Wi-Philes

1987~2007.The Street Fighter martial arts simulation franchise has its roots back some twenty years ago, deep in the late 80's arcade industry on which Capcom partly founded its early success. This blogger recalls dabbling in the first game, between two quarter consuming sessions of After Burner or Rolling Thunder, hitting the buttons as hard as he could in a desperate effort to beat that bald, unibrow sporting Japanese dork who wouldn't stop calling him 'Kiddo'.

But no one remembers nor cares about the first game (and for good reason too), for the series' popularity only reached its apogee with the advent of the universally acclaimed second opus. Capcom ditched the pressure sensitive input found in the first game in favor of the now standard and friendlier six buttons system. Coupled with eight unique playable characters -an impressive number for the time- each with their own set of special moves for the player to master, Street Fighter II attained a level of depth never seen before in a fighting game.

The success was fulgurating. All over the world arcade goers challenged each other, and the CPU controlled AI, in Hadoken and Sonic Boom jousts. From there the franchise spawned everything from calendars to bubble gums, action figures, stickers, manga/anime series, an infamous Jean-Claude Van-Damme starring movie (tak zat baysson!) and occasionally some videogames too.

Indeed, Capcom produced many adaptations and spinoffs of varied quality over the years, and of particular interest to the reader in the context of this (hopefully ongoing) weblog series, are the multiple appearances of the Street Fighter saga on various Nintendo consoles during the last two decades.

Fast forward to late 2007: Twenty years and a third episode -appearing on nearly every videogame platform but Nintendo's- later, Capcom has just announced a fourth episode of Street Fighter was in the works. According to early reports, the game openly takes Street Fighter II as its reference, meaning we can expect many characters from the second installment to return. Dhalsim, Blanka, Guile, Chun Li and many others were already confirmed, in addition to the eternal Ken and Ryu.

Maybe this time there is a slim possibility of Street Fighter IV hitting (pun intended) the Nintendo Wii, allowing us to settle once and for all the Shotokan duo's virile rivalry about who has the biggest (fire)balls.

Asphyxia awaits those holding their breath, you have been warned...

Street Trivia: The Shunning Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers was the last game to appear on a Nintendo home console, back in 1994. One could of course argue that thanks to the Wii Virtual Console, Street Fighter games are again playable on your Nintendo setup in the comfort of your living room. But again, One also better shut his trap or he will no doubt get shoryukened in the face.