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Review: Street Fighter |
Two fighters face off in Thailand. One, a young Shotokan fighter from Japan, bright red hair held back by a white headband, and shoes that match his hair. His oppenent, a giant Muay Thai kickboxer. The Shotokan fighter rushes in, his movements a bit jittery, and utters these famous words as he strikes, forever burning a scar into the Muay Thai fighter.
In a metallic voice that sounds like it is coming from a long distance tin can phone “DRAGON PUNCH!”
This is the world of Street Fighter One. None of those fancy pants japanese name for attacks. Fireball, Dragon Punch, and Hurricane kick, all uttered in an almost unrecognizable garble. There was no character roster, you had two choices. If you were player one, you were Ryu, if you were player two, you were Ken. Despite what people say, there were no difference between the two. As has become the Street Fighter MO, you advanced to various countries and battled the respective fighters of that land. Some staples of the Street Fighter 2 and Alpha series, including the Shoto boys, Gen, Birdie, Adon, and Sagat. Some other fighters have faded into Street Fighter obscurity, but I found them and interviewed them.
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First off of Retsu, Japan’s respective fighter. I caught up with him at a local bar, where he was an MC for kareoke night.
Jay-”So Retsu, what have you been doing these past…13 years?”
Retsu-”I took a job here at the Starlight Lounge as a waiter, and when the kareoke’s popularity surged, I moved up to MC.”
Jay-”That’s nice, say Retsu, I’ve been wondering for years, what the hell was your special attack? Everyone in that first Street Fighter tourny had at least one, Adon had the funky kick, Sagat his tiger shot, Geki had a cool claw and could disappear, hell Ryu and Ken each had three! But what the hell did you do.”
At this point he gave me a deadpan stare, and tried to punch me. That managed to piss me off so I powerbombed him through a table, knocking him out, then grabbed the mic and performed “Karma Chameleon” for the small crowd gathered. Big hit.
Although he couldn’t be reached for interview, Mickey the boxer actually gave up on the Street Fighter tournament scene, and made his way to South Town, working for some guy named Mr. Big. Rumor has it he was beaten senseless by some guy that looked like some genetic crossbreed of Ryu and Dan Hibiki. Guess the poor guy has no luck.
Geki, the supreme ninja warrior that he is, could not be found at all. Rumors have it that he is training other ninjas in his clan, including a rather rambunctous teen girl. Either that or he is making deliveries for Ninja Burger. I’m leaning more towards the latter, last time those bastards delievered to me I saw an awful familiar cloud of smoke.
Well, it was a nice trip down memory lane, now, back to the game itself. The graphics were actually quite bright and sharp for their time. Sure they show their age painfully now, but when you are about 8 or 9, were pac man machine still dominated a lot of arcades, they were godly. The controls, well, they weren’t the most responsive, but at the same time it depends on what version of the Street Fighter control scheme you had. There were two versions that I know off. Both of them had the joystick and familiar six button layout, but the catcher was the buttons. On most machines, they were your run of the mill buttons, but a few I’ve seen, though never played, had these big gnarly rubber buttons that you basically pounded with a fist to do an attack, making you feel like a fighter, or some crap. I personally never played that way, but I’ve heard stories. As for how well the game controlled, well, not very. The characters moved like they were fighting in a screen filled with maple syrup. Jumps were a slow moving flip, and you had to smash the buttons in a hope of getting a jump attack out.
Now back in the day, there were no Gamefaqs.com, or cruddy videogame mags that covered the arcade scene, at least not that I recall. So figuring out how to do special attacks made you the l337357 of the l337. The first time I saw Ryu stutter in a three frame animation and a little yellow ball go flying, well more like warping, since it appeared and disappeard, I thought the game was crashing. Then I noticed Adon fly back with about 1/4 of his life gone. It wasn’t until many many years later that I noticed they included the dragon punch and hurricane kick in this game. The hurricane was controllable, in that it either stayed in place unless you held forward, and the Dragon punch could destroy an opponent, taking a third of their life it even connected, but if you hit it right it nearly killed.
You know, people say Street Fighter II is what truly created the fighting game genre. I’d agree with that, but Street Fighter II could not have existed without this groundbreaking gem. It wasn’t the greatest of games, but it was great fun. .
