Summer of ’91, I’m standing in the Pizza Ranch with my jaw on the floor, watching this high schooler pull off moves I didn’t even know were possible in a video game. The guy’s playing as Guile – you know, the military dude with the ridiculous flat-top – and he’s throwing these curved energy projectiles while yelling “Sonic Boom!” in this crystal-clear digitized voice that made every other arcade game sound like it was being played through a tin can.
I’d blown through my allowance money in about fifteen minutes, but I couldn’t leave. This wasn’t just another beat-em-up where you walked right and punched everything that moved. This was something completely different, and I knew it even at thirteen years old.
See, I’d played the original Street Fighter maybe two years earlier at the Southdale mall. Terrible game, honestly. One character, stiff controls, and special moves so hard to execute they might as well have been myths. But this sequel? Eight different fighters, each with their own personality and fighting style, responsive controls that actually did what you wanted them to do… it was like comparing a bicycle to a Ferrari.
My mom picked me up around 4 PM, and I spent the entire car ride home explaining why she absolutely had to take me back tomorrow with more quarters. “It’s educational,” I told her. “I’m learning… uh… hand-eye coordination.” She wasn’t buying it, but something in my enthusiasm must have gotten through because she agreed to let me ride my bike back the next day.
That next day turned into every day for the rest of the summer. I’d saved up birthday money for months planning to buy some new SNES games, but instead I was feeding quarters into this machine like it was a parking meter. My friend Jake started calling it my “expensive girlfriend” because I was spending more time and money on it than seemed reasonable for a thirteen-year-old.
The SNES port came out that fall, and man, I campaigned harder for that cartridge than any politician ever campaigned for office. Drew up charts showing how much money I’d save not going to the arcade (conveniently ignoring that I’d probably keep going anyway). Promised to do extra chores. Even offered to give up my Halloween candy, which in retrospect was a terrible negotiating position because my parents knew I’d never follow through on that one.
Dad finally caved after I agreed to clean the garage without complaining for the rest of the year. Worth every minute of sorting through his collection of paint cans and broken lawn equipment.
Having Street Fighter II at home was like having your own personal arcade. The SNES version wasn’t perfect – some of the colors looked washed out compared to the arcade, and a few of the voice samples sounded like the characters were talking through a mouthful of marshmallows. But being able to play whenever I wanted, without feeding it quarters every two minutes? That was magic.
Jake and I would play for hours. I mean literally hours. My mom would come downstairs around midnight and find us still there, controllers in hand, eyes bloodshot from staring at the TV. “You boys are going to go blind,” she’d say, then physically turn off the console because we couldn’t be trusted to stop on our own.
Everyone had their character, and your choice said something about who you were as a person. I was a Ryu guy through and through – basic, maybe, but I liked the fundamentals. Clean inputs, reliable moves, nothing fancy. Jake gravitated toward Zangief because he thought the spinning piledriver was hilarious, though he could never execute it consistently enough to be truly dangerous. My older brother Tom picked Guile because the flat-top reminded him of his G.I. Joe figures, and honestly, Guile’s moves were easier to pull off than most of the other characters.
Learning the special moves became this obsession. I’d practice Ryu’s Dragon Punch motion – forward, down, down-forward plus punch – until my thumb was sore from hitting the D-pad. The timing had to be perfect, the motion smooth and deliberate. When I finally landed my first clean Shoryuken against the computer, I jumped up and yelled so loud that our dog started barking and my mom came running downstairs thinking someone was hurt.
The arcade scene around Street Fighter II was unlike anything I’d experienced before. Pizza Ranch started running weekly tournaments with a five-dollar entry fee, which might as well have been fifty dollars to me at the time. I saved up for two weeks to enter, made it exactly one round, and got absolutely demolished by some college kid using Dhalsim who seemed to know combos I didn’t even know were possible.
But here’s the thing – I wasn’t even upset about losing. I was fascinated. I stood there for another hour watching this guy play, trying to figure out how he was linking moves together, how he was spacing his attacks, why he was choosing certain moves at certain times. It was like watching a chess master, except with fireballs and flying kicks.
Word traveled weird back then without the internet. Someone would show up from another town with new techniques, and suddenly everyone at your local arcade was trying to master them. I remember this one guy came through from Minneapolis claiming he knew how to play as the boss characters, which sounded like complete nonsense until he actually did it. Turned out Champion Edition was already out in some places, and we were still playing the original version like cavemen.
My friend’s older brother worked at Electronics Boutique and somehow got his hands on the Japanese version of Street Fighter II Turbo months before it hit the US. We treated that cartridge like it was made of gold. Every day after school, we’d bike over to his house and crowd around the TV, marveling at the increased speed and the secret character you could access with some weird button combination at the character select screen.
The competitive aspect of Street Fighter II was what really set it apart. Before this, most arcade games were about beating the computer and getting a high score. Street Fighter II was about beating other people, and that changed everything. It wasn’t enough to be good against the CPU – you had to understand spacing, timing, psychology. You had to know what your opponent was thinking and be one step ahead.
Jake’s mom thought we were in some kind of cult because of all the strange chanting we did while practicing. “Hadouken! Sonic Boom! Tiger Uppercut!” We’d repeat these phrases over and over while practicing the joystick motions, trying to get the muscle memory down. To an outside observer, it probably looked pretty weird – a bunch of kids gathered around a TV making martial arts noises and moving their hands in specific patterns.
The sound effects became part of our daily vocabulary. We’d yell “Hadouken!” when throwing basketballs, “Sonic Boom!” when tossing frisbees, “Tiger Uppercut!” during basically any jumping motion. I got some strange looks from my basketball coach when I started incorporating Street Fighter sound effects into free throw practice, but my shooting percentage actually improved, so he didn’t complain too much.
What’s amazing is how much depth there was to discover. The combo system wasn’t even intentional originally – it was a programming quirk that Capcom decided to keep because it made the game more interesting. We didn’t know that at the time. We just knew that sometimes, if you timed your attacks perfectly, your opponent couldn’t block between hits. It felt like discovering hidden treasure every time you found a new combo.
I still remember the first time someone showed me you could connect Ryu’s crouching medium kick into a Hadouken. My mind was absolutely blown. I spent the next three hours practicing that simple two-hit combo until I could do it consistently. It sounds ridiculous now, but landing that combo felt like a major achievement.
The various updates and versions kept the game fresh for years. Champion Edition let you play as the boss characters, which felt like getting access to forbidden knowledge. Turbo increased the speed and added new moves. Super Street Fighter II brought in four new characters and refined the whole system. Each version felt like Christmas morning, with new things to discover and master.
Looking back, Street Fighter II established the template that fighting games still follow today. The six-button layout, the special move motions, the concept of character balance, the importance of frame timing – all of that started here. Every fighting game that came after was measured against Street Fighter II. Mortal Kombat had its fatalities and photorealistic characters, but the controls weren’t as tight. Killer Instinct had its combo system and amazing soundtrack, but the characters weren’t as balanced. Virtua Fighter had polygonal graphics and realistic martial arts, but it lacked Street Fighter’s personality.
I’ve still got my original SNES cartridge sitting on the shelf in my game room, complete with a faded price sticker from Electronics Boutique that I never bothered to remove. Sometimes when friends come over – especially the ones who remember this era – we’ll fire up the old SNES and play a few rounds. The muscle memory is still there after thirty-plus years. Quarter-circle forward for Hadouken, quarter-circle back for Tatsumaki, forward-down-down-forward for Shoryuken. It’s like riding a bike.
Last weekend, I took my nephew to one of those retro arcade bars that cater to people my age desperately trying to recapture their youth. They had an original Street Fighter II: Champion Edition cabinet tucked in the corner, complete with the classic six-button layout and that distinctive Sanwa joystick click. I handed him a token, picked Ryu, and showed him the basics.
Kid picked it up faster than I ever did. Had the Dragon Punch motion down within ten minutes, was throwing consistent Hadoukens within twenty. “This is actually pretty fun for such an old game,” he said, which I’ll take as high praise from a generation raised on modern fighting games with 50+ character rosters and frame data displayed in real-time.
Thirty years later, and Street Fighter II still draws crowds. Still creates that same sense of wonder and competition I felt as a thirteen-year-old kid with a pocket full of quarters and an entire summer afternoon stretching out ahead of me. That’s the mark of something truly special – when it can bridge generations and still feel fresh and exciting decades after its release.
Not bad for a happy accident involving combo timing and a development team that decided to keep the glitches that made the game more fun.
Samuel’s been gaming since the Atari 2600 and still thinks 16-bit was the golden age. Between accounting gigs and parenting teens, he keeps the CRTs humming in his Minneapolis basement, writing about cartridge quirks, console wars, and why pixel art never stopped being beautiful.
0 Comments