As it is called in our country, it is one of the indispensables of the arcades.

A generation spends a lot of coins,

Hadouken! Shoryuken!. A series that has become legendary for its ongoing sequels in which it shouts and perhaps beats each other up at the exit!

Street Fighter !

First Street Fighter Game (1987)

While people my age (born in 1990) often have memories of the second game in the series, the first version of Street Fighter dates back to the late 1980s. On August 30, 1987, the first game, designed by Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto, was released through Capcom.

In this game, which is the first of the series, our main character Ryu is controlled and tries to defeat his opponents in a fight tournament organized around the world. Throughout the game, there is travel to exactly 5 countries. In these countries, we see the first versions of the names that will later become our favorite characters. For example, Sagat, which is also my favorite, as we saw when we went to Thailand.

Sagat can even be called the boss of the end of the chapter in this game.

With its highly innovative approach to the Street Fighter era, it has inspired many games and is the first of the combat mechanics that have become standard in the market. Six-button controls make it a kind of pioneer in the industry.

This game, which you can finish in 15-20 minutes with solid gameplay – despite all this – is not very popular at first, but the sequel game changes things.

Street Fighter 2 (1991)

At the end of the intervening 4 years, Street Fighter has taken its place on the shelves again and this time it has become the favorite of the players with 8 characters that can be played. It begins to spread from language to language, with combat mechanics unique to each character and partially improved graphics. In fact, it grossed more than $10 million, leaving the first game quite a bit of a shadow. It also moved to home consoles such as Nintendo and Sega, selling 14 million cartridges. This is the game that I play like crazy in my time.

Later;

Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition,
Street Fighter 2 The New Challengers,
Street Fighter 2 Turbo and so on are coming with a number of updates, both for the richness of visual quality and for the addition of some new characters. In fact, these ‘some characters’ in quotes will make things a little more complicated.

Because everything has a connection to former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson at some point!

Before you guys say what relevance Mike Tyson is, let me explain briefly.

Original Street Fighter games have 4 bosses.

These are respectively; Sagat, Vega, Balrog and M.Bison!

We can eliminate Sagat directly from this list because it has nothing to do with our topic.

The remaining three names. i.e. Vega, Balrog and M..The names we know as Bison have become this after the name change was made among themselves. The originals are different from what we know now. We can easily see this in the Japanese versions of the game.

In other words, the name of the character we know as M.Bison for years is actually Vega,

The name of the hoofed brother we know as Vega is actually Balrog,

And the name of our boxer brother, whose most bombshell we know as Balrog, is M. Bison!

Okay, but where does Mike Tyson fit into all of this?

Since the character of M.Bison, whom we know as Balrog, is extremely similar to Mike Tyson, both in appearance and in a kind of word, Capcom decided on such a name change in those years. For this reason, M.Bison. so Mike Bison became Balrog. Balrog became Vega. Vega became M.Bison.

It may sound a bit complicated, but something like this really happened in the Street Fighter universe. Now let’s say whatever you do with this information and move on to the next game.

Street Fighter Alpha Series (1995)

When the calendar leaves the 1995 date, a new series was released as Street Fighter Alpha. Alpha Series does not mean Street Fighter 3. The story is about the time period between the 1st and 2nd game. The background stories of the characters are enriched. Small touches are made in terms of gameplay and visuality.

Street Fighter Ex Series (1996)

The Street Fighter Alpha series will continue until 1998 with a total of 3 games. However, until the third game of the series is released, a new game called Street Fighter Ex is released in 96. The game is the first Street Fighter game in 3D. On the other hand, these are the years that show that new competitors are now in the market. Namco’s Tekken series, in particular, begins to benefit from the pie slices that stand in the middle place.

Street Fighter Ex, just like the Street Fighter Alpha series, comes until 2000, leaving a total of 3 productions to the players. However, it cannot be said that they do such an effective job as Tekken. In summary, the Street Fighter series has also had its share of the 3D craze that broke out towards the end of the 90s. Although it has an adventure that lasts 4 years, this mistake is realized early and the Street Fighter 3 game that everyone is waiting for shows itself in 1997, but…

It is not the game that everyone expects!

Street Fighter 3 (1997)

Street Fighter 3 New Generation has received quite a few reactions due to the fact that this new production, which is presented to the players under the name of New Generation, is only from the traditional characters – Ryu and Ken. Although a few new features have been added in technical terms, the mistake cannot be covered up and only months later another game called Street Fighter 3 Second Impact is released. With this game, we can see Akuma, and with Street Fighter Third Strike, which was launched in 1999, we can see Chun-Li, but none of this will be enough to capture the old popularity of the series.

For this reason, a hibernation that lasts for many years appears.. In between, there were co-productions such as Marvel Super Heroes versus Street Fighter, X Men versus Street Fighter, but as a result, Street Fighter, one of the company’s most beloved brands, was unplugged.

Street Fighter 4 (2008)

Street Fighter, which broke its years of silence in 2008 and returned to the fields, takes its place in the market by winking at us players with its 4th game and providing a complete return to its roots. The game is the sequel to Street Fighter 2 and reminds fans of the old ones.

Thanks to the updates it has received over time, some new characters have been added besides the original characters. One of them is the Turkish character Hakan, who says what to do with his crimson skin color and turquoise hair color.

Street Fighter, which reappeared as if to say to the dominoed fighting games of the Mortal Kombat series, “Get out, your father has come”, proves that it is permanent in the industry after this, although it still does not catch up with its former popularity.

It solidifies its place with updates such as Ultra Street Fighter 4 and Super Street Fighter 4, which it released until 2014.

Street Fighter 5 (2016)

Street Fighter 5, which was released exclusively for PlayStation 4 and PC in 2016, can be said to be the last bullet of the legendary series. Although it initially had a cast of 16 people, the updates that came as the years progressed showed that the total number of characters reached up to 46 people.

Let’s say that our game, which has fallen silent after 2020, has introduced the 6th game at the Playstation State of Play event recently, let’s talk about other media tools and slowly end our article.

Street Fighter Film and Other Media

We’ve been around since 1987, but we have to go back a long way for Street Fighter. It’s almost 30 years or so back.

The 1994 Street Fighter movie, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, is unfortunately a bad job like most game adaptation films, I think it would not be a wrong opinion. Of course, I remember that I watched it fondly like many ‘children’ because of the excitement that came from those ages and who was fascinated by the game at the time, but when I look back today, the film is really bad!

On the other hand, the film’s low score average failed to put a stop to the animated series that followed.

Then, according to the 2009 film Street Fighter The Legend of Chun-Li; is considered “one of the worst movies ever made!”.

Finale

As a result, Street Fighter, which is not smiling on the big screen, has maintained its place in the market as a series that has come to the present day thanks to many media tools with its games and manga because it is one of the best content of the time and is still frequently mentioned.

Let’s finish here. As I said at the beginning of the article, my favorite character Sagat is dear friends. Do not forget to mention your favorite character in the comments. Thanks for patiently reading to the end. Let us also remind you that you can watch this article as a video: