Street Fighter II: The World Warrior

With Street Fighter II our weekly column continues # fridaynostalgia dedicated to retrogaming. Here is our tale of an epic game.

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STREET FIGHTER II: THE WORLD WARRIOR

"The second album is always the hardest". So he sang, a few years ago, the good Caparezza. In fact, as far as the Japanese giant Capcom is concerned, it seems that the second game is always the most successful. It cannot be a coincidence that both the second chapters of the two most famous sagas of all time are the most successful and popular ones. Applies to Resident Evil II, by far more known and played than the important first chapter and is even more valid for the legendary Street Fighter II, perhaps the most famous fighting game of all time.

This chapter was published in 1991 and boasts, to his credit, a series of Guinness World Records awards such as the "First Fighting Game to Use Combos", "Most Cloned Fighting Game" and "Biggest-Selling Coin-Operated Fighting Game" awarded in the2008 edition of the Guinness dedicated to the world of gaming. The particularities of this title do not stop at the awards: to date, Street Fighter II is the best-selling fighting game ever, with 6,3 million copies. In Capcom, the only ones to do better were two Resident Evil chapters.

AN INNOVATIVE TITLE AND FINALLY A WOMAN FIGHTER

Among the many innovations present in this legendary game, we cannot fail to mention the introduction of parade. Before then, in fact, no fighting game provided for the possibility of protecting oneself from an opponent's blow. Street Fighter II is also responsible for the introduction of the very famous combo. A combo is a combination of shots in a chain, capable of taking a large part of the life from our opponent. Although they were not foreseen in the first chapter of this saga, the most skilled fighters could put together incredible and spectacular series of shots, so much so that the programmers to insert them in the sequel.

Even the character of Chun-Li it was revolutionary in its own way. The Chinese fighter, specialized in the use of kicks, is in fact the first female character of the history of fighting games. Before then, no one had dared to break such a taboo. It must be said that the designer Yoshiki Okamoto, to be completely certain not to be too far ahead of his time, he wanted to equip her with a lower life bar than male fighters. In short, if they had not succeeded in making him change his mind, instead of a revolution, we would have witnessed a beautiful discrimination!

THE STORY OF STREET FIGHTER II

The events told in Street Fighter II are set 9 years after the first episode. Mr. Bison, boss of this chapter, organizes a martial arts tournament to select the strongest fighter in the world, in order to defeat him and thus take possession of his body. For this purpose, eight fighters are chosen from all over the world. The characters are in order: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Blanka, Honda, Guile, Dhalsim and Zangief. Each with its own history and past, each with the moves that made him famous. FromHadoken at Ryu e Ken al sonic boom of Guile, passing through Dhalsim's ability to stretch arms and legs, up to theHyakuretsukyaku di Chun-Li.

There are also four bosses in the game, namely: Mr. Bison, head of the paramilitary organization Shadaloo. Sagat, the boss of the first chapter and the strongest fighter in the world of Muay Thai, with his 224 cm a real giant. Vega, Spanish fighter with the iconic mask and metal claw. Finally there is Balrog, American boxer from Las Vegas, who recalls in all respects the legendary Mike Tyson.

MR. BISON OR WE SHOULD CALL HIM MR. VEGA?

On the names of the bad guys, we need to write a separate paragraph. In fact, originally, the villain called Bison had to be the American boxer. Capcom, however, fearing to be on the verge of plagiarism and imagining a possible lawsuit in the US by Iron Mike because of his African American boxer named Mike Bison, decided to call it Balrog, a name intended for the Spanish fighter. Bison thus passed to what in Japan was called Vega and the latter name went to the Spanish. A good round of names and goodbye fear of lawsuits.

There is another curiosity related to the characters of Street Fighter II, that of the mysterious character Sheng Long. In fact, when you were defeated with Ryu, the writing appeared on the screen: "You must defeat Sheng Long if you want to have a chance." The audience thought of a terrible secret final boss and the bulls multiplied relentlessly. Eventually it turned out that the whole thing was generated by a translation error. Shang Long was in fact the Chinese translation of "Fist of the dragon”Or the shoryukendi Ryu. Capcom, after announcing the introduction of Shang Long with an April Fool, was really tempted by the idea of ​​inserting it in the third chapter of the game but in the end nothing came of it.

JUST SOME OTHER CURIOSITIES

The Russian wrestler Zangief is inspired by a Russian wrestler from the 60s who really existed: Zangiev. If we were able to finish the game with him, in the arcade, we could have seen a video of the Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev that he would get off a helicopter to congratulate his champion. However this ending was cut in the version for Super Nintendo. Vega was originally supposed to be an English knight in armor. In the end, only the mask and claws remained. When we manage to cast the legendary Hadoken, inside the sphere of energy, if we look closely, there are the hands of the one who threw the blow.

Street Fighter II was a real milestone in the history of video games. Its duality with the saga of Mortal Kombat marked more than a generation, giving life to a franchise that still has countless sequels, imitations and citations. He gave birth to comics (actually far from successful), becoming a real pop icon.

THE OBSESSION WITH BLANKA

The eccentric Yoshinori ono Capcom game producer has a real obsession with the character of Blanka. Do you think that for over ten years she has always carried with her a puppet of the green character found in a happy meal of a Filipino burger chain. This peculiarity has become so popular that his fans often ask him to take pictures with him and the little toy, coming to anger them not a little on the rare occasions when he had left it in Japan.

Also a well-known cartoonist español, Zerocalcare, describing his relationship with a particularly difficult boy to whom he gave repetitions, draws it and describes how White: "The fighter raised in the jungle and raised by beasts" as evidence of how this saga has now become a cultural reference for an entire generation of gamers from every corner of the world.