters, then fight four bosses to be crowned the “World Warrior.” That’s it. Ta-effing-da. AND WE WERE GRATEFUL FOR EVERY MINUTE OF IT!


You see, when SFII was released, technology, well, blew. There were no cheap cell phones and certainly no readily available internet porn to distract me and my classmates. You just had SFII. In the school lunch room? You were talking about SFII. Taking a dump? You were reading a GamePro magazine article about SFII. On an eight-hour car ride? Well, you were probably playing that original Game Boy with the pea green screen that gave you migraines and caused eye cancer. But you were thinking about SFII.

Never before had a video game offered such fantastic back stories and motives for its characters. Before SFII, video game protagonists had three motives: Saving their girlfriend, saving the princess or saving the world. Sometimes the princess was their girlfriend, but that was as complex as it got. In SFII, characters entered combat to fight personal demons, avenge dead friends and infiltrate criminal gangs. Sure, the wrestler Zangief was fighting just to prove the Russians were the best, but it was 1992, and Russians hadn’t developed multifaceted human emotions yet. It was the first time that characters had completely selfish reasons for entering the game’s world. I ate it up.

All of this amazing character development would have been moot had the game played like crap. Thankfully, SFII featured some of the smoothest play control of all time, and the depth of its combat system meant you were learning something new after each fight. Not only that, but the game’s two-player mode was simple and elegant, pitting you against your friend over and over until one of you lost your cool and smashed the control against the floor. No other game was able to work people into such a rage. I’ve had controls hurled at my head, wrapped around my neck and thrown against the walls of my living room. You’d end up kicking the person out of your house, swearing you’d never play with them again…until the instant you couldn’t find anyone else to come over and play SFII with, at which point, they were your best friend again.


As time marched on, SFII‘s prominence in my life slowly faded. High school brought drugs, death metal and downloadin’ porn (I told you I’m a ladies man). New video game systems came onto the scene that made the Super Nintendo’s graphics look as impressive as a cave painting. But every so often, years after I had touched any other video game and even with all the crazy things happening in my post-pubescent life, I’d dust off the old Street Fighter II cartridge and take it for a spin. Because Blanka could always stand to be reunited with his mother one more time.

(Below is the game’s ending credits tune. It still makes me choke up and I want it played at my funeral.)

(And please click through and buy Super Street Fighter IV for the PS3 or Xbox 360 so I can continue to pay the bills that come with trans-continental player lifestyle I lead…while living at home. Ya ta!)

Tagged as: Chun-Li, Dee Jay, Dhalsim, E. Honda, Fei Long, Game Boy, Guile, Ken, M. Bison, Ryu, Sagat, SF2, SFII, SNES, Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter II, Super Nintendo, T. Hawk, Vega, Zangief.