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[Geek]

That would be 8-4 towers you see in that picture.

TRUE. I took that photo!

 

[L00P]

I just read all of it. Akiman is one crazy dude. The shenanigans with Mortal Kombat was pretty funny

 

[The_Afroman]

Way to be a dick.

[Yasuda tells the story differently. In an interview in Udon's Street Fighter X Tekken art book, he says he began early design work on Street Fighter 2 before starting on Final Fight but stopped because of a lack of ROM capacity to make the game he wanted. He also says Capcom renamed Street Fighter '89 not because Street Fighter had a poor reputation, but because the game didn't feel like a Street Fighter title. Nishitani says he doesn't remember the situation clearly, but didn't do any work on Street Fighter 2 himself until after finishing Final Fight. Yasuda declined to speak with Polygon for this story, saying he only does interviews if paid.

 

[Jazzkokehead]

Based on the article, it sounds as if the endless Street Fighter II revisions (Champion Edition, Turbo, etc.) were largely produced as a way to combat counterfeit versions of the game. Interesting.

 

[eyeball_kid]

People never mention the first Street Fighter. Heck, I only saw it once, when it was in one arcade at the time. I had thought it was just a brawl game like Double Dragon, but then the guy playing me gleefully threw hadoukens, and I of course had no idea how to respond. Having buttons you physically have to punch was a really dumb decision. It felt awkward and inaccessible; it's no wonder it was a flop financially.

You know how each character has a life bar? At one point, I wanted to make the power gauge for Chun-Li shorter than for the other characters because women are not as strong.

Wow. I wonder if this is why Chun-Li is less balanced in general than the others in SF2. I mean, she was my main and I could hold my own, but for instance her helicopter kick special was useless against a decent player. You'd just get punished severely for trying it, as compared with Ryu's uppercut or Guile's flip kick. And she didn't have a long-range attack, either.

Even the LA riots worked out for me because when they were looting the street, they were running down the streets from the 7-11 stores with Street Fighter games in their hands.

This dude comes off as a real jackass in almost every quote in this article.

My mentor Akira Nishitani was very disappointed with the fact that I wanted to make it faster. He no longer was my mentor after that.

And he was right to be mad! It doesn't matter whether the super hardcore set could adapt to faster gameplay. The turbo editions lost the elegance of the original.

It's easy to look back on these things with hindsight. You know, anime was not anywhere near the acceptance [it's earned as time has gone on]. So we were always creating box art — whether it was Mega Man or Street Fighter — we were always creating art that would sell the game in the U.S.

Riiight. I bet he never even floated the Japanese artwork with the American public. Capcom U.S. just didn't want to take any risks. My generation was already watching Robotech at the time. We loved anime, or what little we got to see of it. These guys were just out of touch.

Could my developers have done such a thing and gotten away with it?

"My" developers. Sadly typical of my experience with marketing/biz people.

 

[Hoya Destroyer]

That was a nice read.
I was obsessed with SF2 back in the early 90's. I used to scour all the video game magazines at the new agents, looking for ANYTHING sf-related. Once I had the magazine, my friends and me would all go through it and talk about it non-stop. Later, I would later look over each screenshot, admiring the art and all the little details, wishing I was at the arcade playing it.
Before SF2 came out on the SNES, I remember frequently wondering "is it even going to be possible to do hadokens on the SNES pad?" lol.
To this day, the $140 I paid for the SF2 SNES cartridge, is the most I have ever spent on a core game. And that was in 1992!

 

[jns]

Great read! thanks for the link. I didn't realise Polygon did such great feature articles. Will have to keep a closer eye on them.

 

[sixteen-bit]

Neat article.

 

[lensoftruth]

Based on the article, it sounds as if the endless Street Fighter II revisions (Champion Edition, Turbo, etc.) were largely produced as a way to combat counterfeit versions of the game. Interesting.

This has always been known, shame it started something though.

 

[iidesuyo]

Interesting read.

I didn't know Capcom USA held so much power.

 

[Version 3.0]

Interesting read, thanks for posting it.

Street Fighter 1 was just awful. It's interesting to read about their deliberate change to make the moves work.

I also enjoyed the Japanese programmers' reactions to bugs - "total shame". Overreaction, for sure, but what a better place the world would be if that view was prevalent.

Also: I just knew combos were accidental! I'd never seen that put on the record before now. But wait, isn't the correct term for what they describe a "2-in-1"? Combos are strings of moves that, if done right, are unblockable. Getting 2 moves out of a single button press is a 2-in-1...or it was, back then. Has the terminology changed?

 

[NoirVisage]

I appreciate the Matt Leon doesn't rely on corporate ballwashing and drama to make an interesting piece.

Street fighter 1 was a good game, it sucks more people didn't know how to play it, but when you mastered it, it was zenlike, the way the characters hopped and how powerful the attacks were..it was before its time, I'd love to see a remake.

 

[dark_prinny]

Fantastic article.

 

[entremet]

Interesting read, thanks for posting it.

Street Fighter 1 was just awful. It's interesting to read about their deliberate change to make the moves work.

I also enjoyed the Japanese programmers' reactions to bugs - "total shame". Overreaction, for sure, but what a better place the world would be if that view was prevalent.

Also: I just knew combos were accidental! I'd never seen that put on the record before now. But wait, isn't the correct term for what they describe a "2-in-1"? Combos are strings of moves that, if done right, are unblockable. Getting 2 moves out of a single button press is a 2-in-1...or it was, back then. Has the terminology changed?

2 in 1s became cancelling, buffering, super cancelling.

buffering, Cancel, Canceling, Cancelable, Super Cancel, 2-in-1: These mean to cancel the animation of one move to go into another. If something is, "cancelable," that means you can interrupt the animation of this move with another with some form of command. The most popular cancel is a normal move into a special move

 

[Sixfortyfive]

Street fighter 1 was a good game

I guess that might be an opinion that some people have.

2 in 1s became cancelling, buffering, super cancelling.

No, the 2-in-1 is what most players call "negative edge" these days. It's something completely different: the ability to activate a special move on both the press or release of a button, which means that you may trigger a normal attack with the press and also trigger a special attack with the release.

 

[entremet]

I guess that might be an opinion that some people have.


No, the 2-in-1 is what most players call "negative edge" these days. It's something completely different: the ability to activate a special move on both the press or release of a button, which means that you may trigger a normal attack with the press and also trigger a special attack with the release.

That's changed then. But the original meaning was the one it listed.

 

[jmdajr]

Excellent read. Thanks!

 

[yurinka]

Very well done, Polygon. This is the way, not the... well, you know.

 

[eso76]

You guys keep saying that making videogames was always about making money and today isn't different from 20 years ago.
You keep saying that

 

[kitsuneyo]

Just finished reading it. One of the best game features I've read, and I actually like Polygon's magazine-like presentation.

Not sure whey they got Mark McGinty to make that new artwork though, it looks pretty bad. Always hated the US/Euro box arts.

 

[pikablu]

Excellent article just killed about 45 minutes of work reading it. . Wish it would have more about the PC Engine development though.

 

[Syril]

You guys keep saying that making videogames was always about making money and today isn't different from 20 years ago.
You keep saying that

It was still a motivation. In that piece they were talking about how the versus fighting was a way to get two players on the same machine at once and improve on Final Fight's attempt by making it so that players won't get frustrated at the game and blame the difficulty.

 

[kitsuneyo]

It was still a motivation. In that piece they were talking about how the versus fighting was a way to get two players on the same machine at once and improve on Final Fight's attempt by making it so that players won't get frustrated at the game and blame the difficulty.

Yeah there's a lot of stuff about money-making in the story. Biggest thing being that after SF2, Capcom just kept on making more SF-related games because they sold so well and they were making so much money. Meantime, many of their most talented people got stifled by the endless sequel-making and left.

 

[Rice-Eater]

Almost done with Chapter 2, just wanted to say I love it. I can't believe I've been putting this off. It's such a amazing read. Very informative and comical at the same time. Some the these guys had batshit ideas and were pretty batshit crazy themselves lol.

 

[Zissou]

REALLY amazing article. First time in a while an online article makes me not miss print mags. More of this polygon- more of this please!

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

You guys keep saying that making videogames was always about making money and today isn't different from 20 years ago.
You keep saying that

It's that, and for some, like the ones in the article, it's also about craftsmanship.

Pray that level of craftsmanship displayed in SF2 keeps getting handed down and taught anew...

 

[Zissou]

One of the really interesting things about the article was how the characters in SFII were all being made by different sub-groups within the dev team. They were competing against each other to make their character the coolest and how they were constantly trying to one-up each other. I wonder if this led to the longevity of the designs and how endearing/entrenched they’ve become in gaming culture. I also wonder if Capcom kept up this sort of process for other fighters they made as years went on (Darkstalkers, etc. - actually, I want a Darkstalkers version of the article!).

The SFII character creation process stands in stark contrast to something like Skullgirls, where all the characters stemmed from a single person’s vision. You obviously can’t say one approach is definitively better than the other, but maybe having the multiple competing teams making characters led to a wider cast more likely to have characters that appealed to different personalities? I’m not sure where I’m going with this- just kind of thinking out loud.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

Interesting read, thanks for posting it.

Street Fighter 1 was just awful. It's interesting to read about their deliberate change to make the moves work.

I also enjoyed the Japanese programmers' reactions to bugs - "total shame". Overreaction, for sure, but what a better place the world would be if that view was prevalent.

Also: I just knew combos were accidental! I'd never seen that put on the record before now. But wait, isn't the correct term for what they describe a "2-in-1"? Combos are strings of moves that, if done right, are unblockable. Getting 2 moves out of a single button press is a 2-in-1...or it was, back then. Has the terminology changed?

It was interesting to find out that SF2 was a completely different team than SF1. Had no idea but it makes sense. From reading that, the thing the SF2 team did to inadvertently create combos by making special moves easier to do is what sucked the most about SF1. Fireballs were fucking impossible to pull off unless you did them perfectly.

Also interested to find out the original SF1 designers went on to SNK to create their early fighting games. Those early SNK games also seemed to have much more difficult and strict controls compared to SF2 from what I can remember. Must have carried over.

 

[Authority]

This is definitely a must-read.

Thanks OP.

 

[Mikhal]

It was interesting to find out that SF2 was a completely different team than SF1. Had no idea but it makes sense. From reading that, the thing the SF2 team did to inadvertently create combos by making special moves easier to do is what sucked the most about SF1. Fireballs were fucking impossible to pull off unless you did them perfectly.

Also interested to find out the original SF1 designers went on to SNK to create their early fighting games. Those early SNK games also seemed to have much more difficult and strict controls compared to SF2 from what I can remember. Must have carried over.

If you want to know more about Nishiyama, you should check out his interview from a couple years ago (also done by Matt Leone).

http://www.1up.com/features/the-man-who-created-street-fighter


Edit: Decided to read an old Yoshiki Okamoto interview. They weren't kidding when they said he likes to joke around!

1UP: This may sound stupid, but Sam Kennedy wants me to ask, what cars do you drive? We heard you once had a Ferrari, but someone crashed it. Is that true?

YO: No, no, it was a Porsche. One of my employees crashed it. But other people have lots of accidents in my cars. My mom crashed a 2002 BMW GTR I used to drive. Now I'm riding a Joker scooter, a Monkey scooter from Monkey, a Rich mountain bike, an Esteema station wagon, and a BMW 750. I used to have a girlfriend that I was riding too. But I went out to the parking lot to get her the other day and she wasn't there anymore. [Laughs]

 

[malfcn]

This is quality work.
I wish we could get more stuff like this from any site on the history of franchises and the industry.

 

[KAP151]

Interesting read.

This game personified my childhood. I can still remember my living room full of my neighborhood friends the weekend i got SFII for SNES. My poor thumbs, ripped the skin right off.

Worth every moment.

 

[Sakujou]

Gotta love Polygon.

this.

 

[Zissou]

This is quality work.
I wish we could get more stuff like this from any site on the history of franchises and the industry.

There's a reason why it's scarce. This thread can't even get a page of posts. Some shitty review they phone in gets 10x the attention/ad revenue. Sad, really.

 

[TheOGB]

Reading through this and had to stop and laugh at this caption

Because James Goddard was a fan of the character Zangief, some at Capcom Japan were skeptical of his ability to give objective feedback.

 

[Geengrenzuh]

Awesome article! I still remember begging my mom for this game. Carefully timing the announcement of the price tag of a whopping 250 dutch guilders. Luckily I have an older brother that contributed in the end.
From that moment I didn't have to go to the ice skate track (vechtsebanen Utrecht for the insiders) to play the arcade game after and between school. Saved me from a couple of ass beatings from older kids / young adults that would occur when they got their ass kicked in game. kinda tense that arcade scene was.

 

[Loona]

There's a reason why it's scarce. This thread can't even get a page of posts. Some shitty review they phone in gets 10x the attention/ad revenue. Sad, really.

It's on page 2...


I wonder why the article stopped at Turbo, since there were still a couple of Super iterations after that (although there was that mention of the Gouki -> Akuma rename - which is dumb as hell).
Glad to know it was a sequel of sorts to the article on Takashi Nishiyama - I loved that one, and I'd love to see an SNK counterpart to this more recent article, if ever possible, what with the way the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting series are related, but that only becoming clear by AoF2, it'd be interesting to know of the process behind working on both series.

 

[Bleepey]

I loved the part about the guy from Acclaim marketing laughing at Blanka crushing the game. They seemed to have a fun friendly joking rivalry sort of like how Capcom did with Snk. Yet Capcom are allergic to money and don't wanna make a game guaranteed to sell at least 5 million even if it got bad reviews.

 

[Zissou]

It's on page 2...


I wonder why the article stopped at Turbo, since there were still a couple of Super iterations after that (although there was that mention of the Gouki -> Akuma rename - which is dumb as hell).
Glad to know it was a sequel of sorts to the article on Takashi Nishiyama - I loved that one, and I'd love to see an SNK counterpart to this more recent article, if ever possible, what with the way the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting series are related, but that only becoming clear by AoF2, it'd be interesting to know of the process behind working on both series.

100ppp is the proper way to browse GAF

 

[Biker19]

This was a great article that explains about the development, etc. about Street Fighter II (& how Street Fighter 1 went).

It also explains how Final Fight came to be because of Double Dragon & that Capcom probably would've went under if it wasn't hugely successful for them financially.

 

[mr stroke]

Finally got around to finishing this and really surprised how great this is. Polygon(or Matt?) is doing fantastic stuff. I had no clue the US had such influence on the direction of the series.

I wish more sites would do stuff like this vs the typical video game site garbage :\