Street Fighter (1987)

Main: Street Fighter (video game) Street Fighter made its debut in the arcades in 1987. It was designed by Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto. The player took control of lone martial artist Ryu, who competed in a worldwide martial arts tournament, spanning five countries and ten opponents. A second player could join in at any time and take control of Ryu's rival, Ken.

The player could perform three types of punch and kick attacks (which varied in speed and strength) and three special attacks: the Ball of Fire, Dragon Punch and Hurricane Kick. These were performed by executing special motions with the controls.

Street Fighter was ported to many popular home computer systems of the time including PC. In 1988, it was released on the NEC Avenue TurboGrafx-CD console under the new name Fighting Street.

Street Fighter was later included in Capcom Classics Collection: Remixed for PlayStation Portable and Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

Street Fighter II series (1991-1996)

Main: Super Street Fighter II

Street Fighter II was the first one-on-one fighting game to give players a choice from a variety of player characters, an option which created hitherto unknown levels of depth and replay value for an arcade game. Each player character had a fighting style with approximately 30 or more moves (including previously nonexistent grappling moves such as throws) as well as two or three special attacks per character.

In the single-player mode, the player's chosen character is pitted sequentially against the seven other main characters before confronting the final four 'boss' opponents, who were CPU-controlled characters not selectable by the player.

As in the original, a second player could join in at any point during single player mode and compete against the other player in competitive matches, with the multiple available characters allowing for more varied matches.

Street Fighter II proved to be popular due to all these factors, eclipsing its predecessor in popularity, eventually turning Street Fighter into a multimedia franchise. Numerous home ports of Street Fighter II followed the original arcade game. Demand for the game was so high that pirates created an unsanctioned, copyright-infringing Famicom/NES version, which saw a very limited release in Asian markets. Computer versions were released for 16-bit PCs, first by a number of copyright-infringing fans who strove to develop a PC version of the game, and later by Capcom, working with an external programming house.

The first official update to the series was Street Fighter II': Champion Edition (pronounced Street Fighter II Dash in Japan, as noted by the prime symbol on the logo), which allowed players to play as the four previously non-playable bosses and also allowed two players to choose the same character (with one character drawn in an alternate color pattern). The game also featured slightly improved graphics (including differently colored backgrounds) and refined gameplay. A second upgrade, titled Street Fighter II': Hyper Fighting (or Street Fighter II Dash Turbo in Japan), was produced in response to the various bootleg editions of the game. Hyper Fighting offered faster gameplay than its predecessors, different character colors and new special techniques (such as Chun-Li's Kikoken or Dhalsim's Yoga Teleport).