Street Fighter (universe)

The Street Fighter (ストリートファイター, Sutorīto Faitā^?) universe refers to the Smash Bros. series' collection of characters, stages, and properties that hail from Capcom's famous fighting game franchise called Street Fighter.

Franchise description

Street Fighter made its debut at the arcades in 1987, designed by Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto. The player took control of a lone martial artist named Ryu, who competes in a worldwide martial arts tournament spanning five different countries (United States, Japan, China, England, and Thailand) and ten opponents, two per country. The player could perform three basic types of punches and kicks, which varies in speed and strength, for a total six attack buttons and three special attacks: the Wave Fist in which the player launches a fireball, Rising Dragon Punch, and Hurricane Kick; or the Hadoken, Shoryuken and Tatsumaki Senpukyaku in Japanese, that could be performed only by executing specific motions. A second player could join in anytime and take control of Ryu's rival, Ken, during competitive matches and play the rest of the game as Ken if they won. The original Street Fighter has been noted by fans of the series for the considerable difficulty in executing special moves compared to its sequels. Some of the characters seen in this game would appear in later Street Fighter games, including Adon, Birdie, Gen and Eagle.

One attempt by Capcom at making a sequel was Street Fighter '89, which was instead a side-scrolling beat 'em up game. Tester feedback pointed out how different this game was to the first Street Fighter, leading to the game being renamed Final Fight and spawning its own series, although ironically Final Fight characters would also appear in later Street Fighter games.

While the original game faded into relative obscurity as time went by, its 1991 sequel, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior was a smash hit in the arcades, turning the franchise into a household name in the video game industry and allowing the fighting genre to flourish due to a whole slew of competitors which appeared in its wake, from SNK's Fatal Fury to Midway Games' Mortal Kombat. Ryu and Ken returned from the previous game, joined by a host of other characters from various parts of the world: Chinese kung fu expert and Interpol officer Chun-Li, USAF officer Guile, Japanese sumotori E. Honda, Russian wrestler Zangief, Indian yoga master Dhalsim and Brazilian beastman Blanka, each one with their own moves and fighting styles. The player could choose any of them freely as they competed in a new worldwide martial arts tournament hosted by the criminal organization Shadaloo, led by M. Bison (Vega in the Japanese version) and his three main lackeys: American boxer Balrog (Mike Bison in Japan), Spanish assassin Vega (Balrog in Japan) and Muay Thai master Sagat, also returning from the first game. Although unplayable in the original game, fan demand led to the bosses becoming playable in the first of many updates to the game, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition. A further series of gameplay-tweaking updates eventually led to Super Street Fighter II in 1993 and its own update, 1994's Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which added four new fighters, allowing for more gameplay variations: British government operative Cammy, Hong Kong movie star Fei Long, Mexican brawler T. Hawk and Jamaican kickboxer Dee Jay. Super Turbo added also the mysterious and powerful Akuma (Gouki in Japan) as a secret final boss, and introduced to the series the "Super Combo", a far more powerful version of certain specials that did massive damage.

Following the II games, and with alleged credit to its more famous anime movie installment, 1995 saw the release of Street Fighter Alpha (Street Fighter Zero in Japan), the first part of a prequel trilogy whose events bridge the gap between the first and second World Warrior Tournaments, while adding new characters, fleshing out the backgrounds of established characters, and integrating Final Fight (a 1989 side-scrolling beat-'em-up from Capcom) into its canon with characters like Guy and Sodom. Its sequels, Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Street Fighter Alpha 3, came out in 1996 and 1998 respectively. Much like Street Fighter II, the Alpha series had a certain amount of revisions for the second and third installments. The overseas release of Alpha 2 introduced the "Evil" form of Ryu as a playable character and certain console ports of Alpha 2 Gold include Cammy White as a playable character. Alpha 3 had Alpha 3 Upper and MAX which added more characters. The Alpha series added more Super combos as well as the "Custom Combo" mechanic which gave players a brief moment to rapidly press buttons and create their own long and powerful combos. Alpha 3 split mechanics into three different "ISMs", with A-ISM playing more like the previous Alpha games, X-ISM increasing offensive power but only granting one super stock and one Super combo and removing defensive options, and V-ISM which removed all Super combos in favor of increased defense and the use of an improved Custom Combo system.

The series' true sequel, Street Fighter III, was released for arcades in 1997 in the new CPS-3 board, which showed off greater graphical capabilities, like smoother animation and greater level of detail, especially in its final boss, Gill, who was colored differently on both sides of his body, with the colors notably not switching sides as he moved around to demonstrate the power of the CPS-3 board. Ryu and Ken were the only returning characters, the rest of them making way to a whole new slew of fighters from everywhere around the world. Even then, Ryu and Ken were only added later in development due to criticism from testers, with Sean Matsuda originally planned to be the only Ansatsuken fighter in the game. Street Fighter III received its first update, 2nd Impact, eight months after the original release, and the second, 3rd Strike, in 1999. These games were notably more technical than the previous ones, with new mechanics like Parrying (in which the player can repel an oncoming attack by pressing forward at the exact moment of impact) and EX Specials (enhanced versions of special moves, performed at the cost of a portion of the Super Arts gauge). In these games, players could choose only one of three Super combos (in this game, redubbed "Super Arts") they would like to use before a match (for example, Ryu could choose from Shinku Hadoken, Shin Shoryuken and Denjin Hadoken), with different Super Arts having not only different amount of Super stocks that players could keep in reserve, but also had their Super Arts bars varying in length depending on how powerful a Super Art the player had chosen, allowing for player intuition and strategy than reliance on a plethora of moves and mechanic centered gameplay compared to earlier installments.

While the characters from Street Fighter would be featured in a slew of other fighting games and even crossovers throughout the late '90s and 2000s, a real sequel to the main series would not materialize until Street Fighter IV, released for the arcades in 2008. The new entry drew attention from the gaming press by utilizing the traditional 2D gameplay style in conjunction with high-definition 3D graphics (the Street Fighter EX subseries, developed by Arika, was an earlier attempt at bringing the series to a 3D environment; fan reaction to these games remains mixed to this day), while adding in new mechanics like Focus Attacks (powerful, chargeable moves which ignore defense at their full strength) and Ultra Combos (desperation attacks whose usage depends on the Revenge Gauge, which fills as the player takes damage; as such, these moves are mainly used as a means to alter the outcome of a match). The game was brought to home consoles the following year, and its success led to a total of three updates: Super Street Fighter IV (which added more characters and added a second Ultra Combo for every character) and Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition in 2010, and Ultra Street Fighter IV in 2014, which added 5 new characters (albeit with 4 ported over from the earlier Street Fighter X Tekken) as well as introducing the "Red Focus Attack" and the "Ultra Combo Double" option, which let the player use both a character's Ultra Combos at once albeit with reduced damage. Notably, at the final version, the game has as many as 44 selectable characters in a roster which encompasses every era of the Street Fighter series.

The next game, Street Fighter V, has recently been announced and is slated to be released in 2016.

In Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U

Characters

• Ryu is a playable character available for download. He was released on the same day as Lucas, along with Roy.
• Ken Masters appears as a regular trophy.

Stages

• Suzaku Castle appears as new stage in the Wii U and 3DS versions.

Trivia

• Street fighter is the only third party franchise that does not have an assist trophy.

External Links

• The Street Fighter wiki