1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:02:10,671 --> 00:02:12,212 In the early days of the arcade, 4 00:02:12,504 --> 00:02:16,504 the idea of action and competition were fairly separate. 5 00:02:17,004 --> 00:02:20,254 So you had sports games like football, soccer. 6 00:02:20,754 --> 00:02:24,087 One on one things, like YieAr Kung-Fu and IK Plus 7 00:02:24,379 --> 00:02:26,754 I think because of that they were like karate and martial arts. 8 00:02:27,046 --> 00:02:28,962 Simple appeal of like one against one. 9 00:02:29,254 --> 00:02:30,337 Like you obviously want to win. 10 00:02:30,629 --> 00:02:34,296 The fight against the preceded Street fighter one where similar in a lot of ways. 11 00:02:34,587 --> 00:02:38,754 You take a game like Karate Champ which is probably the most successful title in that vein beforehand 12 00:02:39,087 --> 00:02:42,712 and it did accommodate two players playing at once, but nobody really used it that way. 13 00:02:43,004 --> 00:02:46,337 People were still used to score chasing and that's what they thought an arcade game should do. 14 00:02:46,629 --> 00:02:50,712 Karate Champ in particular was very interesting because all through sticks it's awkward. 15 00:02:51,004 --> 00:02:52,671 It's like, How do I do this move every time? 16 00:02:52,962 --> 00:02:56,212 And it was one of the first games that did a winner stays, loser pays. 17 00:02:56,546 --> 00:03:01,171 And then after that there was Yie Ar Kung-Fu, which was a multi character fighting game 18 00:03:01,462 --> 00:03:03,671 where you actually got to play different characters. 19 00:03:03,962 --> 00:03:06,171 So it was fun, but very, very simple. 20 00:03:50,379 --> 00:03:54,296 When you look at something like Tenkaichi Bushi on Famicom. 21 00:03:54,587 --> 00:03:57,046 Hokuto No Ken on the home consoles. 22 00:03:57,921 --> 00:04:02,087 It's all based on extended boss battles when it comes to the versus mode. 23 00:04:03,046 --> 00:04:06,087 And then you had like the Brawlers, like Double Dragon just come out. 24 00:04:26,004 --> 00:04:28,462 And then when Street Fighter one comes out. 25 00:04:31,004 --> 00:04:33,421 Elaborating on the boss battle aspect 26 00:04:33,921 --> 00:04:38,254 rather than focusing on the competitive nature of what fighting games would come to be. 27 00:04:38,546 --> 00:04:45,046 The original Street Fighter one was a kind of luxury version of a lot of ideas gone before it. 28 00:04:45,337 --> 00:04:50,754 They tried to make it a reason to visit and play in the arcade, something that you couldn't do at home. 29 00:04:51,046 --> 00:04:55,962 Street Fighter one starts the concept of having iconic characters on screen. 30 00:04:56,254 --> 00:04:58,379 Ryu and Ken get introduced in Street Fighter one. 31 00:04:58,671 --> 00:05:02,879 They are literal mirrors of each other, except one is wearing a white guy and one is wearing a red one. 32 00:05:03,171 --> 00:05:07,587 And then with Sagat, you've got a guy with a very similar move set, except he's enormous. 33 00:05:09,171 --> 00:05:11,296 What I think it does right, is that it creates 34 00:05:11,587 --> 00:05:16,629 the allure of playing as the hero and the competitive nature. 35 00:05:16,962 --> 00:05:22,254 It creates that martial artist that goes through all these masters and you tackling them. 36 00:05:22,546 --> 00:05:24,504 You're becoming the world champion like a sport. 37 00:05:25,004 --> 00:05:27,462 It did get some things right and it got some things wrong. 38 00:05:27,837 --> 00:05:32,796 Fundamentally, I think it did sort of tap into this idea of a one on one versus fighter. 39 00:05:33,087 --> 00:05:36,796 The exciting idea of just walking up to somebody, a stranger in the arcade, 40 00:05:37,087 --> 00:05:41,379 popping that quarter in and squaring off in a battle that was engaging. 41 00:05:41,837 --> 00:05:47,962 The difference between Street Fighter and Double Dragon was that if you were playing Double Dragon first player 42 00:05:48,254 --> 00:05:52,671 and another kid came up and put in a quarter, you were still playing the game with that person. 43 00:05:52,962 --> 00:05:54,796 That person's objective was your objective. 44 00:05:55,087 --> 00:05:59,462 If you're playing Street Fighter and you're doing well and another kid comes up and puts in a quarter, 45 00:05:59,879 --> 00:06:01,671 suddenly you're fighting that kid. 46 00:06:05,546 --> 00:06:07,712 In America especially, that's how the game was used. 47 00:06:08,087 --> 00:06:12,171 And that really changed the dynamic of the game because it became this two kids in the arcades 48 00:06:12,462 --> 00:06:16,921 squaring off versus one another as opposed to one kid fighting for the high score on the machine. 49 00:06:17,379 --> 00:06:21,171 Back in that time, it wasn't known how you play fighting games 50 00:06:21,462 --> 00:06:23,587 and there was no like official command this that taught you. 51 00:06:23,879 --> 00:06:25,504 You just have to sort of figure it all out. 52 00:06:25,796 --> 00:06:28,004 Some of the special moves, the Hadoken, the Shoryuken, 53 00:06:28,296 --> 00:06:31,837 were introduced that gave a little bit of differentiation and fun factor to the game. 54 00:06:32,129 --> 00:06:35,212 And then lo and behold, you know, there's always the first time you ever did a fireball. 55 00:06:35,504 --> 00:06:38,337 Theres the first time you ever did a Tatsumaki. The first time you ever did a Dragon Punch. 56 00:06:38,671 --> 00:06:42,337 So there's all these things that you're getting used to feeling in the game and understanding, 57 00:06:42,629 --> 00:06:43,712 you know, how the different mechanics work. 58 00:06:46,171 --> 00:06:51,171 Street Fighter one, we know that the way that the inputs were done back in those days, it's not the same. 59 00:06:51,462 --> 00:06:53,379 They were like really rigid, right? 60 00:06:53,671 --> 00:06:57,796 The input method, it started with those pneumatic buttons that you sort of slam with your hand. 61 00:06:58,087 --> 00:07:01,337 And the idea was that the harder you press it, the harder you punch in the game. 62 00:07:05,087 --> 00:07:06,629 The players loved the game play. 63 00:07:06,921 --> 00:07:09,379 However, that big punch pad was not holding up. 64 00:07:09,671 --> 00:07:12,046 You sometimes miss the button and would skin your knuckles. 65 00:07:12,337 --> 00:07:14,087 People would break their hands on those things. 66 00:07:14,379 --> 00:07:17,171 People were breaking their thumbs on them. They were cutting their hands. 67 00:07:17,462 --> 00:07:18,504 Apunch pads were breaking up. 68 00:07:18,796 --> 00:07:20,587 People were obviously playing these games to destruction 69 00:07:22,129 --> 00:07:25,629 and with an arcade game, you the machine's got to stay relevant for a long period of time. 70 00:07:25,921 --> 00:07:26,754 You want to make money off it. 71 00:07:38,337 --> 00:07:41,087 The game was being held back by its controls. 72 00:07:41,462 --> 00:07:43,587 Then comes the introduction of the six buttons. 73 00:07:44,171 --> 00:07:47,296 And now you get six buttons. I mean, it's I think it's going to be too complicated. 74 00:07:47,587 --> 00:07:49,712 I'll never forget what it said to me. 75 00:07:50,004 --> 00:07:53,254 Jeff-san, you're an amazing marketing guy, but you're not a game player. 76 00:07:55,712 --> 00:07:57,587 There's going to be more flexibility. 77 00:07:57,879 --> 00:08:01,212 There's going to be more combination of moves when you've got six different buttons. 78 00:08:01,504 --> 00:08:03,254 Well, of course he was right, I was wrong. 79 00:08:03,546 --> 00:08:05,796 And I stated my my lane after that. 80 00:08:27,296 --> 00:08:31,796 It still had this feeling of sort of almost like a side scrolling platformer style feel to it. 81 00:08:32,087 --> 00:08:35,087 And rather than a proper fighting game as we know it today. 82 00:08:35,421 --> 00:08:41,046 We only have singular elements that kind of work on their own, but they haven't come together yet. 83 00:08:41,337 --> 00:08:45,879 But you could feel the origins of something. Capcom was finding their feet, so to speak. 84 00:08:47,504 --> 00:08:52,046 Lots of stuff happens behind the scenes between the release of Street Fighter 1 and 2. 85 00:08:52,337 --> 00:08:55,796 First of all, the team that creates Street Fighter one leaves Capcom, 86 00:08:56,087 --> 00:08:59,421 moves across town to SNK and essentially immediately installs themselves as 87 00:08:59,712 --> 00:09:02,212 Street Fighter's earliest game studio rival. 88 00:09:07,212 --> 00:09:07,962 Then, in the meantime, 89 00:09:08,254 --> 00:09:12,129 Capcom makes the bold choice of tapping these two extremely young developers 90 00:09:12,421 --> 00:09:15,962 Akira Nishitani and Akira Yasuda to lead the Street Fighter 2 project. 91 00:09:16,754 --> 00:09:20,671 And just as they're getting underway, there's a global shortage of silicon, 92 00:09:20,962 --> 00:09:24,962 which means that the extra memory that they knew that they would need to make this game is impossible. 93 00:09:25,254 --> 00:09:27,004 And Street Fighter 2 goes on the shelf. 94 00:09:27,296 --> 00:09:31,296 The Capcom Play System One. The CPS hardware. 95 00:09:31,629 --> 00:09:36,046 This was Capcom's big move to create sort of a centralized arcade platform. 96 00:09:36,337 --> 00:09:39,587 Essentially, so they could develop games targeting the specific piece of kit. 97 00:09:39,921 --> 00:09:43,962 It was able to produce large colorful graphics with independent background 98 00:09:44,254 --> 00:09:48,879 scrolling layers, and it was used in games like Strider, Mercs, Ghouls'n Ghosts. 99 00:09:49,171 --> 00:09:53,671 In the meantime, they worked on another project, a side scroller in the style of Double Dragon 100 00:09:53,962 --> 00:09:55,421 that ultimately is called Final Fight. 101 00:09:57,546 --> 00:10:00,921 Or Street Fighter '89, which was its informal internal title. 102 00:10:12,796 --> 00:10:17,212 And I even remember seeing Street Fighter '89 in like EGM where one the American magazines 103 00:10:17,504 --> 00:10:22,504 have a coverage of Japan where they show that Street Fighter '89 is coming out. 104 00:10:42,837 --> 00:10:48,087 And when they were developing Final Fight they always have monitors looking at American films, 105 00:10:48,379 --> 00:10:53,212 American television and then primarily American wrestling as well as Japanese. 106 00:11:13,254 --> 00:11:17,046 A Walter Hill movie comes out in the early eighties called Streets of Fire. 107 00:11:17,337 --> 00:11:18,962 And see if this plot sounds familiar. 108 00:11:19,254 --> 00:11:24,337 You've got a fighter named Cody whose girlfriend is stolen away from him by an angry mob 109 00:11:24,629 --> 00:11:29,254 that takes her across town and he has to fight his way across the wild urban streets to rescue her. 110 00:11:29,837 --> 00:11:32,254 That is exactly the plot of Final Fight. 111 00:11:32,629 --> 00:11:35,171 I'm surprised there was no licensing deal required to make that happen. 112 00:11:57,671 --> 00:12:02,671 So I definitely think that Final Fight has some cues from Street Fighter one and is sort of this middle 113 00:12:02,962 --> 00:12:06,587 ground towards the progression to Street Fighter two and I think if you put the three games 114 00:12:07,046 --> 00:12:10,962 side by side by side, you can see that's very logical progression. 115 00:12:12,921 --> 00:12:16,921 Final Fight was one of the first arcade games I can remember being absolutely obsessed with. 116 00:12:17,212 --> 00:12:21,421 The massive sprites, the animation, the fact that you could do stuff like throw enemies into other enemies. 117 00:12:21,712 --> 00:12:24,337 You could see that a lot of time have been spent on the character design. 118 00:12:24,629 --> 00:12:26,837 Even the enemies were completely unique to one another. 119 00:12:27,129 --> 00:12:28,462 So as you progressed through Final Fight, 120 00:12:28,754 --> 00:12:33,671 you're playing against very different, low key kind of enemies until you get to a boss character. 121 00:12:34,004 --> 00:12:37,587 And that whole concept really carries across to Street Fighter as well. 122 00:12:37,879 --> 00:12:40,962 When I did eventually get Final Fight in the snares, it was obviously single player, 123 00:12:41,462 --> 00:12:44,379 had less characters and less levels, but I still absolutely loved it. 124 00:12:44,962 --> 00:12:48,671 And I think with Final Fight they try to improve some things from Street Fighter one 125 00:12:48,962 --> 00:12:53,421 where maybe the moves weren't as flashy, but they're much easier to do. 126 00:12:53,712 --> 00:12:57,212 So anyone could jump into a final fight, feel powerful, feel special. 127 00:12:57,504 --> 00:12:59,629 And the controls were great, very responsive. 128 00:12:59,921 --> 00:13:01,087 The culmination of the music, 129 00:13:01,379 --> 00:13:05,296 the backgrounds and the action with an underlying story that pushed people forward. 130 00:13:05,587 --> 00:13:08,337 I think those are all elements that helped to inspire Street Fighter 2. 131 00:14:06,212 --> 00:14:10,546 Walter Hill's first feature in the mid seventies was called Hard Times and it was released in the US. 132 00:14:10,879 --> 00:14:13,379 But in Japan and elsewhere it was called The Street Fighter. 133 00:14:13,671 --> 00:14:14,254 And here's the plot. 134 00:14:14,546 --> 00:14:18,087 Charles Bronson plays this drifter who arrives in New Orleans by train 135 00:14:18,546 --> 00:14:22,046 and proceeds to fight for money in front of docks, 136 00:14:22,337 --> 00:14:27,171 a crawfish boil, a dance hall, all these picturesque scenes against a series of colorful characters. 137 00:14:27,462 --> 00:14:30,837 And it's not a stretch to say we really see the plot of Street Fighter in this movie. 138 00:14:51,462 --> 00:14:54,504 Building that character roster really was all about contrast. 139 00:14:54,796 --> 00:14:58,462 So for instance, now we see Ryu and Ken starting to take on distinctive personalities 140 00:14:58,754 --> 00:15:00,379 beyond the fact that they're wearing different colors. 141 00:15:00,671 --> 00:15:03,879 Ryu is the strong and silent Japanese version of this fighter, 142 00:15:04,171 --> 00:15:08,254 whereas Ken is the headstrong, Corvette driving blond American. 143 00:15:10,171 --> 00:15:13,421 To be the best example of this contrast is Guile and Blanka. 144 00:15:13,712 --> 00:15:17,296 Nishitani and Yasuda used to play a lot of Nintendo pro-wrestling after hours 145 00:15:17,587 --> 00:15:19,337 as they were making Street Fighter 2 146 00:15:21,087 --> 00:15:24,004 Yasuda especially got into the dynamic between two of these characters, 147 00:15:24,296 --> 00:15:29,629 one called the Amazon, this feral monster, and another called Star Man, who was very slick and cool 148 00:15:30,087 --> 00:15:33,712 and it wasn't that either of those characters grabbed them so much as the dynamic between them 149 00:15:34,004 --> 00:15:35,296 really captured Yasuda. 150 00:15:35,587 --> 00:15:38,587 And that literally gets ported over into Blanka and Guile. 151 00:15:38,879 --> 00:15:43,421 Guile is supposed to be the unflappable, cool soldier, and Blanka is the one who can roll in 152 00:15:43,712 --> 00:15:44,337 and ruffle his feathers. 153 00:15:44,629 --> 00:15:47,796 And so those characters exist in contrast to one another. 154 00:15:57,462 --> 00:16:00,879 There are a lot of stereo types in the street fighter world, and it's not by accident. 155 00:16:01,171 --> 00:16:03,504 It's not something that Akira Yasuda apologizes for. 156 00:16:03,879 --> 00:16:06,879 Street Fighter is very much based on archetypes from each country. 157 00:16:07,171 --> 00:16:10,046 You know, your Russian is a big, strong man from the USSR. 158 00:16:10,337 --> 00:16:12,379 We've got very traditional Chinese dress for Chun-Li. 159 00:16:12,671 --> 00:16:15,296 Dhalsim, the yoga who for some reason is wearing a necklace of skulls. 160 00:16:15,587 --> 00:16:17,212 Who knows where he's pulling some of these influences from. 161 00:16:17,504 --> 00:16:20,212 But certainly honoring cultures wasn't the foremost intent. 162 00:16:22,379 --> 00:16:27,629 I think back then, this was all about trying to pull up recognizable stereotypes and helping 163 00:16:27,921 --> 00:16:31,504 you sort of understand where these characters are supposed to fit in his universe of contrast. 164 00:16:31,796 --> 00:16:35,379 Any player anywhere in the world could get a sense of World Warriors. 165 00:16:35,671 --> 00:16:37,962 E. Honda was kind of fun just because he was odd. 166 00:16:38,254 --> 00:16:39,712 He wasn't real athletic. 167 00:16:40,796 --> 00:16:42,837 My favorite character was always Blanka. 168 00:16:43,337 --> 00:16:47,296 I don't know. I'd try and use him in everything I did just because he was green and ugly 169 00:16:47,587 --> 00:16:48,921 and he rolled up in a ball. 170 00:16:49,212 --> 00:16:53,337 Blanka really felt different. How he animated his background. 171 00:16:53,629 --> 00:16:58,046 His story were very interesting to me, and even though he's never been a top tier 172 00:16:58,337 --> 00:17:03,754 character in any sort of version of Street Fighter, he's always my go to fallback, fun character. 173 00:17:07,046 --> 00:17:08,796 I'm going to be boring and I'm going to say Ryu. 174 00:17:09,087 --> 00:17:11,546 Obviously he's the character from Street Fighter one. Him and Ken. 175 00:17:11,837 --> 00:17:14,337 It feels like the series is built around those two characters. 176 00:17:14,629 --> 00:17:16,504 They've got the right balance between speed and power. 177 00:17:16,796 --> 00:17:19,337 If I'm going to pick up a controller, it's that's the character I'm going to go for 178 00:17:19,629 --> 00:17:22,921 because I know I can deal with any situation that's thrown at me. 179 00:17:23,212 --> 00:17:25,337 Zangief is my absolute favorite character. 180 00:17:25,629 --> 00:17:28,296 He's my he's my spirit animal. 181 00:17:28,796 --> 00:17:29,796 Basically. 182 00:17:30,087 --> 00:17:32,921 I won't do cosplay as saying it because no one is that scared. 183 00:17:34,796 --> 00:17:37,129 My favorite character out of that set is Chun-Li. 184 00:17:37,421 --> 00:17:40,337 I think most of the fighting game depictions of Chinese characters 185 00:17:40,629 --> 00:17:43,754 when the games come from Japan can be negative or stereotyped. 186 00:17:44,046 --> 00:17:47,046 And in Chun-Li we just see this awesome admired hero. 187 00:17:47,504 --> 00:17:51,504 Guile just looked cool. The flat top, the army fatigues, the camo. 188 00:17:51,962 --> 00:17:57,962 The sonic boom and the flash kick looked really cool. And his stage with the jet was very iconic. 189 00:18:22,712 --> 00:18:26,296 I do think the global nature of the characters and the setting for the game helped 190 00:18:26,587 --> 00:18:31,129 make it a worldwide phenomenon, not necessarily in a localization kind of way where people were playing 191 00:18:31,421 --> 00:18:35,921 because they felt represented, but it did give it A, a grandness of scope 192 00:18:36,296 --> 00:18:41,296 and B, just allowed them to touch on every possible martial arts style 193 00:18:41,587 --> 00:18:44,129 or trope that they could think of. 194 00:18:51,379 --> 00:18:55,004 The happy accident in there is the fact that there was combos. 195 00:18:55,296 --> 00:18:56,837 Those kind of natural combos were in there, 196 00:18:57,129 --> 00:19:01,212 but the actual cancels or two in ones, that's a happy accident. 197 00:19:01,504 --> 00:19:05,587 That where suddenly the competitive play exploded. 198 00:19:37,337 --> 00:19:40,796 A game is neat, but if you can imagine playing the game without those 199 00:19:41,087 --> 00:19:43,754 without two in ones or cancels... 200 00:19:44,046 --> 00:19:47,254 It had legs, but it wouldn't have the kind of legs that ended up having. 201 00:19:49,796 --> 00:19:51,296 The special move was a special move. 202 00:19:51,587 --> 00:19:57,837 The fact that in Street Fighter you had light, medium and hard versions of all the moves 203 00:19:58,171 --> 00:20:03,962 that had their own uses for combos or depending on the height and trajectory of someone's flying attack, 204 00:20:04,296 --> 00:20:10,046 little baby Dragon Punches that level of multi dimensionality 205 00:20:10,546 --> 00:20:13,087 tactics, strategy... like chess, isn't it? 206 00:20:24,046 --> 00:20:25,962 So I think the music was definitely 207 00:20:26,254 --> 00:20:28,212 a crucial part of the Streetfighter experience. 208 00:20:31,379 --> 00:20:36,004 They're memorable from the standpoint that they're always playing in the background and as we played Street Fighter 209 00:20:36,296 --> 00:20:40,629 so frequently, the song started just getting in our brains and loops and stuff like that. 210 00:21:47,087 --> 00:21:48,587 The quality of the songs 211 00:21:48,879 --> 00:21:54,587 and their catchiness as far as in relation to matching the levels that they were part of were really crucial 212 00:21:54,879 --> 00:21:59,796 because it just felt like a cohesive experience between the character, the background and the music. 213 00:22:00,087 --> 00:22:04,337 There are moments that resonate with me, and if I were to have to choose one song, 214 00:22:04,629 --> 00:22:08,462 it have to be Vegas stage because it's very fast paced, it's very energetic. 215 00:22:09,171 --> 00:22:14,962 It matches sort of his background, his level very well, but it makes the battle feel very intense, 216 00:22:15,254 --> 00:22:17,837 almost like the timer is going faster and faster and faster. 217 00:24:15,629 --> 00:24:17,879 So in Coin-op, the way that they would test the game is 218 00:24:18,171 --> 00:24:22,337 they'd sent a printed circuit board over to us basically stick it in a cab and off we go. 219 00:24:22,629 --> 00:24:25,337 So in February of 1991, I got the board. 220 00:24:25,629 --> 00:24:29,046 I'd already have a meeting set up with the distributors to launch it. 221 00:24:29,421 --> 00:24:31,629 They were testing not two blocks from where I lived. 222 00:24:31,921 --> 00:24:33,796 It just completely captured my imagination. 223 00:24:34,087 --> 00:24:37,796 Oh, there's a guy throwing sonic booms and there's a stretchy guy. 224 00:24:38,171 --> 00:24:41,796 At that time, if you had a game that was doing 225 00:24:42,087 --> 00:24:45,629 five or $600 a week to start off, you were doing pretty well. 226 00:24:45,921 --> 00:24:49,171 And of course I'm monitoring the sales, booking my flights because I got to go down 227 00:24:49,462 --> 00:24:52,504 and report some earnings and you need a seven day earnings to report. 228 00:24:53,004 --> 00:24:58,587 So it's like $523 for the earnings for the five days. 229 00:24:59,046 --> 00:25:02,671 So I said, well, I'm going around it out and just say, we headed there for seven days 230 00:25:02,962 --> 00:25:05,837 and it did 750 bucks for a week, which was very impressive. 231 00:25:06,129 --> 00:25:08,629 So everybody was very excited about it. 232 00:25:09,379 --> 00:25:12,546 Those units went out and I sold 900 way too fast 233 00:25:13,004 --> 00:25:17,212 because of my $750 earnings were really $900 234 00:25:17,879 --> 00:25:20,712 and that they were asking for a second game and a third game. 235 00:25:21,004 --> 00:25:25,046 And every time I got in another game, their overall gross went up to the point 236 00:25:25,337 --> 00:25:29,379 where I think at one point they were probably operating 12 or 13 of them in one location. 237 00:25:32,421 --> 00:25:35,671 So that this kid is like, ouch, I've just played Street Fighter 2. 238 00:25:35,962 --> 00:25:37,212 Said, "Oh, what's it like?" 239 00:25:37,504 --> 00:25:38,921 He was like, was almost shaking, right. 240 00:25:39,212 --> 00:25:41,421 They said, it is amazing, man. You've got to play it. 241 00:25:42,421 --> 00:25:44,379 Everybody seem massively excited about it. 242 00:25:44,671 --> 00:25:48,587 And it was almost like, say, Nirvana or Terminator 2 or anything else 243 00:25:48,879 --> 00:25:52,921 around those time in the 90's that was like a must see movie or a must have album. 244 00:25:53,337 --> 00:25:55,962 And Street Fighter 2 was a must play and must own game. 245 00:25:56,421 --> 00:25:59,087 When Street Fighter 2 dropped, arcades were really in decline. 246 00:25:59,379 --> 00:26:01,837 That notion of heading to the arcades, so you could chase the high score. 247 00:26:02,129 --> 00:26:05,337 It was really not much reason to do that when you could do the same thing on your home console. 248 00:26:05,629 --> 00:26:08,754 But then Street Fighter 2 arrives and there is a reason to go to the arcade 249 00:26:09,087 --> 00:26:11,087 because you've got to prove that you're the king of the mall. 250 00:26:13,129 --> 00:26:15,671 I saw the game in the arcades a few times. 251 00:26:15,962 --> 00:26:19,921 It wasn't that well known and says something very special about it. 252 00:26:20,254 --> 00:26:23,296 It was just very, very playable and I really wanted to talk about it. 253 00:26:23,587 --> 00:26:27,879 I wrote about it for the first time in an editorial in Mean Machines magazine. 254 00:26:28,171 --> 00:26:32,712 Mean Machines was the magazine that I read about Street Fighter 2 in first, 255 00:26:33,004 --> 00:26:35,046 and they'd say, oh, you know, this new arcade machines out. It's amazing. 256 00:26:35,337 --> 00:26:36,629 It's going to take the world by storm. 257 00:26:36,921 --> 00:26:42,129 This one Arcade and Water Street in London had an entire wall of Street Fighter 2 258 00:26:42,421 --> 00:26:44,546 all occupied with people waiting to get on it. 259 00:26:44,837 --> 00:26:47,212 That's when you knew that it was serious. 260 00:26:47,504 --> 00:26:48,296 It was intimidating. 261 00:26:48,587 --> 00:26:54,254 So it was such a popular arcade that there was a queue of people with their 20p, 10p laid down 262 00:26:54,546 --> 00:26:59,296 and you would get on there for maybe one game, get absolutely thrashed, and then you're just watching. 263 00:26:59,587 --> 00:27:02,587 It took like 20 minutes to get my turn and I got killed right away. 264 00:27:02,879 --> 00:27:06,879 Street Fighter 2 was, you know, center stage, everyone crowding around it, 265 00:27:07,171 --> 00:27:10,879 people leaving their credits for my other games to come over and watch the crowd of Street Fighter players. 266 00:27:11,254 --> 00:27:12,754 This is like the ultimate Karate Champ. 267 00:27:13,046 --> 00:27:14,171 This is so awesome. 268 00:27:14,462 --> 00:27:14,796 I played it. 269 00:27:15,087 --> 00:27:17,796 I put all my quarters into it and I got fairly good. 270 00:27:18,087 --> 00:27:19,671 I kind of grew naturally to it. 271 00:27:19,962 --> 00:27:23,754 That's the first time I'd ever seen a game literally take over an entire arcade. 272 00:27:24,087 --> 00:27:26,587 You go in there, you get your butt handed to you by the AI. 273 00:27:26,879 --> 00:27:28,504 But then when you're squaring off against one another, 274 00:27:28,796 --> 00:27:31,671 you're kind of learning the game and just figuring things out together. 275 00:27:32,796 --> 00:27:34,837 They're just like, yeah, you know, do this, do fireball. 276 00:27:35,254 --> 00:27:37,212 I don't know. You go like this to do the sonic boom thing. 277 00:27:37,504 --> 00:27:42,004 A lot of times when you have new arcade games come out that people are interested in, there's a lot of like 278 00:27:42,296 --> 00:27:46,754 rumor and hearsay about what's in it, and that sparks a lot of imagination about what's real or not. 279 00:27:47,046 --> 00:27:48,962 So everything was spread word of mouth. 280 00:27:49,337 --> 00:27:51,671 I still remember to this day it was this guy. 281 00:27:51,962 --> 00:27:53,837 He was older than me. I was probably eight. 282 00:27:54,129 --> 00:27:55,462 He had a girl, his arms. 283 00:27:55,754 --> 00:27:58,171 He came over and he's like, oh, I'm going to beat that punk. 284 00:27:58,671 --> 00:28:00,921 And I was like, Oh, sure. Like, I'll play you. 285 00:28:01,337 --> 00:28:05,796 And definitely he was trying to get my quarter because if he wins, he continues, I remember I beat him. 286 00:28:06,212 --> 00:28:07,587 I beat him really bad. 287 00:28:07,879 --> 00:28:12,046 And by the time the match was over, his girl had left and he was just like, well, where is she? 288 00:28:12,504 --> 00:28:14,671 And I learned a very valuable lesson. 289 00:28:14,962 --> 00:28:16,337 Women don't care about Street Fighter. 290 00:28:18,087 --> 00:28:22,587 Here we are, the source of all Street Fighter strategy. Capcom headquarters in Northern California. 291 00:28:23,337 --> 00:28:26,671 Another job I had Capcom... I was a man of many jobs. 292 00:28:27,087 --> 00:28:29,546 James here is a resident Street Fighter 2 expert. 293 00:28:30,046 --> 00:28:32,712 Rumor has it you got a new Guile killer combo. 294 00:28:33,004 --> 00:28:33,671 You got it, man. 295 00:28:33,962 --> 00:28:38,004 Because I also was basically, I guess, their first community manager. 296 00:28:38,546 --> 00:28:40,504 Oh, yeah. Hey, you're the guy who knows Tomo, right? 297 00:28:40,962 --> 00:28:42,754 Hey Tomo, you know this guy, right? 298 00:28:43,712 --> 00:28:45,421 No, I've never seen him before. 299 00:28:46,379 --> 00:28:49,796 But when people would call in about Street Fighter with rumors and that's 300 00:28:50,087 --> 00:28:51,837 how we started hearing about handcuffs. 301 00:28:52,129 --> 00:28:54,212 And we start hearing about Dhalsim disappearing. 302 00:28:54,837 --> 00:28:55,837 What is this now? Right. 303 00:28:56,129 --> 00:28:58,629 Can we just go back to Sheng Long? What is happening? 304 00:29:00,921 --> 00:29:03,837 Yes. Guile had handcuffs and the body would get locked on. 305 00:29:04,129 --> 00:29:05,587 And this caused a lot of fights. 306 00:29:05,879 --> 00:29:09,962 What would happen is, you know, little cheeky guys would learn it against the CPU 307 00:29:10,629 --> 00:29:13,671 and then they would do it against the human opponent and then leave the arcade. 308 00:29:14,546 --> 00:29:18,004 Now, it's a very specific command to escape the handcuffs, 309 00:29:18,379 --> 00:29:21,004 but if you don't escape the handcuffs before the time runs out, 310 00:29:21,296 --> 00:29:24,421 the game infinitely freezes on that single frame of no time 311 00:29:24,712 --> 00:29:29,087 with Guile, with the opponent in handcuffs not moving, neither player can move nor start a new credit 312 00:29:29,379 --> 00:29:33,421 because the game thinks that the game is still running because the timer is on, but there's no time left. 313 00:29:33,712 --> 00:29:36,962 And this one time a guy did handcuffs and left and I didn't know how to escape it then. 314 00:29:37,504 --> 00:29:40,587 And on like 10 seconds left because these guys were freaking 315 00:29:40,879 --> 00:29:41,879 Oh my god. Gonna lose the credits, man. 316 00:29:42,171 --> 00:29:42,546 Quick, don't you know how to do it? 317 00:29:42,837 --> 00:29:43,212 Get on it, man. 318 00:29:43,504 --> 00:29:46,587 And then this guy just casually walks over and goes... 319 00:29:50,171 --> 00:29:52,379 They're going "continue now" and just walks off. 320 00:29:52,671 --> 00:29:54,796 Yeah, that was a very powerful tool. 321 00:29:55,087 --> 00:29:56,171 If you knew it. 322 00:29:58,796 --> 00:30:00,046 Seeing moves and learning 323 00:30:00,337 --> 00:30:03,587 that they had a complicated input to achieve them, 324 00:30:03,879 --> 00:30:08,171 that it required a kind of elevated level of skill to pull off. 325 00:30:08,462 --> 00:30:10,879 Suddenly there's an eliteism now. 326 00:30:11,171 --> 00:30:14,546 There's people that have put in the training that can do moves that you can't. 327 00:30:14,921 --> 00:30:15,879 It's never been seen before. 328 00:30:16,171 --> 00:30:19,504 Re-dizzy combo by Guile, double sonic boom re-dizzy. 329 00:30:19,796 --> 00:30:21,754 Pull up that game screen over there, and I'll talk you through it right. 330 00:30:22,046 --> 00:30:22,796 All right! 331 00:30:23,087 --> 00:30:24,421 The feedback was pretty universal. 332 00:30:24,712 --> 00:30:27,379 Everybody want to play the same character. Everybody wanted to play the same bosses. 333 00:30:27,921 --> 00:30:32,171 The more we did tournaments, the more that was obvious, especially when you're having to make rules like, 334 00:30:32,462 --> 00:30:33,171 All right, ready? 335 00:30:33,462 --> 00:30:38,629 We're going to toss a coin that's two out of three coin tosses gets to pick side 336 00:30:39,212 --> 00:30:42,671 or character, because even which side you played on was a thing back then. 337 00:30:42,962 --> 00:30:47,087 It's like, oh damn, I really want to play Guile, but I really want that right side. 338 00:30:47,379 --> 00:30:50,921 So I'll take the right side. I'm taking Guile. Dammit! 339 00:32:18,462 --> 00:32:20,087 So Street Fighter 2's popularity in the west 340 00:32:20,379 --> 00:32:24,754 is really rooted around this head to head shoulder to shoulder arcade dynamic that super competitive. 341 00:32:25,129 --> 00:32:26,587 That wasn't the way it was in Japan. 342 00:32:26,879 --> 00:32:30,254 The notion of person versus person game play was slower to develop. 343 00:32:30,587 --> 00:32:34,421 And even today you go to an arcade in Japan that has Street Fighter machines, they're positioned 344 00:32:34,712 --> 00:32:35,462 opposite one another. 345 00:32:35,754 --> 00:32:38,129 So even if you're playing someone else, you can't see that person. 346 00:32:39,087 --> 00:32:43,254 Because the Japanese were playing differently than us and because socially walking up 347 00:32:43,546 --> 00:32:47,337 and just being like sitting down next to a stranger and being like, I'm just going to play, you know? 348 00:32:47,629 --> 00:32:49,546 It's was like, that's not that's rude. That's not how it works. 349 00:32:49,879 --> 00:32:51,546 I ended up at an arcade show playing 350 00:32:51,837 --> 00:32:57,087 one of the best street fighter players from Japan at the time from Gamest magazine. 351 00:32:57,754 --> 00:33:01,296 So I go playing all eight characters, I go 50/50 with them. 352 00:33:01,629 --> 00:33:05,129 And he was like, wow, you're one of the best players in the U.S.? 353 00:33:05,421 --> 00:33:08,212 I go, I don't even make top 16 in my local tournament. 354 00:33:08,504 --> 00:33:09,712 And it shocked him. 355 00:33:10,004 --> 00:33:14,629 You know, I said, that's because we play Wild West cry school style. 356 00:33:14,962 --> 00:33:16,087 It's just whose the best. 357 00:33:16,379 --> 00:33:21,754 And so until Japan starts playing that way, they're never going to be as good as us, right? 358 00:33:22,046 --> 00:33:24,254 It's kind of a little taunt. 359 00:33:24,546 --> 00:33:26,837 And he's like, oh, so he went and wrote an article about it. 360 00:33:27,129 --> 00:33:28,837 And then I worked out with him. 361 00:33:29,129 --> 00:33:33,587 We'll make it on the Japanese version that if you hit the second player button, it flashes. 362 00:33:33,879 --> 00:33:37,921 I welcome any player in Japanese and we changed it to winner stays, loser pays. 363 00:33:38,212 --> 00:33:41,671 That changed everything. So now all of a sudden they're playing head to head too. 364 00:33:41,962 --> 00:33:45,671 Now a lot more money is pouring in, so more units are being sold. 365 00:33:45,962 --> 00:33:46,796 It was a worldwide hit. 366 00:34:29,921 --> 00:34:32,296 We just kept trying to stop Street Fighter 2, 367 00:34:33,879 --> 00:34:35,421 and guys just kept saying, well, can you just... 368 00:34:35,712 --> 00:34:38,462 and then next think you know... No, I'll, I'll do a thousand more and that's it. 369 00:34:39,712 --> 00:34:46,296 Well then Sugimoto had the problem of keeping a young development team in Japan, 370 00:34:46,587 --> 00:34:49,379 keep them hungry and they want another game to come out. 371 00:34:49,671 --> 00:34:53,004 They just did not want to be known as a one trick pony and Street Fighter. 372 00:34:53,296 --> 00:34:56,879 So there was a game called Captain Commando, which was a tremendous turd. 373 00:35:01,337 --> 00:35:03,796 Japanese felt and wasn't, you know, done. 374 00:35:04,087 --> 00:35:07,796 They were going to work on Captain Commando. That was their big next game was Captain Commando. 375 00:35:08,337 --> 00:35:11,754 And yeah, there was a lot of energy into that. 376 00:35:13,337 --> 00:35:14,879 It wasn't earning well at all 377 00:35:15,171 --> 00:35:18,421 and it was a four player game and there was all kinds of problems with it. 378 00:35:19,462 --> 00:35:22,754 And James Goddard said to me, 379 00:35:23,046 --> 00:35:26,337 Jeff, you got to come down to Sunnyvale Golf Land. 380 00:35:26,629 --> 00:35:31,462 The kids are all dressed up as the characters and they're in huge arguments 381 00:35:32,004 --> 00:35:34,546 because they can't play the same character. 382 00:35:35,087 --> 00:35:36,254 So I went down there, I saw this. 383 00:35:36,546 --> 00:35:40,879 I saw these two young girls dress up like Chun-Li, and she goes, It's my turn next. 384 00:35:41,171 --> 00:35:41,796 I'm playing that game. 385 00:35:42,087 --> 00:35:43,754 Or they're trying to coordinate playing each other. 386 00:35:44,046 --> 00:35:45,962 But the game wasn't facilitating their form. 387 00:35:46,754 --> 00:35:50,171 So I had to ask Jeff Walker how to make it happen because I saw an opportunity 388 00:35:50,462 --> 00:35:51,421 and he saw that opportunity. 389 00:35:51,712 --> 00:35:54,629 He saw people waiting, wanting to play the same characters. 390 00:35:54,921 --> 00:35:55,962 He looked at me, I looked at him. 391 00:35:56,254 --> 00:35:58,296 I go, looks like a pretty easy fix to me. 392 00:35:58,671 --> 00:36:01,379 He helped me pitch it the right way, which is business first. 393 00:36:03,296 --> 00:36:06,421 I said, James, are you telling me that if we just had a couple more characters 394 00:36:06,712 --> 00:36:10,712 and we allow them to be the same character and play the same game, we can run this thing again. 395 00:36:11,212 --> 00:36:13,337 He said, not only can we run again, I think it would be bigger. 396 00:36:13,671 --> 00:36:15,587 I'm positive. 397 00:36:16,171 --> 00:36:17,004 So what should we call it? 398 00:36:17,296 --> 00:36:20,796 I said we have to set this thing up so we can facilitate tournaments with them. 399 00:36:21,087 --> 00:36:23,837 So let's call it Championship Edition. 400 00:36:24,129 --> 00:36:26,796 I get on a phone in Japan, got an idea. 401 00:36:27,296 --> 00:36:31,004 So Sugimoto says to me, so let me tell you something right now if you can guarantee me 402 00:36:31,296 --> 00:36:34,796 we can do a thousand uprights on that thing, I'll roll into it. 403 00:36:36,087 --> 00:36:37,337 So okay, we can do a thousand. 404 00:36:38,462 --> 00:36:40,504 Do you mind if I fly 405 00:36:40,796 --> 00:36:43,504 and I hear that from your distributors mouths? 406 00:36:45,004 --> 00:36:45,796 No problem. 407 00:36:46,087 --> 00:36:49,837 So I brought in eight of my biggest distributors from around the country. 408 00:36:50,129 --> 00:36:55,171 They flew in, sat there, Sugimoto sat there, and he says, I need to see a commitment of a thousand games. 409 00:36:55,462 --> 00:36:59,962 Let's start with you, Peter Betti from Betson Pacific, who represented 33%. 410 00:37:00,254 --> 00:37:01,504 And he said, OK, I'll take a thousand. 411 00:37:02,296 --> 00:37:03,629 Next. 412 00:37:04,129 --> 00:37:06,337 So within just in that meeting 413 00:37:06,629 --> 00:37:09,754 we'd already sold about 8000 units. 414 00:37:10,962 --> 00:37:16,379 But you in concept learned a lot about what's involved in all the changes 415 00:37:16,671 --> 00:37:18,754 to make a game like that land. 416 00:37:19,046 --> 00:37:21,046 And we really did a great job on that thing. 417 00:37:23,421 --> 00:37:27,212 We're going to maximize the sales. One is I got to keep the earnings up in the street. 418 00:37:27,504 --> 00:37:30,587 These operators are too quickly to discount the pricing. 419 00:37:31,671 --> 00:37:35,379 Right now, the game went out to 50 cent start 25 cent to continue play. 420 00:37:35,671 --> 00:37:37,546 I'm so confident in the game, I'm locking them out. 421 00:37:37,837 --> 00:37:43,254 They're going to go 50/50 and also another thing a dirty little part of the business is 422 00:37:43,671 --> 00:37:47,129 you got to collect your money because they're only paying you while you're red hot. 423 00:37:47,837 --> 00:37:50,879 So I starved the market and I set and I kept building them. 424 00:37:51,171 --> 00:37:55,254 I took the three different factors, build them at the time I set and I waited and I waited. 425 00:37:55,546 --> 00:37:56,629 I said, everybody pay their bills. 426 00:37:56,921 --> 00:37:59,296 Everyone get their operators collect it up. Everyone paid me. 427 00:37:59,671 --> 00:38:00,296 Here they come. 428 00:38:01,962 --> 00:38:05,837 Champion Edition would go on to actually sell more than the original. 429 00:38:06,129 --> 00:38:12,629 We sold tons of dedicated cabinets, tons of kits, and it wasn't even just in America. 430 00:38:12,921 --> 00:38:15,754 It was a worldwide hit. 431 00:38:16,046 --> 00:38:19,254 And part of the reason that that was well received in Japan is that meanwhile, Akira Nishitani 432 00:38:19,546 --> 00:38:23,546 had been continuing to tinker with the game and realized that he wasn't satisfied with 433 00:38:23,837 --> 00:38:27,879 where he had left the balance, wanted to do some tweaks, but knew he needed to package it with something 434 00:38:28,171 --> 00:38:29,046 bigger and more ambitious. 435 00:38:29,337 --> 00:38:32,046 And this feedback from America gave him carte blanche to do that. 436 00:38:32,337 --> 00:38:34,754 So there's Champion Edition. 437 00:38:35,629 --> 00:38:37,796 But everything about Champion was just amazing. 438 00:38:38,087 --> 00:38:38,837 It had more characters. 439 00:38:39,129 --> 00:38:41,296 You could pick the bosses, which was really anticipated. 440 00:38:41,629 --> 00:38:42,254 They were cool. 441 00:38:42,546 --> 00:38:43,629 There was a new color palette. 442 00:38:43,921 --> 00:38:45,962 Everyone looked really fresh, you know, 443 00:38:47,004 --> 00:38:48,421 the game was faster, which I 444 00:38:48,712 --> 00:38:52,129 personally really liked because it was more of like, Who can beat who to the punch now? 445 00:38:52,421 --> 00:38:54,504 Rather than just building a strategy that you make them follow. 446 00:38:54,837 --> 00:38:56,379 So this was really cool. 447 00:38:56,671 --> 00:38:59,046 I mean, they really did a good job with the champion. 448 00:38:59,337 --> 00:39:00,962 And I put a lot of time into that. 449 00:39:01,254 --> 00:39:04,546 So I have particularly fond memories of playing that particular version. 450 00:39:04,837 --> 00:39:07,796 I think it's well balanced, just a lot of memories tied up. 451 00:39:08,337 --> 00:39:11,004 Playing all the mean machines team. 452 00:39:11,337 --> 00:39:17,129 With how many tournaments at lunch times and sneak off work for a few games. 453 00:39:17,504 --> 00:39:20,296 And just brilliant to have that in the office. 454 00:39:20,587 --> 00:39:21,587 Very lucky. 455 00:39:21,879 --> 00:39:25,712 My favorite is Champion Edition just because that is the, you know, the first tweak 456 00:39:26,087 --> 00:39:30,046 where you can play the bosses, but it really still points to that original character roster. 457 00:39:30,337 --> 00:39:31,421 And I appreciate that so much. 458 00:39:31,712 --> 00:39:35,129 The sort of contrasting set of characters that Akira Yasuda developed. 459 00:39:35,546 --> 00:39:41,254 And I just that to me is the sort of purist execution of the original version for Street Fighter 2. 460 00:39:41,629 --> 00:39:43,421 These are things you put, you just can't plan them. 461 00:39:43,712 --> 00:39:49,046 You just kind of look at what the market is doing, what the players want and go with it and you try things and 462 00:39:50,129 --> 00:39:51,546 We're damn, damn lucky. 463 00:39:51,837 --> 00:39:53,504 But we were listening. 464 00:39:57,504 --> 00:39:58,629 Stay calm. 465 00:39:58,921 --> 00:40:01,129 Concentrate on the screen. 466 00:40:01,421 --> 00:40:03,379 Street Fighter 2 is on Super Nintendo. 467 00:40:03,671 --> 00:40:07,379 From the arcades, the ultimate combat game. 468 00:40:09,587 --> 00:40:12,837 Once the console version was being discussed, the fact that was even possible. 469 00:40:14,129 --> 00:40:14,879 It just seemed crazy. 470 00:40:15,171 --> 00:40:16,837 It would even fit on the Super Nintendo, right? 471 00:40:17,129 --> 00:40:21,004 Everyone knew that Street Fighter 2 coming home was going to be a big deal. 472 00:40:21,379 --> 00:40:23,462 Nintendo was the first one to strike with this. 473 00:40:23,754 --> 00:40:27,462 They obviously had a deal with Capcom, Street Fighter 2 was announced for Super NES. 474 00:40:27,754 --> 00:40:30,296 Everyone was psyched for it. 475 00:40:30,587 --> 00:40:33,504 Crazy what they were able to do to shrink the sprites down just a bit 476 00:40:33,796 --> 00:40:37,546 and still retain the integrity of the way that the game played. 477 00:41:02,712 --> 00:41:06,546 I remembered thinking to myself, my God it looks just like the arcade. 478 00:41:06,921 --> 00:41:09,254 Like it's really, really close. 479 00:41:09,712 --> 00:41:11,504 It felt like it was the full experience. 480 00:41:11,796 --> 00:41:15,129 You'd got all the characters, you'd got the two player modes, you've got the battle mode. 481 00:41:15,421 --> 00:41:19,962 And I thought, this is really exciting because there was the possibility that I could now 482 00:41:20,254 --> 00:41:24,962 play a game without losing my quarter, get familiar with it without the threat of getting 483 00:41:25,254 --> 00:41:26,379 kicked off the cabinet. 484 00:41:26,671 --> 00:41:30,296 You could play Street two on the SNES and go down the arcade 485 00:41:30,587 --> 00:41:35,171 and what you learned at home, you would be able to repeat it in the arcade and become a bit of a legend. 486 00:41:35,462 --> 00:41:35,796 You know. 487 00:41:36,087 --> 00:41:38,004 I remember getting the game into in the office. 488 00:41:38,296 --> 00:41:39,254 Work stopped. 489 00:41:39,546 --> 00:41:44,504 Everybody piled into the office to look at this game and to see whether it lived up to all the hype. 490 00:41:44,879 --> 00:41:46,587 It was an amazing conversion. 491 00:41:46,879 --> 00:41:48,129 It was actually spot on. 492 00:41:48,421 --> 00:41:51,212 It was kind of nervous about what this sport could be. 493 00:41:51,504 --> 00:41:54,296 But then when we got it was the complete package and I couldn't believe it. 494 00:41:54,587 --> 00:42:00,712 I was blessed by my darling mother with the Super Nintendo Streetfighter two package for Christmas. 495 00:42:01,046 --> 00:42:02,671 Yes, I still remember it like it was yesterday. 496 00:42:02,962 --> 00:42:04,837 I can smell the fibers of that cardboard. 497 00:42:05,129 --> 00:42:07,004 I played it all day, all night. 498 00:42:07,296 --> 00:42:08,379 Don't I think I slept for a month. 499 00:42:08,671 --> 00:42:11,171 You can have a tournament, whatever. You've got two or three friends around. 500 00:42:11,462 --> 00:42:15,337 And I remember just spending hours with my mates, you know, we'd have sleepovers and it would just be 501 00:42:15,629 --> 00:42:18,296 the SNES hooked up to a telly and it would be winner stays on 502 00:42:18,587 --> 00:42:20,629 and that would be all you played for hours and hours at a time. 503 00:42:20,921 --> 00:42:25,212 The Super NES pad was made before six button fighters would become a big deal. 504 00:42:25,504 --> 00:42:28,962 So while it did have six buttons with the shoulder buttons, you didn't 505 00:42:29,254 --> 00:42:33,046 have the six face buttons that you would expect from the arcade original. 506 00:42:33,337 --> 00:42:33,879 It's really hard. 507 00:42:34,171 --> 00:42:39,254 D-pad on the Super Nintendo we had played that way was like, oh God, I can't do anything. 508 00:42:39,546 --> 00:42:41,254 I sure as hell to do a walking spinning pile driver. 509 00:42:41,546 --> 00:42:46,712 This is the specific moment, in fact, that I believe caused the rise of six button pads. 510 00:42:47,087 --> 00:42:49,587 Without street Street Fighter 2, we would not have had that. 511 00:42:50,587 --> 00:42:51,629 You win. 512 00:43:02,879 --> 00:43:06,004 So when I got my Mega Drive, that kind of opened my eyes to the fact that, 513 00:43:06,379 --> 00:43:10,171 you know, you could actually get arcade perfect games like Golden Axe and Ghouls'n Ghosts. 514 00:43:10,754 --> 00:43:12,712 Prior to that, I'd been an Atari ST owner. 515 00:43:13,004 --> 00:43:16,504 There'd been a lot of arcade conversions, which would that got the flavor and the essence of the game. 516 00:43:16,796 --> 00:43:19,462 But there was something missing. You know, you've got less fire buttons. 517 00:43:19,921 --> 00:43:23,004 The hardware wasn't really designed for games at that point. 518 00:43:23,587 --> 00:43:26,504 So when US gold got its hands on Street Fighter two and started 519 00:43:26,796 --> 00:43:30,171 releasing ports, of course people were excited, right? 520 00:43:30,546 --> 00:43:32,504 You want this game on your home computer. 521 00:43:32,796 --> 00:43:34,212 That was an exciting thing. 522 00:43:34,504 --> 00:43:37,462 The problem is, is most of the platforms they were targeting 523 00:43:37,879 --> 00:43:41,171 were not up to the task of running a game like this, right? 524 00:43:41,462 --> 00:43:47,837 Yes, the arcade conversions back then were absolutely hit and miss and the basic Amiga version was not good. 525 00:43:48,379 --> 00:43:50,879 It really wasn't much fun playing against the computer at all. 526 00:43:51,171 --> 00:43:55,087 We always played as Dhalsim because it's slightly broken and you can just punch from a distance 527 00:43:55,379 --> 00:43:57,337 and getting the special moves wasn't fun. 528 00:43:57,629 --> 00:43:58,129 It's not good. 529 00:43:58,421 --> 00:44:03,337 Let's be honest, the scrolling is choppy, the sprites look a little bit often awkward. 530 00:44:03,629 --> 00:44:06,879 Everything feels wrong and that's exactly 531 00:44:07,171 --> 00:44:10,754 the same issue with every other home computer version. 532 00:44:11,087 --> 00:44:12,462 They don't feel right. 533 00:44:12,754 --> 00:44:16,546 One of my friends was a big Amiga owner and I can remember the look 534 00:44:16,837 --> 00:44:21,129 of crushing disappointment on his face when he realized that it A, came on about 20 disks 535 00:44:21,587 --> 00:44:26,671 and B, it looked terrible and you'd only got one button to do all those special moves with. 536 00:44:27,004 --> 00:44:31,546 But we played it loads in two player, don't get me wrong, it wasn't great, but it was all we had 537 00:44:31,837 --> 00:44:35,504 and it was clearly still Street Fighter 2 and they're still shouting Shoryuken 538 00:44:35,796 --> 00:44:38,546 and flying across screen. So we were quite happy with that. 539 00:44:39,171 --> 00:44:42,796 I remember my mate, you made a big song oh, I've got the Amiga version of Street Fighter 2. 540 00:44:43,087 --> 00:44:45,296 It's going to be amazing, it's going to blow this SNES version away. 541 00:44:45,587 --> 00:44:47,754 And he's like, oh you know... a click, click. 542 00:44:48,379 --> 00:44:49,962 Okay, well, forget let's play Sensible Soccer again. 543 00:44:50,254 --> 00:44:52,587 So I got to review the Spectrum version of Street Fighter 2. 544 00:44:52,879 --> 00:44:54,879 I don't even remember being able to sort of really even play it. 545 00:44:55,171 --> 00:45:00,171 Actually, I think that's a kind of controller with a with a Kensington joystick with like one button. 546 00:45:00,462 --> 00:45:05,296 The graphics are impressive and the kinds of the games there, but the multi load is an absolute killer. 547 00:45:05,587 --> 00:45:10,087 You have to rewinding and loading from a tape which takes several minutes and you're never quite 548 00:45:10,379 --> 00:45:13,587 sure which position you are on the tape unless you happen to have one on the tape counter. 549 00:45:14,004 --> 00:45:16,546 And it should not have been a thing. 550 00:45:16,837 --> 00:45:20,921 You'd have the amazing artwork on the box and you'd think, okay, so I'm getting in the same game. 551 00:45:21,254 --> 00:45:22,754 Oh, that actually looks like Street Fighter. 552 00:45:23,046 --> 00:45:28,004 I'll pick this up, then you take it home and you're swapping disks and it runs at like 15 frames per second. 553 00:45:28,296 --> 00:45:29,546 And it's, it's terrible. 554 00:45:29,837 --> 00:45:34,087 I mean, that just goes to show you how kind of ruthless and a little bit cruel 555 00:45:34,379 --> 00:45:36,087 some of the publishers were in those days. 556 00:45:36,379 --> 00:45:38,546 Not a great time for conversions. 557 00:45:38,921 --> 00:45:41,379 If you wanted the game at home, you had to play it on Super NES. 558 00:45:41,671 --> 00:45:42,712 At the time. 559 00:45:50,462 --> 00:45:55,629 So Capcom had this team of American operatives, not just the arcade guys, also some creatives 560 00:45:55,921 --> 00:45:59,837 who were looking into how the games might be updated and how they're being received in arcades. 561 00:46:00,171 --> 00:46:05,004 James Goddard was one of those guys and one of the things he noticed was that a wave 562 00:46:05,296 --> 00:46:10,504 of fake hacked editions of Street Fighter were making their way into American arcades. 563 00:46:10,796 --> 00:46:12,837 They're like, Hey, there's another kid on the phone for you 564 00:46:14,254 --> 00:46:15,171 talking about Street Fighter. 565 00:46:15,462 --> 00:46:17,254 Can you just take this call? Sure. Pick it up. 566 00:46:17,546 --> 00:46:21,671 Like, Hey, tell me about like how to do the fireballs in the air. 567 00:46:21,962 --> 00:46:24,129 And I'm like, Oh, man, there's no fireballs in the air. 568 00:46:24,421 --> 00:46:26,171 And he goes, No, I'm seeing it. 569 00:46:26,462 --> 00:46:28,671 It's crazy. And like, there's hurricane kicks in the air. 570 00:46:28,962 --> 00:46:32,879 And then I got another call and then they're talking about it at the arcade. 571 00:46:33,296 --> 00:46:34,837 Sure enough, walk in... 572 00:46:35,129 --> 00:46:38,504 Yeah, there's fireballs in the air and there's just crazy stuff happening. 573 00:46:38,796 --> 00:46:40,254 Sonic booms like 574 00:46:41,462 --> 00:46:42,671 going on a sine wave like this. 575 00:46:42,962 --> 00:46:45,421 And I'm like, Oh, wow. 576 00:46:45,712 --> 00:46:47,004 And it was super fast. 577 00:46:47,296 --> 00:46:49,462 It was probably like 25, 30% faster. 578 00:46:49,879 --> 00:46:53,337 These hacked games arrive Street Fighter Rainbow Edition, which is not a real game, 579 00:46:53,629 --> 00:46:55,921 but it was a hacked game that showed up in arcades everywhere. 580 00:46:56,254 --> 00:46:57,421 Characters had new moves. 581 00:46:57,712 --> 00:47:01,546 The speed of the game was dramatically faster and ultimately this forces 582 00:47:01,837 --> 00:47:05,587 Capcom to realize after initially resisting, especially on the Japanese side, 583 00:47:06,379 --> 00:47:10,212 to kind of come around to yeah this faster game it it's hard to go back to the slow game 584 00:47:10,504 --> 00:47:11,587 once you played the fast game. 585 00:47:11,879 --> 00:47:18,129 Get back to Capcom write a report basically in summary says yes this is real. 586 00:47:18,421 --> 00:47:21,004 It's apparently some kind of a bootleg chip that's been added. 587 00:47:21,504 --> 00:47:26,712 You know, this this game is completely unbalanced and it's fun, but it ruins the game. 588 00:47:27,004 --> 00:47:27,796 So I wrote this report. 589 00:47:28,087 --> 00:47:31,629 I put aside sit down and play Champion Edition and it felt terrible. 590 00:47:32,837 --> 00:47:34,879 I'm just like, I'm completely thrown off. 591 00:47:35,296 --> 00:47:39,421 I go back, scrap my report, and instead I write. 592 00:47:40,129 --> 00:47:44,462 Rainbow Edition represents the greatest threat to our business around Street Fighter 593 00:47:44,921 --> 00:47:49,004 because after just a short time in playing, when it's so much faster, 594 00:47:49,296 --> 00:47:52,712 it changes your perception of the game so the game never feels right again. 595 00:47:53,129 --> 00:47:55,337 Part of the Manufacturers Association. 596 00:47:55,629 --> 00:48:00,921 Distributors Association was a FBI force, if you will, or a committee 597 00:48:01,212 --> 00:48:03,171 that was looking at copy games and where they were coming from. 598 00:48:03,462 --> 00:48:05,296 And most of them are coming from Taiwan. 599 00:48:05,587 --> 00:48:08,587 When we tracked him down, we cut a deal with them 600 00:48:09,046 --> 00:48:12,046 because it was easier to cut a deal with them and take a percentage of what they were selling. 601 00:48:12,337 --> 00:48:16,629 They were servicing all of the third world markets that we really couldn't service anyway. 602 00:48:16,921 --> 00:48:20,879 So Mexico, South America, stuff where we didn't have inventory anyways, 603 00:48:21,171 --> 00:48:25,837 To my knowledge, a deal was cut in Japan and they were making a piece of they get a licensing deal with that. 604 00:48:26,129 --> 00:48:30,962 And in the meantime we were satisfying everybody else and, and keeping the copies out of the US 605 00:48:31,337 --> 00:48:36,754 telling these other companies we don't want to see any in Europe or Asia or Japan or the US. 606 00:48:37,046 --> 00:48:39,254 And it pretty much worked out. So yeah. 607 00:48:39,546 --> 00:48:45,421 After Champion Edition, we have a new system, the new super system coming out, it's more powerful 608 00:48:45,921 --> 00:48:51,379 and we could add more characters and cue sound and there's a lot more we're going to do with it. 609 00:48:51,671 --> 00:48:53,129 So we're going to make Super Street Fighter. 610 00:48:53,421 --> 00:48:55,921 I was like, awesome, this is exciting. We're gonna add four characters. 611 00:48:56,254 --> 00:48:58,671 Wow, that's great. And then Hyper Fighting happened. 612 00:48:59,962 --> 00:49:02,879 We need to make our own ROM. 613 00:49:03,379 --> 00:49:08,462 We've got to make it super exciting and way more balanced and tournament worthy. 614 00:49:08,796 --> 00:49:12,087 And so that's how Hyper Fighting came to be, is we pitched it and it was like, 615 00:49:12,379 --> 00:49:16,421 Oh, here we go, like more ideas from the US and we don't... 616 00:49:16,712 --> 00:49:19,421 We're in the middle of Super Street Fighter. We don't really want to do this. 617 00:49:19,712 --> 00:49:24,546 And none of us, none of us wanted to touch Champion Edition, but Rainbow Edition was out there 618 00:49:24,837 --> 00:49:28,421 and the operators were buying it like crazy and it was going to wreck everything. 619 00:49:28,921 --> 00:49:31,421 So I foolishly and epically 620 00:49:32,129 --> 00:49:35,921 in front of a roomful of designers where I should have had my mouth shut, apparently. 621 00:49:36,254 --> 00:49:39,671 Go, give me five changes we've tested here in Japan. 622 00:49:39,962 --> 00:49:44,962 And if it doesn't work, then we can write, "It's a failure" and then we'll just stop. 623 00:49:45,671 --> 00:49:50,379 We go through the five changes, Hurricane Kicks in the air, Chun-Li Bird Kick in the air 624 00:49:50,921 --> 00:49:54,254 Chun-Li Fireball. Blanka ball in the air. 625 00:49:54,587 --> 00:49:57,546 And Dhalsim disappearing. Its 15% faster. 626 00:49:57,879 --> 00:50:03,254 They tested literally two and a half hours away by train to make sure it's been nowhere near the office 627 00:50:03,546 --> 00:50:06,671 to embarrass themselves. It's over there on site testing. 628 00:50:06,962 --> 00:50:09,546 It was phenomenal. They're just like freaking out. 629 00:50:09,837 --> 00:50:14,462 There was a line, what, an hour long line to play without that many people around cheering. 630 00:50:14,754 --> 00:50:19,087 And it's coming fresh off the uncertainty of like, hey, did I just risk my entire career 631 00:50:19,379 --> 00:50:23,629 on five changes based on channeling what the players want back home? 632 00:50:23,962 --> 00:50:27,504 I saw them freaking out about and so it was really awesome. 633 00:50:27,837 --> 00:50:32,879 It sold tons of kits, sold actual uprights also worldwide. 634 00:50:33,337 --> 00:50:36,254 So, Hyper Fighting has been the best thing for my career overall 635 00:50:36,712 --> 00:50:38,921 and the worst thing that could have happened to me at Capcom 636 00:50:39,212 --> 00:50:42,546 because after that my career was pretty much done because I caused somebody big 637 00:50:42,837 --> 00:50:46,129 to lose face a couple times, even though I actually didn't intend it, 638 00:50:46,587 --> 00:50:51,004 it absolutely did what we wanted to do, which is destroy Rainbow Edition, want to make it obsolete. 639 00:50:51,546 --> 00:50:56,337 And so high performing was so successful in the middle wasn't planned that, 640 00:50:56,629 --> 00:51:01,171 you know, Super Street Fighter would have had of course correct to address all those things and it didn't. 641 00:51:01,462 --> 00:51:04,004 So did the Street Fighter 2 Turbo characters turn up for the interview, then? 642 00:51:06,754 --> 00:51:09,379 So you're going to show off the new moves then? Great. 643 00:51:10,712 --> 00:51:12,504 Well, that works then. 644 00:51:12,796 --> 00:51:14,087 Well if I'd known you were having this much fun. 645 00:51:14,379 --> 00:51:16,962 I'd never hidden in the lab as I'd pretended to be late. 646 00:51:17,254 --> 00:51:19,754 Street Fighter 2 Turbo. Intimidating. Invincible. Nintendo. 647 00:51:21,046 --> 00:51:22,712 And so a really unique thing about Street Fighter 648 00:51:23,004 --> 00:51:27,129 is that in some ways this was the forerunner to the modern console title. 649 00:51:27,421 --> 00:51:28,837 You know, the Internet supported console title 650 00:51:29,129 --> 00:51:33,337 that gets season one, season two, season three, balance updates, new characters, things like that. 651 00:51:33,712 --> 00:51:38,337 In an age when that wasn't possible, popularity of Street Fighter willed it to be possible. 652 00:51:58,712 --> 00:52:03,129 As the years went on I would get the successive updates of the game. 653 00:52:03,629 --> 00:52:08,087 I think the speed increase I remember with Hyper Fighting, 654 00:52:08,379 --> 00:52:12,254 I remember there was a star system of how fast you wanted it to be. 655 00:52:12,546 --> 00:52:19,504 So experimenting with what's the sweet spot for speed, because I felt like max speed, it was too fast. 656 00:52:19,796 --> 00:52:23,296 You know, It's no different really from upgrading FIFA every year. 657 00:52:23,587 --> 00:52:27,879 You know, it felt like it was a natural progression to do because me and my mates, we were all still playing it. 658 00:52:28,171 --> 00:52:31,462 We're all still obsessed with Street Fighter and the idea that if you didn't buy 659 00:52:31,754 --> 00:52:35,337 this version, you wouldn't be able to play as the bosses and you wouldn't be able to play at the right speed. 660 00:52:35,629 --> 00:52:36,879 You know, no one wanted to miss out. 661 00:52:37,171 --> 00:52:38,046 On the very first one. 662 00:52:38,337 --> 00:52:42,504 Street Fighter two was was fun because we were talking earlier about the different formats 663 00:52:42,796 --> 00:52:46,254 and each of them had a different packaging shape. 664 00:52:47,212 --> 00:52:54,504 I remember having E. Honda just do one hand forward and I sent that off to the art director. 665 00:52:54,921 --> 00:52:57,004 I do remember them asking for this change. 666 00:52:57,296 --> 00:53:03,587 They wanted to really make sure that I tried to accentuate the fact that he could do it like that. 667 00:53:04,046 --> 00:53:07,712 When I got it back, I had the paint out the hand that was just kind of 668 00:53:08,004 --> 00:53:12,337 just thrusting straight out, you know, look like he just did one of these thrusts. 669 00:53:12,629 --> 00:53:13,754 He's flying backwards. 670 00:53:14,046 --> 00:53:17,421 And and it turned out that became the focal 671 00:53:17,712 --> 00:53:19,796 point of the whole box, in my opinion. 672 00:53:20,087 --> 00:53:22,337 It was hugely successful. I can't remember the numbers. 673 00:53:22,629 --> 00:53:25,754 It's four plus million Super Nintendo carts alone. 674 00:53:26,212 --> 00:53:29,837 You know, whatever the Genesis did, it's a it's another worldwide phenomenon. 675 00:53:41,296 --> 00:53:45,587 The thing is, is this was still early days for the console war, if you will, at the time. 676 00:53:45,921 --> 00:53:47,837 But Sega Genesis was big in America. 677 00:53:48,129 --> 00:53:50,171 It was known for its big arcade style games. 678 00:53:50,462 --> 00:53:55,087 So the fact that the still new Super NES was getting Street Fighter 2 it felt kind of like 679 00:53:55,379 --> 00:54:00,129 a blow for Sega fans to be honest I was more I love them both, but I was more of a Sega guy. 680 00:54:00,421 --> 00:54:05,671 I mean, I think Street Fighter was one of those series that the battle lines were drawn between Sega and Nintendo 681 00:54:06,046 --> 00:54:11,254 because obviously Nintendo scored a massive coup by having the first game ported to the Super Famicom 682 00:54:11,546 --> 00:54:16,796 and I remember the hype around that being absolutely massive, purely just because they'd secured the license. 683 00:54:17,337 --> 00:54:19,962 Well, I mean, Nintendo sort of famously had 684 00:54:20,421 --> 00:54:25,046 an advertisement that said you're not going to get this on Sega Mega Drive. 685 00:54:25,462 --> 00:54:27,962 Of course they were wrong. And they eventually did come out. 686 00:54:41,629 --> 00:54:46,587 It was obviously a big deal, right? But the thing is that the road to this conversion was a difficult one. 687 00:54:46,879 --> 00:54:53,587 Traditionally Capcom games they appeared on Sega's 16-bit system had actually been developed by Sega itself, 688 00:54:53,879 --> 00:54:59,671 but at some point Capcom took over the project and they delivered the final version, if you will. 689 00:55:00,212 --> 00:55:03,212 It comes remarkably close to matching the Super NES version. 690 00:55:03,629 --> 00:55:07,087 In fact, it looks like it was directly based upon it and that was also 691 00:55:07,379 --> 00:55:11,087 one of those games that pushed the arrival of the six button controller. 692 00:55:11,421 --> 00:55:15,712 That six button pad really felt like a big difference to me because you had 693 00:55:16,462 --> 00:55:19,754 instead of having two of the buttons on the shoulders, which was sometimes hard to get for combos 694 00:55:20,046 --> 00:55:23,712 and stuff, you had all six buttons on the front of the pad, which made things a lot easier. 695 00:55:24,171 --> 00:55:29,379 That new six button pad ended up being vastly superior Street Fighter over the Super NES 696 00:55:29,671 --> 00:55:35,962 which is a roundabout way of saying I did ultimately prefer the game on Sega Genesis 697 00:55:36,296 --> 00:55:39,754 because of this pad you could do those quarter circle moves perfectly. 698 00:55:40,171 --> 00:55:41,879 Whether you were on Sega or Nintendo, 699 00:55:42,171 --> 00:55:48,462 you were treated to an exceptionally high quality conversion of what was a fairly demanding arcade game at the time. 700 00:55:55,296 --> 00:55:58,296 The guy that brought me Street Fighter, his name was Denny Moore, 701 00:55:58,587 --> 00:56:03,296 he worked for Moore & Price Design, up near Palo Alto in California. 702 00:56:03,921 --> 00:56:07,546 He was a real go getter, entrepreneur guy, really fun guy to work with. 703 00:56:07,837 --> 00:56:10,587 You never met him for the first ten years of working with him. 704 00:56:10,879 --> 00:56:13,921 He had a relationship with Capcom already. 705 00:56:14,379 --> 00:56:21,462 He sent me three screenshots of the video game and they said, we want to feature Blanka 706 00:56:21,837 --> 00:56:25,671 I guess it was Ryu and Chun-Li, so give us some sketches. 707 00:56:25,962 --> 00:56:30,921 And anyway, so I went to work and did two or three sketches and had a lot of fun. 708 00:56:31,212 --> 00:56:32,254 They were really happy with it. 709 00:56:32,546 --> 00:56:37,087 It is probably the most iconic piece that I think I did of all of them. 710 00:56:37,379 --> 00:56:41,921 The artwork's not terrible, I regret one of my interviews that I actually said that because it's like, 711 00:56:42,212 --> 00:56:43,129 No, the artworks awesome. 712 00:56:43,421 --> 00:56:47,796 You know how things were back then, like on TV and all the box covers. 713 00:56:48,087 --> 00:56:50,296 It was all real, like fantasy and epic. 714 00:56:50,587 --> 00:56:53,504 But the guy is super talented. The artwork is not his fault, it's his style. 715 00:56:53,796 --> 00:56:57,629 He's been asked, do his style, Western style and not Japanese style. 716 00:56:58,046 --> 00:57:01,837 Just as a way of promoting the next Street Fighter. 717 00:57:02,129 --> 00:57:05,921 I think I did maybe eight or ten characters, 718 00:57:06,212 --> 00:57:08,879 just small, small little pieces, 719 00:57:09,879 --> 00:57:14,546 kind of in an action posed in my style instead of what was available 720 00:57:14,837 --> 00:57:18,587 for them at the time was just the Japanese versions. 721 00:57:19,212 --> 00:57:23,046 Well, I always thought that I was realistic, but I really wasn't. 722 00:57:23,337 --> 00:57:26,921 I mean, I was I was actually a step or two behind 723 00:57:27,254 --> 00:57:31,546 the people that were doing all those illustrations for the Japanese covers. 724 00:57:31,837 --> 00:57:37,587 I mean, it wasn't anything I admired all that much, but now it's like one of my favorite art forms. 725 00:57:37,879 --> 00:57:39,879 I mean, there are just beautiful. 726 00:57:40,212 --> 00:57:44,129 Looking at the original artwork, I felt like all I could do 727 00:57:44,421 --> 00:57:48,504 was just be myself and based on my influences, 728 00:57:49,087 --> 00:57:53,629 I was going to redraw and repaint these characters, doing their fighting moves. 729 00:57:54,296 --> 00:57:58,462 But try not to compete against the Japanese style. 730 00:57:59,004 --> 00:58:01,129 We would write about it almost every month. 731 00:58:01,504 --> 00:58:05,337 Because readers wanted to read everything they could about the game. 732 00:58:05,629 --> 00:58:08,837 It was, you know, it was always a joke. ls Street Fighter 2 733 00:58:09,129 --> 00:58:13,879 mentioned on the cover of the magazine, because if it's not, it's not going to sell as well. 734 00:58:14,171 --> 00:58:20,962 So you've got interesting things like this Street Fighter 2 Special Champion Edition Mean Machine Sega poster book. 735 00:58:21,379 --> 00:58:25,504 But it's not bad, actually. The art works pretty nice all the way through, 736 00:58:25,796 --> 00:58:30,962 so there's a poster of each of your favorite characters and yeah, it's nicely drawn, it's nicely put together. 737 00:58:31,462 --> 00:58:33,421 That's quite a nice, nice little thing, that. 738 00:58:33,921 --> 00:58:36,212 Announcing the all new official strategy guide. 739 00:58:36,504 --> 00:58:37,796 For Street Fighter 2. 740 00:58:38,087 --> 00:58:41,004 From the Masters of Menace, Game Pro magazine. 741 00:58:41,629 --> 00:58:48,129 On the original Game Pro Guide, I got invited to consult and so it was done in a way that was good. 742 00:58:49,046 --> 00:58:51,921 Like, here's the moves and here's stuff about the character. 743 00:58:52,212 --> 00:58:57,087 And it was it was a really good book, you know, It was like a fighting game guide was kind of new. 744 00:58:57,379 --> 00:59:02,171 There's a lot of Japanese magazines covering Street Fighter like crazy, especially by Champ Edition. 745 00:59:02,504 --> 00:59:06,921 And so, you know, there's a lot more stuff being written about techniques and all that. 746 00:59:07,212 --> 00:59:10,962 And now because of that, Capcom, they're giving me all kinds of books and I'm looking through them. 747 00:59:11,254 --> 00:59:13,671 I'm going not even been able to read. 748 00:59:14,004 --> 00:59:17,087 I'm seeing collision boxes. I'm seeing notes about timing. 749 00:59:17,379 --> 00:59:19,337 I'm seeing notes about how much damage. 750 00:59:19,629 --> 00:59:23,921 So when hyper fighting comes around, especially being the co-lead hyper fighting designer, 751 00:59:24,212 --> 00:59:27,254 I definitely had some say in how that book was going to go, 752 00:59:27,796 --> 00:59:30,712 and I got a chance to be like a co-lead author on it. 753 00:59:31,004 --> 00:59:35,754 The difference in how we approached it was we want to model off of what the Japanese were doing, 754 00:59:36,046 --> 00:59:39,879 but why don't we go Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. 755 00:59:40,462 --> 00:59:42,837 Street Fighter 2 Expert Player's Handbook. 756 00:59:43,254 --> 00:59:45,421 Not only is it got incredible artwork 757 00:59:46,462 --> 00:59:51,587 from throughout the eras of Street Fighter, but it's obviously got tutorials on the basic moves. 758 00:59:51,879 --> 00:59:55,212 And as you progress into progressive combos 759 00:59:55,879 --> 00:59:59,254 looking at this stuff because you know when you've been playing a game for a while, 760 01:00:01,046 --> 01:00:05,212 you almost forget training certain combos, doing a crossover combo, 761 01:00:05,921 --> 01:00:09,837 which is almost like a broken buggy thing in Street Fighter that you can fly 762 01:00:10,129 --> 01:00:13,546 and kick over the player's head, but you're hitting them behind you. 763 01:00:13,837 --> 01:00:16,462 Even though the striking limbs are facing that way. 764 01:00:16,754 --> 01:00:23,087 It's like the hit boxes were a bit dodgy, but people liked it, so they kept these things in. 765 01:00:23,421 --> 01:00:26,962 We had tons and tons of footage we had to edit. We had to do all the combos. 766 01:00:27,254 --> 01:00:28,087 You asked how it was done. 767 01:00:28,379 --> 01:00:31,629 Dave Winstead, Matt Taylor and I did everything. 768 01:00:31,921 --> 01:00:34,337 We actually discovered combos we didn't even know were there. 769 01:00:34,796 --> 01:00:37,921 Maybe doing a light punch, a medium 770 01:00:38,421 --> 01:00:42,462 low punch into a standing fierce uppercut into their shoulder. 771 01:00:42,754 --> 01:00:48,754 You can getting that because the uppercut to shoulder you can was a great knockdown combo 772 01:00:49,129 --> 01:00:53,712 and then with a charge characters that was almost more difficult with Guile 773 01:00:54,421 --> 01:01:00,421 jumping in with that flying kind of slap chop thing that he does that's a certain skill 774 01:01:01,087 --> 01:01:04,754 charging, particularly sonic booms and flash kicks. 775 01:01:05,212 --> 01:01:09,087 I'm really proud of the work that Game Pro did on that because they were they were the first, you know, 776 01:01:09,504 --> 01:01:15,004 later on Matt Taylor would form Versus Books and do just amazing guides with all the top pros 777 01:01:15,296 --> 01:01:17,546 and you know it kept going from there. 778 01:01:23,421 --> 01:01:26,504 We did lots of different promotions for our magazines. 779 01:01:26,796 --> 01:01:29,212 We gave away stickers and badges. 780 01:01:29,504 --> 01:01:35,296 And all sorts of things and we thought, why not try and put a video cassette 781 01:01:35,587 --> 01:01:40,004 on the front of a magazine to promote it, you know, as a cool freebie? 782 01:01:40,296 --> 01:01:44,004 I mean, kind of sums it up, you know, like a nineties 783 01:01:44,671 --> 01:01:50,171 games coverage, like a VHS tape with commentary from a couple of the guys that works on the magazine. 784 01:01:50,504 --> 01:01:54,129 And we're here to teach you how to play Street Fighter 2 like a master. 785 01:01:54,421 --> 01:01:55,962 Unlikely, but it's possible. 786 01:01:56,254 --> 01:02:02,504 So we basically put together what was a very early let's play player guide. 787 01:02:02,796 --> 01:02:05,879 So we went to a recording studio and pretty much did it 788 01:02:06,171 --> 01:02:10,379 all in one take, played the game and just narrated how we were playing. 789 01:02:10,712 --> 01:02:11,587 And now he's on the fence. 790 01:02:11,879 --> 01:02:15,837 Now this is where you want to do the Dragon. And make sure you're well positioned. 791 01:02:16,171 --> 01:02:17,754 He's up... and a miss. 792 01:02:18,046 --> 01:02:19,087 Deary, deary me. 793 01:02:19,379 --> 01:02:21,337 But to give them credit, they knew what they were talking about. 794 01:02:21,629 --> 01:02:25,587 Gary constantly practicing and he would actually go down the arcades and pick up 795 01:02:25,879 --> 01:02:30,754 tips from the kids that are playing in Soho, like religiously for hours and hours and hours. 796 01:02:31,296 --> 01:02:35,421 At various comments over the years, people saying how much they enjoy, 797 01:02:35,921 --> 01:02:39,337 enjoyed watching it, and nearly wore the tape out when they first got it. 798 01:02:39,629 --> 01:02:45,046 It's a fun trip down memory lane watching this old video that's now 30 years old. 799 01:02:45,337 --> 01:02:50,296 With the editorials that they had very good at registering, kind of like what is it 800 01:02:50,587 --> 01:02:58,712 that grabs the attention of people is a kind of created this atmosphere of worldwide competition. 801 01:02:59,004 --> 01:03:02,879 So basically the arena of Street Fighter as a video game became an arena for coverage 802 01:03:03,171 --> 01:03:04,379 in the video game magazines. 803 01:03:04,671 --> 01:03:08,796 It's funny how Street Fighter just kind of rolls out and becomes 804 01:03:09,171 --> 01:03:11,254 every medium that it touches. 805 01:03:17,921 --> 01:03:19,754 The Street Fighter brand just started to be everywhere. 806 01:03:20,046 --> 01:03:23,087 Obviously, there's a Hollywood movie, but also lunchboxes and t-shirts. 807 01:03:23,379 --> 01:03:27,296 And this was just, y'know, maybe alongside Pacman, one of the very first franchises 808 01:03:27,587 --> 01:03:31,462 to sort of get the full run market saturation treatment in terms of merchandise. 809 01:03:31,837 --> 01:03:37,129 Starting to get pulled into discussions about toys and pinball machines and never cereal. 810 01:03:37,421 --> 01:03:38,337 But that's unfortunate. 811 01:03:38,629 --> 01:03:41,837 Because I used to read magazines like Super Play CVG 812 01:03:42,129 --> 01:03:45,171 Mean Machines, and they would occasionally report on what was happening in Japan. 813 01:03:45,879 --> 01:03:49,087 One of the things they did say is that this game's a phenomenon because in Japan 814 01:03:49,379 --> 01:03:53,421 they've got music, CDs and toys and t-shirts and stuff like that. 815 01:03:53,712 --> 01:03:56,212 And that's when I kind of realized, well, this is obviously quite a big thing. 816 01:04:13,046 --> 01:04:17,754 Man, there's all these almost encyclopedic books and stuff coming out in Japan. 817 01:04:18,046 --> 01:04:19,754 I remember to show that off in Super Play. 818 01:04:20,046 --> 01:04:25,254 I think it was like a page was like, Hey, there's an art book just specifically by Street Fighter. 819 01:04:25,546 --> 01:04:28,171 I imported a very expensive book. 820 01:04:28,754 --> 01:04:34,254 The Street Fighter 2, was like a hardback, came with a CD with all the sound effects on it, right. 821 01:04:34,921 --> 01:04:37,337 Amazing artwork. It was so beautiful. 822 01:04:37,879 --> 01:04:42,421 And I just started working at this publisher and I was taking it and say, I've got this, you know? 823 01:04:43,087 --> 01:04:45,837 And the guy there was like, Huh, 824 01:04:46,129 --> 01:04:48,837 we should probably produce something like that here, you know? 825 01:04:49,129 --> 01:04:52,754 So basically what they did, we got permission to sort of use the artwork, 826 01:04:53,087 --> 01:04:55,587 but they just had to scan it all in, and completely wrecked my book. 827 01:04:56,546 --> 01:04:58,171 So I managed to get another one. 828 01:04:58,462 --> 01:05:03,671 The first Game Pro book was Western Art with maybe a couple of pieces of Japanese art. 829 01:05:03,962 --> 01:05:07,754 And so when we went to the Hyper Fighting guide, sorry, I was persuasive enough 830 01:05:08,046 --> 01:05:12,337 and to be able to say, Hey, here are the guidelines for the way we're going to the Hyper Fighting guide. 831 01:05:12,629 --> 01:05:14,046 No American art. 832 01:05:14,337 --> 01:05:17,754 I really like the Super Street Fighter 2 artwork. 833 01:05:18,212 --> 01:05:21,962 I love this artwork as well. That's a great image. That's tattoo worthy. 834 01:05:22,337 --> 01:05:25,879 So here we have everybody's favorite Street Fighter 2 item 835 01:05:26,171 --> 01:05:31,921 Look And Find Street Fighter 2. It's like where's Wally for Street Fighter 2, but is where's Blanka instead? 836 01:05:32,421 --> 01:05:36,462 Here is the USSR factory full of random people 837 01:05:36,754 --> 01:05:41,504 and also Zangieffor I don't know, Blanka wearing a hat on that even on the back it says 838 01:05:42,629 --> 01:05:47,129 "search each of the nine wildly confusing fighting arenas." Is that good? 839 01:05:47,629 --> 01:05:51,962 The gloves are off as far as merchandizing was concerned you know anything they could slap a name on. 840 01:05:52,629 --> 01:05:56,129 So Street Fighter 2 at the apex of its popularity was still early days 841 01:05:56,421 --> 01:06:00,171 for the notion that a video game property could be turned into three dimensional 842 01:06:00,462 --> 01:06:04,421 touch them and hold them toys that could dominate at a retailer like Toys R US. 843 01:06:04,712 --> 01:06:06,296 But everybody wanted a piece of the action. 844 01:06:06,587 --> 01:06:10,421 And early on, Capcom strikes an ill fated deal with Hasbro 845 01:06:10,712 --> 01:06:16,712 to make basically G.I. Joes that are slightly repurposed to look vaguely like street fighter figures. 846 01:06:17,421 --> 01:06:19,337 That was a landmark licensing deal, right? 847 01:06:19,629 --> 01:06:21,504 Not a super success for one. 848 01:06:22,337 --> 01:06:24,171 Its the most lethal G.I. Joe team yet. 849 01:06:24,462 --> 01:06:26,587 Capcom's Street Fighter 2. No way. 850 01:06:26,879 --> 01:06:27,379 Way. 851 01:06:27,671 --> 01:06:31,712 The commercials that were released were really just not great. 852 01:06:32,004 --> 01:06:37,004 And unless you were a kid of like eight years old, I don't think you'd get any enjoyment of them. 853 01:06:37,296 --> 01:06:41,296 And I think even young kids who saw those commercials really felt 854 01:06:42,379 --> 01:06:43,962 like they didn't want to play with those characters. 855 01:06:44,254 --> 01:06:48,379 I understand the opportunity they felt they had with Street Fighter 2. 856 01:06:48,921 --> 01:06:54,921 This was a group of characters that were in interesting and distinct costumes, just like G.I. Joe was based around. 857 01:06:55,212 --> 01:06:58,129 This was a group of action heroes, just like G.I. Joe 858 01:06:58,421 --> 01:07:04,212 And they were the perfect vehicle as a toy company to create Street Fighter 2 action figures. 859 01:07:04,629 --> 01:07:08,462 So from the Official Street Fighter 2 chapter of G.I. Joe 860 01:07:08,754 --> 01:07:15,004 it's Chun-Li with you will notice a hand grenade around her neck because that's her classic look apparently. 861 01:07:15,296 --> 01:07:20,129 So all of these figures had to have some sort of crappy spring loaded action in order to ruin them. 862 01:07:20,421 --> 01:07:22,754 How is this particularly egregious... 863 01:07:23,046 --> 01:07:26,171 So, just noticed she's got a flintlock pistol on her thigh. 864 01:07:26,462 --> 01:07:28,587 Why does Chun-Li have a flintlock pistol? 865 01:07:29,004 --> 01:07:35,004 They are a group of very colorful action figures that are based around the Ninja Force format. 866 01:07:35,462 --> 01:07:38,462 They come with sprues of neon colored weapons. 867 01:07:38,754 --> 01:07:41,421 All the kids knew who all these characters were. 868 01:07:41,712 --> 01:07:46,087 Yeah, so you notice she's got this sort of odd thing with the sort of design of the waist and legs. 869 01:07:46,379 --> 01:07:47,587 It looks like she's wearing a nappy. 870 01:07:47,879 --> 01:07:52,046 And that is because there has to be the spinning bird kick action. 871 01:07:54,379 --> 01:07:56,671 Yeah, spinning bird kick straight to your shin. 872 01:07:57,212 --> 01:08:03,254 So all of the head sculpts for all of the Street Fighter 2 action figures are totally unique, but the action 873 01:08:03,546 --> 01:08:06,837 figures themselves, except for a handful 874 01:08:07,212 --> 01:08:11,796 reuse body parts that are just repainted from previous G.I. Joe characters. 875 01:08:12,087 --> 01:08:14,629 The card backs are beautiful, the artwork is great. 876 01:08:14,921 --> 01:08:16,504 They didn't skimp in that. 877 01:08:16,796 --> 01:08:19,254 Sense, but it is a line of recycled parts. 878 01:08:19,962 --> 01:08:22,379 So in the nineties everything had a board game. 879 01:08:22,671 --> 01:08:25,337 Street Fighter 2 had two of them. This is the Milton Bradley version. 880 01:08:25,671 --> 01:08:27,671 I haven't actually played this yet, only got it recently, 881 01:08:27,962 --> 01:08:32,587 but I'm intrigued to see how it works because how do you sort of transfer the game play 882 01:08:32,879 --> 01:08:37,254 of a one on one tournament fighter to some sort of traffic management simulator? 883 01:08:37,546 --> 01:08:43,129 I'm really confused by it, but I'll bet if we open it up it's a lot of cardboard and a lot of plastic cancers. 884 01:08:44,837 --> 01:08:46,546 Take that back. It's just garbled. 885 01:08:46,837 --> 01:08:53,962 The rocket stock and robots Street Fighter adaptation that they brought out, which, that's kind of like saying I have 886 01:08:54,254 --> 01:08:58,379 Street Fighter 2 Monopoly, but at least in this case it was two guys who were duking it out 887 01:08:58,671 --> 01:09:01,087 and they had the Street Fighter 2 skins over them. 888 01:09:01,421 --> 01:09:06,587 From around the globe, the street fighters came bashing and banging til only 889 01:09:06,879 --> 01:09:10,712 Ryu and Guile remained in the Street Fighter 2 tabletop game. 890 01:09:11,546 --> 01:09:12,754 You see some of the stuffies back here. 891 01:09:13,046 --> 01:09:16,129 These were in vending machines like course you know they they hooked me up. 892 01:09:16,421 --> 01:09:21,629 I will say I didn't spend 10,000 dollars in Yen to get these, but I'm terrible at Crane games. 893 01:09:22,129 --> 01:09:25,504 So because we are a sinful people and God chose to punish us, 894 01:09:25,962 --> 01:09:29,962 Tiger Electronics were given the license to just about every video game property 895 01:09:30,254 --> 01:09:34,921 and every movie property in the world and produced one of these LCD games for them. 896 01:09:35,421 --> 01:09:39,462 And if you've ever played one of these and I use the term played as loosely as it can 897 01:09:39,754 --> 01:09:40,754 be in the English language, 898 01:09:41,879 --> 01:09:46,129 Lots of little black drawings flicker about and it beeps at you. 899 01:09:46,504 --> 01:09:52,087 Hundred Hand Slaps and rolling attacks, fireballs and hurricane kicks are your weapons. 900 01:09:52,379 --> 01:09:55,212 The Street Fighter 2 one is I mean it's as bad as all the others. 901 01:09:55,504 --> 01:09:58,379 You can't quite tell what's going on and that's probably for the best. 902 01:10:03,546 --> 01:10:07,837 Street Fighter, it's a move set a lot of people have grown up with. 903 01:10:08,337 --> 01:10:09,754 People know there's respect. 904 01:10:10,046 --> 01:10:14,379 You're a top tier Street Fighter player that a certain level of kudos comes with it. 905 01:10:14,754 --> 01:10:16,796 In particular, Northern California was the hub. 906 01:10:17,254 --> 01:10:20,296 And when we run tournaments, people come in from Arizona or wherever 907 01:10:20,587 --> 01:10:24,629 and they just get stomped because no Internet, so no knowledge sharing. 908 01:10:25,129 --> 01:10:28,587 And so there was just tribal knowledge about like, you know, techniques. 909 01:10:28,879 --> 01:10:34,962 That is when the tournament scene became in overdrive, like everybody was flocking back. 910 01:10:35,254 --> 01:10:39,004 And then all of a sudden it was northern California, Northern California versus Southern California. 911 01:10:39,296 --> 01:10:40,296 And there was a rivalry. 912 01:10:40,587 --> 01:10:41,171 They were good. 913 01:10:41,462 --> 01:10:46,421 That was also the birth of some deep matchup, technology and tactics. 914 01:10:46,712 --> 01:10:52,087 That tournament for sure was the moment that everybody got it and then start talking about it. 915 01:10:52,379 --> 01:10:55,504 This is the first time we had ever heard of a tournament. 916 01:10:56,129 --> 01:11:01,129 We were alien to the concept of a tournament on fighting games. We got sponsors, we got a venue. 917 01:11:01,421 --> 01:11:03,962 Its going down. We've told everyone we've been everywhere, I've been all over the country. 918 01:11:04,254 --> 01:11:05,421 We're going to get these players all together. 919 01:11:05,712 --> 01:11:08,462 We're going to find out who the best Street Fighter in the country is. 920 01:11:08,754 --> 01:11:10,254 We're going to work it out. 921 01:11:10,546 --> 01:11:13,296 Get everyone down to Central London, no one can argue it's too far. 922 01:11:13,587 --> 01:11:14,504 Everyone's got to travel. 923 01:11:14,796 --> 01:11:20,046 The UK players, which was, you know, a combination of different, you know, backgrounds and races and stuff. 924 01:11:20,546 --> 01:11:21,171 But then... 925 01:11:22,254 --> 01:11:24,129 I think the Chinese guys were really good. 926 01:11:24,421 --> 01:11:26,046 The Chinese guys seemed to excel. 927 01:11:26,337 --> 01:11:28,754 There was one guy, though, who did come third at the national tournament 928 01:11:29,046 --> 01:11:30,212 that I told you about, the Trocadero. 929 01:11:30,504 --> 01:11:33,629 He was from Japan, his name was Shin, but I didn't know him then. 930 01:11:33,921 --> 01:11:36,212 We became friends much later on and I'm like, Oh my God, you're that guy. 931 01:11:36,504 --> 01:11:37,171 He said yeah. 932 01:11:37,462 --> 01:11:41,171 And he lived in the UK for a lot of years and was very, very good at every game he played. 933 01:11:41,462 --> 01:11:43,504 Honestly, though, I wasn't that good. 934 01:11:43,879 --> 01:11:47,671 And because I wasn't that good, I didn't really understand why he's so much better 935 01:11:47,962 --> 01:11:49,296 than the others, you know? 936 01:11:49,587 --> 01:11:53,462 So I really wasn't that deep into, you know, the technical stuff here. 937 01:11:54,087 --> 01:11:58,546 I probably didn't understand a lot of the dynamics that makes, you know, a top, top, top player. 938 01:11:58,962 --> 01:12:02,962 So I think the personalities, the people that play Street Fighter have become minor 939 01:12:03,254 --> 01:12:04,754 celebrities in their own right. 940 01:12:05,046 --> 01:12:07,754 I was already heavily into Fatal Fury and World Heroes and stuff like that. 941 01:12:08,171 --> 01:12:10,712 I almost got shunned and banished to like a remote island. 942 01:12:11,004 --> 01:12:12,379 Like, are you playing that now? 943 01:12:12,671 --> 01:12:13,212 Yeah. You know, people just 944 01:12:13,504 --> 01:12:16,712 didn't like to see that I'm not playing the game that obviously I'm only allowed to play. 945 01:12:17,046 --> 01:12:18,629 You know, I could learn something new here. 946 01:12:18,921 --> 01:12:20,421 That Street Fighter didn't seem to offer. 947 01:12:20,712 --> 01:12:27,462 It takes a seismic shift for something new to come along and fully pull people away. 948 01:12:37,879 --> 01:12:38,587 With the popularity 949 01:12:38,879 --> 01:12:42,962 rise of Street Fighter in general, in the arcades, there was bound to be some competition. 950 01:12:43,254 --> 01:12:47,296 The biggest one probably was SNK with their Neo Geo fighting games. 951 01:12:47,712 --> 01:12:51,254 Fatal Fury one, two, three. Fatal Fury Special was amazing. 952 01:12:51,546 --> 01:12:52,879 That was a very, very good fighting game. 953 01:12:53,171 --> 01:12:56,379 I could see from the earlier games that SNK released 954 01:12:56,671 --> 01:13:00,254 like Fatal Fury 2 and Art of Fighting and then the first King of Fighters. 955 01:13:00,754 --> 01:13:06,171 That was when I kind of thought, actually that does feel like it's a more technically involving game. 956 01:13:06,462 --> 01:13:10,837 And I know that as SNK went on with the King of Fighters series and the sequels to Fatal Fury, 957 01:13:11,421 --> 01:13:15,504 they did gain a reputation for being more technically deeper games. 958 01:13:15,837 --> 01:13:17,962 SNK's just outdone themselves. I think they could have had a slow release, period. 959 01:13:18,254 --> 01:13:21,796 They they had absolute classics that were just clustered with other classics. 960 01:13:22,087 --> 01:13:23,421 So they would be overlooked. 961 01:13:23,712 --> 01:13:28,004 After playing sort of Street Fighter 2 and getting into Champion Edition and things like that. 962 01:13:28,296 --> 01:13:33,421 The overall speed and sort of floaty-ness and roughness of the SNK games, especially the early ones, 963 01:13:33,796 --> 01:13:35,712 unfortunately, none of them really resonated. 964 01:13:36,004 --> 01:13:38,879 However, when Mortal Kombat came out, 965 01:13:39,504 --> 01:13:43,129 that was definitely one that influenced people to sort of 966 01:13:43,421 --> 01:13:47,212 take a pause on Street Fighter and jump over and see what this game was about. 967 01:13:47,504 --> 01:13:53,046 Yeah, I remember we were hearing about Mortal Kombat, and so Jeff found where it was being tested. 968 01:13:53,671 --> 01:13:57,046 A rare moment where because it was a big deal and was Midway, 969 01:13:57,337 --> 01:14:01,254 I'd come in, yeah, that thing, that thing had, had a vibe. 970 01:14:01,587 --> 01:14:04,004 You walk in that this was like, "Get over here." 971 01:14:07,296 --> 01:14:11,879 It's the first time you're seeing a fighting game, but you're like digitized sprites. 972 01:14:12,212 --> 01:14:16,587 This is kind of real human beings and it suddenly makes it all the more 973 01:14:17,837 --> 01:14:20,796 tangible and believable because you're like these movies. 974 01:14:21,087 --> 01:14:24,587 When I see a nice high sidekick, someone actually did that. 975 01:14:24,879 --> 01:14:30,796 And the gore it was just I mean, what kid at that time isn't into always wanting to watch 18 movies. 976 01:14:31,087 --> 01:14:35,962 And you know, you saw Robocop for the first time and Predator 977 01:14:36,254 --> 01:14:40,462 and you're talking about when the arm got shot off and it was still shooting on the floor, you know. 978 01:14:40,879 --> 01:14:44,754 So I thought it was really awesome. I love the base, love the swagger. 979 01:14:45,046 --> 01:14:47,212 It had so much attitude, super violent. 980 01:14:47,504 --> 01:14:48,671 We saw a couple of fatalities. 981 01:14:48,962 --> 01:14:54,462 It wasn't really fair to say that Street Fighter or was any better or Mortal Kombat was, you know, worse. 982 01:14:54,754 --> 01:14:57,337 I think they just appeals to different audiences. 983 01:14:57,629 --> 01:15:01,962 Not everybody who like Street Fighter got Mortal Kombat, but people who just played Mortal Kombat 984 01:15:02,254 --> 01:15:03,879 and didn't like Street Fighter, Boy, they loved it. 985 01:15:04,171 --> 01:15:07,462 I was never the biggest fan because it always felt very stiff 986 01:15:07,754 --> 01:15:11,379 compared to Street Fighter 2 in terms of the way the characters moved and animated. 987 01:15:11,754 --> 01:15:13,879 Mortal Kombat in the corner where you're just punching, 988 01:15:15,421 --> 01:15:18,337 just trapping people with these punches. 989 01:15:18,629 --> 01:15:19,879 They were quite fluid, actually. 990 01:15:20,171 --> 01:15:22,129 Some of the punches, it was just different. 991 01:15:22,504 --> 01:15:23,837 You went to every single arcade. 992 01:15:24,129 --> 01:15:28,421 It was Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, just trading spaces and staying in the top 993 01:15:28,712 --> 01:15:31,004 five forever for over a year. 994 01:15:31,296 --> 01:15:34,254 It definitely changed things in a good way. 995 01:15:34,546 --> 01:15:35,087 I mean, it expanded. 996 01:15:35,379 --> 01:15:39,879 I think it brought I think I think it wasn't like 100% of the fighting players got divided. 997 01:15:40,171 --> 01:15:43,337 I think we probably lost, you know, 20, 30%. 998 01:15:43,671 --> 01:15:47,046 Between the two games, averaging about $1,000 a week. 999 01:15:47,462 --> 01:15:50,254 The boost to the industry was tremendous. 1000 01:15:50,629 --> 01:15:55,671 Nothing prior to Mortal Kombat had really stuck no other than Street Fighter. 1001 01:15:56,087 --> 01:16:00,796 I definitely followed Capcom and SNK in tandem, but wasn't too keen on the Western 1002 01:16:01,087 --> 01:16:04,712 developed fighting games because they did feel like they were kind of jumping on a bandwagon. 1003 01:16:05,212 --> 01:16:09,004 You had games like Body Blows on the Amiga and stuff like that and all these are that 1004 01:16:09,796 --> 01:16:13,046 to a lesser extent Killer Instinct and stuff like that that came out that did feel 1005 01:16:13,671 --> 01:16:17,421 they're very much sort of hanging on the coattails of what the Japanese companies were doing. 1006 01:16:17,754 --> 01:16:21,087 I think Street Fighter did very well to kind of hold onto its 1007 01:16:21,462 --> 01:16:25,712 they had a very even since like Street Fighter the first one, it had a very sort of clear 1008 01:16:26,004 --> 01:16:31,504 idea of what it was and who it was for and why people played it and didn't get swayed too much. 1009 01:16:31,796 --> 01:16:35,879 I don't think by Mortal Kombat or any of the earlier SNK games. 1010 01:16:36,296 --> 01:16:41,629 But when King of Fighters started to gain momentum, that really did take over. 1011 01:16:44,004 --> 01:16:46,004 When I look at what games people were starting to get into, 1012 01:16:46,296 --> 01:16:49,254 they were games that had a lot more to offer, you know, Bloody Roar, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct. 1013 01:16:49,546 --> 01:16:51,796 These had very unique elements to them. 1014 01:16:52,171 --> 01:16:54,712 What made those games special that Street Fighter didn't have. 1015 01:16:55,129 --> 01:16:56,837 So people were just looking for something new. 1016 01:16:57,129 --> 01:16:58,254 It doesn't mean they didn't like Street Fighter. 1017 01:16:58,546 --> 01:17:00,962 It was just like, Well, what's that about? Oh, that looks cool. I'm going to, you know. 1018 01:17:01,254 --> 01:17:03,879 So I think either Capcom could have released a second fighting game 1019 01:17:04,254 --> 01:17:07,879 or made different updates to Street Fighter so that people could feel 1020 01:17:08,171 --> 01:17:10,879 that it was still fresh and new and worth investing time into. 1021 01:17:18,296 --> 01:17:22,546 I think Super Street Fighter is a great example of a missed opportunity. 1022 01:17:22,837 --> 01:17:25,504 We get the Polaroids over and it's four characters. 1023 01:17:25,796 --> 01:17:27,796 It's two characters that look the same. 1024 01:17:28,087 --> 01:17:30,129 They're just be a head swap like Ken and Ryu, basically. 1025 01:17:30,421 --> 01:17:31,837 And color palette change. 1026 01:17:32,129 --> 01:17:33,046 And that was Fei Long. 1027 01:17:33,337 --> 01:17:36,046 And then T. Hawk, wasn't called T. Hawk at the time, 1028 01:17:36,337 --> 01:17:39,254 and there was Cammy, who wasn't Cammy at the time, 1029 01:17:39,546 --> 01:17:42,379 And that was it. And so what do you think it was like? 1030 01:17:42,671 --> 01:17:48,254 Well, we think that you should do four unique characters and not just do a head swap. 1031 01:17:48,546 --> 01:17:51,129 Like, well, it's more RAM and more memory. 1032 01:17:51,587 --> 01:17:53,421 You want to... You really think so? 1033 01:17:53,712 --> 01:17:55,546 It's like, yeah, you say you're doing four characters, 1034 01:17:55,837 --> 01:17:58,421 it's not going to feel like that if you don't do four characters. 1035 01:17:58,712 --> 01:18:01,546 Well, do you have any ideas? Well, actually, let me go think. 1036 01:18:01,837 --> 01:18:02,629 Y, know, I might. 1037 01:18:02,921 --> 01:18:05,129 And so I had been watching 1038 01:18:06,087 --> 01:18:10,046 a lot of different movies, and one that really stuck with me was King of the Kickboxers. 1039 01:18:10,337 --> 01:18:13,129 If Billy Blanks was in there and I hadn't seen him before 1040 01:18:13,462 --> 01:18:17,296 and he just had a lot of crazy kicks, you know, from lots of weird angles. 1041 01:18:17,587 --> 01:18:20,421 And and he had one in particular that he would do that would kill people. 1042 01:18:21,004 --> 01:18:24,129 He'd jump up, and his legs would clap together. Bam! 1043 01:18:24,421 --> 01:18:29,254 You know, I pitched not him, but I pitched the idea of let's do a black character. 1044 01:18:29,629 --> 01:18:33,462 It's not the typical Japanese, you know, bad guy, black character 1045 01:18:33,754 --> 01:18:36,546 and like, let's make him a hero, you know, let's go down this road. 1046 01:18:36,837 --> 01:18:41,754 And so I sent over probably a pretty crummy sketch initially, but mostly a write up, 1047 01:18:42,212 --> 01:18:46,087 you know, passed on, passed back like, okay, here's here's what we're thinking. 1048 01:18:48,296 --> 01:18:49,754 We looked at T. Hawk. 1049 01:18:50,046 --> 01:18:53,671 We had a friend who worked for us at Yellow Brick Road, which Capcom owned, 1050 01:18:54,046 --> 01:18:55,671 and so he's part Native American Indian. 1051 01:18:55,962 --> 01:18:59,046 And so we reached out to him, went down there and we showed him 1052 01:18:59,337 --> 01:19:03,212 the images and got lots of feedback on what's appropriate, you know, 1053 01:19:03,504 --> 01:19:07,587 what would be not offensive, what would be good costuming for him, and also what's a good name. 1054 01:19:07,879 --> 01:19:09,796 So he actually coined the name T. Hawk. 1055 01:19:10,087 --> 01:19:15,879 And then we came up with Cammy for Cammy, because she had camouflage and she seemed really cool. 1056 01:19:16,171 --> 01:19:19,546 And so that is how those characters all ended up where they are. 1057 01:19:19,837 --> 01:19:22,587 And we just provided lots of feedback and it was great. It's a great time. 1058 01:19:22,879 --> 01:19:29,546 So the four characters we first saw in marketing, I think it was big pictures of Cammy and Fei Long 1059 01:19:29,837 --> 01:19:34,087 like all amazing, like you've got your obvious Bruce Lee parallel, you've got a new character. 1060 01:19:34,379 --> 01:19:37,087 Oh, apparently the stage in Scotland and she's British, so they are... 1061 01:19:37,379 --> 01:19:38,671 This is all very interesting. 1062 01:19:38,962 --> 01:19:42,462 Seeing Fei Long and seeing some shots with the nunchucks. 1063 01:19:42,754 --> 01:19:45,587 I saying, oh, is he going to be able to use nunchucks in a game? 1064 01:19:45,879 --> 01:19:48,796 And you're like, no, it's just one of his win poses. 1065 01:19:49,087 --> 01:19:54,004 I love the fact that they added like Fei Long because it puts a huge Hong Kong action fan. 1066 01:19:54,504 --> 01:19:57,754 So I was like, they added Bruce Lee into Street Fighter. 1067 01:19:58,254 --> 01:19:59,879 Like, are you serious? 1068 01:20:00,171 --> 01:20:02,046 So I was a big Fei Long player, actually. 1069 01:20:02,421 --> 01:20:06,796 I think in general, the characters in Super Street Fighter 2 of the new challengers, 1070 01:20:07,296 --> 01:20:08,296 they're pretty excellent. 1071 01:20:08,587 --> 01:20:12,212 And if you look at them, especially when compared to later entries in the series, 1072 01:20:12,837 --> 01:20:16,962 I think they have a bit of the same or as the original cast, 1073 01:20:17,254 --> 01:20:21,212 almost as if they were initially designed and then entered later. 1074 01:20:21,504 --> 01:20:23,837 Initially, I thought it was okay. 1075 01:20:24,921 --> 01:20:30,504 I think some of them didn't quite fit into the world of Street Fighter or weren't really necessary 1076 01:20:31,254 --> 01:20:36,046 like T. Hawk, I felt was just a character made for no real reason. 1077 01:20:36,337 --> 01:20:38,962 And then of course, you try and play with T. Hawk, and he's like Zangief, 1078 01:20:39,254 --> 01:20:42,337 but with all the fun taken out and for some reason he can fly. 1079 01:20:42,796 --> 01:20:44,337 At that point, I had played Guile a lot. 1080 01:20:44,629 --> 01:20:47,587 He was a very, you know, horizontal, vertical character. 1081 01:20:47,879 --> 01:20:51,254 And I just felt that Dee Jay was similarly like that. 1082 01:20:51,546 --> 01:20:53,171 He was just a very horizontal character. 1083 01:20:53,462 --> 01:20:54,921 Charge moves for the most part. 1084 01:20:55,212 --> 01:20:58,379 The feedback was like, yeah, cool character, but why does he play like Guile? 1085 01:20:58,837 --> 01:21:00,754 And he wasn't really supposed to play like Guile too much. 1086 01:21:01,046 --> 01:21:02,504 Dee Jay is supposed to be a bit more high flying. 1087 01:21:02,796 --> 01:21:06,296 You know, as cheesy as it may be, I think Cammy was the one that seemed to resonate 1088 01:21:06,587 --> 01:21:10,379 with me and my friends as far as a unique addition to Street Fighter 1089 01:21:10,796 --> 01:21:14,879 feeling a bit different enough with her move set and being enjoyable to play. 1090 01:21:15,171 --> 01:21:18,379 And maybe that's one of the reasons why she's one of the only characters 1091 01:21:18,671 --> 01:21:22,671 of those of those four that continues to be in Street Fighter, and is still very popular 1092 01:21:22,962 --> 01:21:25,254 as a playable character, even now in Street Fighter 5. 1093 01:21:25,546 --> 01:21:32,587 But I think they started to really differentiate Ryu and Ken's fighting styles. 1094 01:21:32,879 --> 01:21:38,587 Ken was a lot faster. Ryu suddenly now had a much more solid, traditional karate feel. 1095 01:21:38,879 --> 01:21:40,004 He was level and straight. 1096 01:21:40,296 --> 01:21:44,212 Ken had arching moves and his three hit Dragon Punch 1097 01:21:44,504 --> 01:21:48,796 doing a crossover, you know, flying psychic into Uppercut 1098 01:21:50,004 --> 01:21:52,879 just... it was great. 1099 01:21:53,171 --> 01:21:57,129 As most people know when Super came out the overall game speed of it was pretty slow. 1100 01:21:57,421 --> 01:21:59,212 It was almost a shock to the system. 1101 01:21:59,504 --> 01:22:03,171 If think about it Hyper Fighting if hadn't happened, and we went from Champion to Super. 1102 01:22:04,171 --> 01:22:05,629 It wouldn't have felt slower. 1103 01:22:05,921 --> 01:22:10,546 And so that that's part of the context of what went wrong for Super. 1104 01:22:10,962 --> 01:22:15,046 They didn't change it to speed it up, you know, to match what had just happened to the market. 1105 01:22:15,337 --> 01:22:18,171 There's part of having your vision and not wanting to change because the market changed. 1106 01:22:18,754 --> 01:22:22,004 But then there's like, players want this, so give them what they want. 1107 01:22:22,296 --> 01:22:28,046 And I'll tell you that game hurt Capcom. It hurt Street Fighter's momentum. 1108 01:22:28,337 --> 01:22:33,921 Super had so much potential and Hyper Fighting really diverted its course. 1109 01:22:34,337 --> 01:22:39,087 You know it was successful so it's hard to say, you know, was that a good thing or a bad thing? 1110 01:22:39,379 --> 01:22:43,504 That is kind of what happened with Super Street Fighter is that Hyper Fighting was such a success, 1111 01:22:43,796 --> 01:22:44,629 it blindsided us. 1112 01:22:45,712 --> 01:22:49,462 That we just didn't adapt. 1113 01:22:51,171 --> 01:22:52,712 When Super Street Fighter two came out 1114 01:22:53,004 --> 01:22:57,087 of course console sports would follow Super Street Fighter added more characters. 1115 01:22:57,379 --> 01:23:00,296 It added more backgrounds, just more to the game. 1116 01:23:00,671 --> 01:23:04,254 So obviously you're going to need a larger, more expensive cartridge. 1117 01:23:04,546 --> 01:23:08,212 And it's an interesting time because this was later in the console development cycle. 1118 01:23:08,587 --> 01:23:12,337 New machines were on the horizon or out, in fact, in some areas. 1119 01:23:12,712 --> 01:23:17,296 So there was another cover that was the logo busting out of a wall 1120 01:23:17,587 --> 01:23:21,587 so that was used as a cover, and all it said was Street Fighter 2. 1121 01:23:22,462 --> 01:23:28,212 I did the logo and the brick and I mean, usually the logo is always supplied by somebody else. 1122 01:23:28,587 --> 01:23:32,004 And then the idea came along that same image 1123 01:23:32,337 --> 01:23:36,046 was going to be melded with another brick wall. 1124 01:23:36,337 --> 01:23:40,379 But down below they just wanted this kind of high noon 1125 01:23:41,087 --> 01:23:44,421 silhouette of the characters shining up next to it. 1126 01:23:44,712 --> 01:23:46,421 I think that was part of the idea. 1127 01:23:46,712 --> 01:23:47,504 They wanted to. 1128 01:23:47,796 --> 01:23:50,796 A little mystery of who these next characters are going to be. 1129 01:23:51,171 --> 01:23:55,046 But as far as the actual game play, the visuals being presented, 1130 01:23:55,629 --> 01:23:59,004 you know, it's still well within the realm of that original conversion. 1131 01:23:59,337 --> 01:24:03,754 And as a result, it is really actually quite good on both the Super NES 1132 01:24:04,046 --> 01:24:06,712 and the Sega Genesis slash Mega Drive. 1133 01:24:07,546 --> 01:24:10,921 The only issue I guess with Mega Drive is the sound reproduction. 1134 01:24:11,337 --> 01:24:12,879 And this isn't the fault of the system. 1135 01:24:13,171 --> 01:24:16,254 Its Capcom's own sound driver and the way they implement it, 1136 01:24:16,546 --> 01:24:19,962 it's very garbled, scratchy and not optimal for the time. 1137 01:24:20,254 --> 01:24:22,796 And anybody that played it back then probably would have noticed that, 1138 01:24:23,087 --> 01:24:27,462 especially if you compared the voice clips from Super NES to the Sega version, 1139 01:24:35,171 --> 01:24:36,879 That kind of gave you bragging rights. 1140 01:24:37,171 --> 01:24:40,004 You could say if you were playing on Super NES. 1141 01:24:40,379 --> 01:24:43,587 If you were more of a casual Street Fighter fan or just a casual gamer in general, 1142 01:24:44,546 --> 01:24:48,546 then yes, I could see how these near releases of 1143 01:24:48,837 --> 01:24:53,379 Street Fighter on the platforms at 70 bucks a pop or so could be a bit much for you. 1144 01:24:53,879 --> 01:24:55,712 But for us, we loved it. 1145 01:24:56,004 --> 01:24:58,421 We kept wanting them to come out with more. 1146 01:24:59,004 --> 01:25:00,754 We wanted to play more. 1147 01:25:01,046 --> 01:25:03,296 We would swap between the different versions of the game. 1148 01:25:03,587 --> 01:25:05,254 I know I didn't mind the frequent updates. 1149 01:25:05,546 --> 01:25:07,837 I was there on day one, waiting in line to buy them all. 1150 01:25:08,254 --> 01:25:12,712 Capcom maybe got a little bit too iterative, so when Super Street Fighter 2 was announced, 1151 01:25:13,004 --> 01:25:17,879 I mean, you know, I can remember walking into school with the copy of Mean Machines or Nintendo magazines, 1152 01:25:18,171 --> 01:25:22,337 whatever it was in, and people were just gazing at the artwork, said, oh, this is amazing. 1153 01:25:22,629 --> 01:25:25,462 Look, this new fighter, this new characters, you know, they couldn't believe it. 1154 01:25:25,837 --> 01:25:27,004 So that became a point of obsession. 1155 01:25:27,296 --> 01:25:31,962 But obviously when it came out, we were already been promised Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. 1156 01:25:32,254 --> 01:25:36,796 So I think maybe when the luster started to fade a little bit, I think, well, you know, I'm 1157 01:25:37,087 --> 01:25:41,837 going to shell out sixty quid for this and there's going to be a better version six months down the line. 1158 01:25:42,129 --> 01:25:47,171 Not having a Super Nintendo or Mega Drive myself, I'd completely lost track of which version was which. 1159 01:25:47,587 --> 01:25:50,004 There's like Turbo and then there's Championship. 1160 01:25:50,337 --> 01:25:51,212 Which one's better? 1161 01:25:51,504 --> 01:25:55,962 Well, the marketing for Sega says Championship's better. But hmm, is the Super Nintendo... 1162 01:25:56,254 --> 01:25:57,962 I was completely lost by that stage. 1163 01:25:58,254 --> 01:26:02,254 And it wasn't, I think, until Super Turbo came out in the arcade, though. 1164 01:26:02,546 --> 01:26:07,254 I actually went back and managed to get straight in my head which version was which and what did what. 1165 01:27:30,712 --> 01:27:32,962 So the long run of Street Fighter 2 culminates 1166 01:27:33,254 --> 01:27:37,337 in this final release Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, or Super Turbo as it's called. 1167 01:27:37,671 --> 01:27:41,921 And the fact that they were able to get to this, what fifth version allows them to really create 1168 01:27:42,212 --> 01:27:46,379 this final, perfectly balanced, fully realized version of Street Fighter 2. 1169 01:28:00,296 --> 01:28:01,837 So when Super Street Fighter 2 1170 01:28:02,129 --> 01:28:05,921 was announced for the 3DO console, it was kind of a big deal, right? 1171 01:28:06,212 --> 01:28:09,421 Because while the 3DO was not a huge commercial success, 1172 01:28:09,837 --> 01:28:13,129 it was actually well known amongst people playing games. 1173 01:28:13,546 --> 01:28:17,712 Obviously, the price was a huge barrier to entry, but that doesn't mean 1174 01:28:18,004 --> 01:28:19,837 that there wasn't still a lot of attention around it. 1175 01:28:20,129 --> 01:28:23,421 Your impression is that, wow, this is really close to the arcade game. 1176 01:28:23,879 --> 01:28:27,046 Unlike the 16-bit ports, everything was larger. 1177 01:28:27,379 --> 01:28:28,754 The resolution seemed higher. 1178 01:28:29,046 --> 01:28:32,462 And on top of that, you had this fabulous CD audio soundtrack, 1179 01:28:32,754 --> 01:28:38,004 which I would only later learned was actually borrowed from the FM Towns version of Street Fighter. 1180 01:28:38,796 --> 01:28:41,962 But it's fantastic arrangements of great tracks. 1181 01:28:51,462 --> 01:28:55,337 So it's this combination of larger graphics, more colors, 1182 01:28:55,629 --> 01:28:59,379 the CD audio soundtrack and remarkably fast loading for a CD console. 1183 01:28:59,671 --> 01:29:02,296 It really felt like a huge step up. 1184 01:29:02,587 --> 01:29:07,171 The thing is, though, the 3DO did not ship with a six button controller by default. 1185 01:29:07,587 --> 01:29:11,712 It actually had five buttons, which is a little better, but two of them were shoulder buttons. 1186 01:29:12,004 --> 01:29:14,337 So of course there was that as well. 1187 01:29:14,712 --> 01:29:16,212 But honestly, overall 1188 01:29:16,504 --> 01:29:20,004 that was the best looking version of Street Fighter 1189 01:29:20,296 --> 01:29:24,671 that you could play in your home at the time, and it was something special. 1190 01:29:24,962 --> 01:29:29,004 Then I made the fatal error of buying Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo 1191 01:29:29,337 --> 01:29:32,379 well, for the A 1200, and it's just abysmal. 1192 01:29:32,671 --> 01:29:34,671 Half of the frames of animation are missing. 1193 01:29:35,004 --> 01:29:39,462 It's almost completely unplayable unless you've got the most powerful accelerated Amiga in the world. 1194 01:29:39,754 --> 01:29:43,587 It ran like an absolute dog and it was no fun whatsoever. 1195 01:29:43,921 --> 01:29:49,004 I think overall it's probably the most polished and well-balanced and just well-rounded 1196 01:29:49,462 --> 01:29:55,671 Street Fighter game, and it's just unfortunate that it came too long after Super Street Fighter 2 1197 01:29:55,962 --> 01:30:00,546 because I think it would have sort of gotten us to come back together again 1198 01:30:01,004 --> 01:30:05,254 and get excited about Street Fighter again and come back in the arcades to play it again. 1199 01:30:05,754 --> 01:30:12,046 Super Turbo showed, it brought back a lot of people and it's considered one of the best of the two series for tournaments. 1200 01:30:12,337 --> 01:30:15,671 It's considered also like with Hyper Fighting one of the best balanced games. 1201 01:30:16,212 --> 01:30:19,879 I think Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo has that kind of not only 1202 01:30:20,171 --> 01:30:24,296 does it have a massive nostalgia hits around it, but also the strength of the game play 1203 01:30:24,587 --> 01:30:27,546 is something that still holds up for the excellent balancing. 1204 01:30:27,879 --> 01:30:29,462 And it's just much fun to play. 1205 01:30:29,754 --> 01:30:31,504 I think that's why people keep going back to it. 1206 01:30:31,796 --> 01:30:33,712 They use it as a benchmark effectively. 1207 01:31:28,087 --> 01:31:32,962 Well, I was aware of the game because every weekend I would ride bicycles 1208 01:31:33,254 --> 01:31:37,712 with my kids to the nearest arcade and watch them throw quarters down the machine. 1209 01:31:38,046 --> 01:31:41,421 But I ended up being even more familiar with Capcom, 1210 01:31:41,712 --> 01:31:46,379 making a television series and a home video game out of Cadillacs Dinosaurs. 1211 01:31:46,712 --> 01:31:50,754 And then the producer called me up and said, I'm in business with them. 1212 01:31:51,046 --> 01:31:52,212 Ed Pressman. 1213 01:31:52,504 --> 01:31:55,212 The Capcom people are coming into L.A. 1214 01:31:55,504 --> 01:32:01,337 to audition writers, producers and directors to make a movie out of their video game, Street Fighter 2 1215 01:32:01,629 --> 01:32:02,754 When is this meeting? 1216 01:32:03,046 --> 01:32:06,712 He says, well, they're coming on Monday and they already had meeting set up. 1217 01:32:07,004 --> 01:32:08,837 And this conversation is like on a Thursday. 1218 01:32:09,129 --> 01:32:11,421 My condition is I want to direct the movie, if it happens, 1219 01:32:11,712 --> 01:32:14,796 if I'm going to like kill myself and come up with this in 72 hours. 1220 01:32:15,087 --> 01:32:17,587 So they said, all right, we'll go with that. And they sent me a bunch of materials. 1221 01:32:17,921 --> 01:32:19,629 A lot of it was in Japanese. 1222 01:32:19,921 --> 01:32:26,337 It was like for the Japanese home market, but it was a fold out of Bison's secret hideout. 1223 01:32:26,629 --> 01:32:28,754 It was like we have in a James Bond movie. 1224 01:32:29,046 --> 01:32:33,337 It was under a temple and he had like secret submarine pens and missile launchers. 1225 01:32:33,629 --> 01:32:36,921 And I go, wow, this is a whole world of world building that they've done 1226 01:32:37,212 --> 01:32:40,921 that hasn't shown up in the game yet, but they're planning far ahead. 1227 01:32:41,421 --> 01:32:45,087 So I decided to go out on a limb and I was not going to pitch a tournament movie. 1228 01:32:45,712 --> 01:32:52,004 I just felt that there have been so many low budget direct to video tournament movies that I thought that 1229 01:32:52,296 --> 01:32:57,296 if this was going to be the big budget, high end motion picture debut of a fighting game, 1230 01:32:57,837 --> 01:33:03,004 that perversely as it sounded, I didn't want it to be about the tournament. 1231 01:33:03,379 --> 01:33:04,962 So I went out on a limb with that approach. 1232 01:33:05,254 --> 01:33:06,421 It's dumb luck would have it. 1233 01:33:06,712 --> 01:33:10,171 They were thinking along those lines anyway for the far future. 1234 01:33:10,587 --> 01:33:11,921 So I ended up pitching. 1235 01:33:12,212 --> 01:33:16,171 What it subsequently said is really the first, and best G.I. Joe movie. 1236 01:33:25,254 --> 01:33:27,962 Everybody at the time I was definitely excited about the Street Fighter film. 1237 01:33:28,337 --> 01:33:32,587 Video game movies weren't a common and it was an exception rather than normality. 1238 01:33:32,879 --> 01:33:36,504 I mean, now you've got a lot of adaptations, but back then it felt unique. 1239 01:33:36,796 --> 01:33:41,587 I'm going to be honest, I don't think any of us were particularly interested because we'd already been burned 1240 01:33:41,879 --> 01:33:48,337 by Super Mario Brothers, which of course ultimately has nothing to do with the game, and it's pretty bad. 1241 01:33:48,629 --> 01:33:52,337 The best thing about that was at the beginning when they had the little "ba-ding!" 1242 01:33:56,754 --> 01:33:58,712 And I thought, oh, Nintendo, you know, 1243 01:33:59,129 --> 01:34:02,629 and then the movie sort of just went from bad to worse. 1244 01:34:03,296 --> 01:34:07,212 They were so literal minded about the Mario Brothers game. 1245 01:34:07,504 --> 01:34:12,171 So in the Mario Brothers game, the characters travel by jumping. 1246 01:34:12,462 --> 01:34:17,587 So they decided that the storyline of the movie, they had to get these boots with springs in them 1247 01:34:17,962 --> 01:34:20,546 to explain why they didn't walk or run, they jumped. 1248 01:34:20,962 --> 01:34:26,921 So I'm going like of all the things you could say must be in the movie, the jumping, why were they fixated on that? 1249 01:34:27,212 --> 01:34:31,337 Being in the movies was so sort of like a validation for video games. 1250 01:34:31,629 --> 01:34:33,087 And it was again, it was like a pop culture thing. 1251 01:34:33,379 --> 01:34:37,254 You know, if something can infiltrate movies and music, which obviously it did as well, 1252 01:34:37,587 --> 01:34:41,254 we had like singles based on Super Mario Brothers and Tetris and stuff like that. 1253 01:34:41,879 --> 01:34:44,837 So I was excited about it, even to the point where, you know, 1254 01:34:45,129 --> 01:34:49,046 I saw the first few clippings in magazines and thought, well, that doesn't look quite right, but you know, 1255 01:34:49,337 --> 01:34:50,087 I'll give them the benefit of the doubt 1256 01:34:50,379 --> 01:34:54,296 because how can you turn a video game with a green man with orange hair and it's like a monster? 1257 01:34:54,587 --> 01:34:57,254 How can you turn that into a live action movie? 1258 01:35:01,171 --> 01:35:06,046 Well, out of all the people we saw, the only two two studios wanted to do it, and we went with Universal. 1259 01:35:06,462 --> 01:35:10,087 It was easier for Universal to decide because Capcom was going to pay 1260 01:35:10,379 --> 01:35:15,962 the entire cost of production, so Universal was only on the hook for distribution. 1261 01:35:16,671 --> 01:35:21,587 Capcom was determined for this to come off as a major motion picture, as a star studded picture. 1262 01:35:21,879 --> 01:35:25,962 They originally were talking about getting, you know, all of the action stars for the character of Guile. 1263 01:35:26,254 --> 01:35:27,712 Oh, they were talking about Schwarzenegger, 1264 01:35:28,004 --> 01:35:31,504 Stallone, all these people, stuff like that, all of whom were priced out of their range. 1265 01:35:32,129 --> 01:35:36,462 But Jean-Claude, at that time, we were going to just hire him for like a month or five weeks. 1266 01:35:36,754 --> 01:35:38,087 We were able to afford Jean-Claude. 1267 01:35:38,379 --> 01:35:42,212 I was a big fan of van Damme. You know, being an avid martial artist myself. 1268 01:35:42,504 --> 01:35:47,379 The accent and the first images, his hair looked almost orange rather than sort of blond. 1269 01:35:47,671 --> 01:35:49,337 I was like, look, it's Van Damme. 1270 01:35:49,629 --> 01:35:52,504 You know, to hear that we were going to do a live action was awesome. 1271 01:35:52,879 --> 01:35:54,337 How do you go wrong with Van Damme? Right? 1272 01:35:54,629 --> 01:35:56,046 Him being Guile is going to be amazing. 1273 01:35:56,337 --> 01:36:02,337 I got invited into look at some of the initial treatments on how the movie was going to go. 1274 01:36:03,379 --> 01:36:05,296 Chun-Li's got a gun. 1275 01:36:05,587 --> 01:36:06,171 Awesome. 1276 01:36:06,462 --> 01:36:09,171 You know, there's a bunch of military stuff. 1277 01:36:09,462 --> 01:36:13,421 We didn't have a lot of details, but the tone just felt way off. Like, way off. 1278 01:36:13,796 --> 01:36:15,337 And now they wanted another big name. 1279 01:36:15,629 --> 01:36:18,171 They want another name that would elevate the picture. 1280 01:36:18,837 --> 01:36:22,046 Now it's an action movie and we make it a major motion picture. 1281 01:36:22,379 --> 01:36:23,587 Raul Julia was on the list. 1282 01:36:23,879 --> 01:36:28,504 Now, up to that point, if we had not had Raul Julia, we were talking about Stephen Lang, 1283 01:36:28,837 --> 01:36:30,212 you know, the villain in Avatar. 1284 01:36:30,504 --> 01:36:35,712 It turned out Raul Julia's kids played the game, so they see an envelope come to his house, Street fighter. 1285 01:36:36,087 --> 01:36:37,921 Dad, Dad, you've to do that. 1286 01:36:38,212 --> 01:36:42,462 So we were lucky that his kids were fans of the game and they encouraged his father to do it. 1287 01:36:42,796 --> 01:36:45,504 And it was great. He had this wonderful trip to Australia. 1288 01:36:46,421 --> 01:36:49,254 They were down there, we they were they rented a condo at the beach. 1289 01:36:49,546 --> 01:36:51,921 So we were like, next we were like, they were both on the same beach. 1290 01:36:52,254 --> 01:36:56,004 We had a wonderful time with his kids on this, what turned out to be his last picture. 1291 01:36:56,296 --> 01:36:58,171 So I was glad that he was able to have that. 1292 01:36:58,462 --> 01:37:01,962 He's so funny in the movie because he's not trying to be funny. 1293 01:37:02,254 --> 01:37:06,212 He based a lot of his body language on Mussolini, Saddam Hussein. 1294 01:37:06,504 --> 01:37:08,171 He approached this quite, quite seriously. 1295 01:37:08,462 --> 01:37:11,087 He approached this like he was playing Richard the third. 1296 01:37:11,379 --> 01:37:12,671 You know, the fact that Van Damme was in it. 1297 01:37:12,962 --> 01:37:16,087 Kylie Minogue, obviously she was a big part of everyone's life back. 1298 01:37:16,379 --> 01:37:19,212 If you were a young teenage boy, you know, that was a big selling point. 1299 01:37:19,504 --> 01:37:24,421 Kylie I tell you what, she is not only a beautiful soul, beautiful, hard, 1300 01:37:25,337 --> 01:37:30,171 hard worker, and I said, This is what we want you to do. 1301 01:37:30,712 --> 01:37:32,837 How do you feel about... She says, What do you think? 1302 01:37:33,129 --> 01:37:34,379 I said, I know you can do it. 1303 01:37:34,671 --> 01:37:35,587 She says let's go. 1304 01:37:35,879 --> 01:37:38,171 As she didn't second guess herself at all. 1305 01:37:38,587 --> 01:37:42,171 You know, she's a pro at whatever she does, I mean, her voice and everything else. 1306 01:37:42,462 --> 01:37:47,004 But when it came to that action, I really enjoyed watching her performing. 1307 01:37:47,421 --> 01:37:49,212 It was basically Ken and Ryu's movie. 1308 01:37:49,504 --> 01:37:53,546 And we're going to have, I think, Chun-Li and Honda, Balrog, 1309 01:37:53,837 --> 01:37:57,212 I think it was four and four was a couldn't get it to seven, but I had four and four. 1310 01:37:57,504 --> 01:38:02,921 But once John Claude came in, his part became much more dominant. 1311 01:38:03,379 --> 01:38:06,046 He eats up so much time he can't have time with the other people. 1312 01:38:06,379 --> 01:38:08,421 Plus he we did not have him for the whole shoot. 1313 01:38:08,796 --> 01:38:12,296 The whole picture was a ten week shoo, but we only had him for like six weeks. 1314 01:38:12,587 --> 01:38:14,712 Van Damme, you know, he was always in shape. 1315 01:38:15,212 --> 01:38:18,004 That's one thing. You know, I had never had to worry about him. 1316 01:38:18,296 --> 01:38:22,587 He was ripped flexibility from his dance background. 1317 01:38:22,879 --> 01:38:24,587 He was always fit. 1318 01:38:24,879 --> 01:38:27,629 It was easy to work with him because, you know, 1319 01:38:27,921 --> 01:38:32,087 he said, okay, I don't want you to do a sidekick and you're going to kick over his head. 1320 01:38:32,379 --> 01:38:34,546 He would just stand there, go boop, put it out there. 1321 01:38:34,837 --> 01:38:37,296 And I said, okay, that was easy. 1322 01:38:37,671 --> 01:38:40,671 As I would write each draft of the script, they would come back and hammer me, 1323 01:38:40,962 --> 01:38:44,046 and hammer me, and hammer me, and add more characters and add characters. 1324 01:38:44,337 --> 01:38:47,462 And I kept saying to them, look, we've got 100 minute movie. 1325 01:38:47,962 --> 01:38:50,754 If you have ten characters, that's 10 minutes each. 1326 01:38:51,296 --> 01:38:53,712 But then the storyline, the plot of the movie, right? 1327 01:38:54,004 --> 01:38:55,754 You're going to like people are going to be, who was that? 1328 01:38:56,046 --> 01:39:00,712 You know, they would say, all right, I guess we could give you another million, 200,000 dollars 1329 01:39:01,004 --> 01:39:03,254 but we'd like you to add this other character. 1330 01:39:03,587 --> 01:39:08,129 So before we were done, it had like crept back up to like 18 or 19 characters. 1331 01:39:08,671 --> 01:39:14,671 Original world warriors, seven eight characters, and focusing on them could have worked. 1332 01:39:14,962 --> 01:39:20,962 But you have to have the central heart of the film clearly going to be Guile because is the American or Belgian in this case 1333 01:39:21,254 --> 01:39:25,087 All roads lead to Bison, whose road is clearest. 1334 01:39:25,379 --> 01:39:28,337 Well, Guile had this friend killed. 1335 01:39:28,629 --> 01:39:31,796 Chun-Li had her father killed by this single man. 1336 01:39:32,421 --> 01:39:37,171 So we kind of make them in the forefront because people can they can relate to revenge story. 1337 01:39:37,462 --> 01:39:39,629 A good revenge story makes for good cinema. 1338 01:39:43,671 --> 01:39:47,254 The hype was real and they were very crafty. 1339 01:39:47,921 --> 01:39:53,296 One of the first images they released, I think I got it in a games mag and I had the poster on my wall was Vega. 1340 01:39:53,754 --> 01:39:59,129 It was just an image of vega. You're like, he's ripped, he's got the claw, he's got the mask. 1341 01:40:00,087 --> 01:40:01,671 What's to complain about? 1342 01:40:01,962 --> 01:40:03,254 He looks dope, right? 1343 01:40:03,546 --> 01:40:07,504 So I remember seeing that and I thought, well, if vega looks this good, then, 1344 01:40:07,796 --> 01:40:09,337 you know, we're in for a good time. 1345 01:40:09,629 --> 01:40:12,879 The fighting in the game is not the way people fight in streets, it's fantastic. 1346 01:40:13,171 --> 01:40:17,296 Now they push the cash back up to 19 people we could not afford 1347 01:40:17,629 --> 01:40:21,004 18 like well known martial artists, we couldn't afford it. 1348 01:40:21,337 --> 01:40:26,421 So he said since it's disconnected from reality, we have to teach them these crazy fighting moves anyway. 1349 01:40:26,712 --> 01:40:28,796 Let's go with actors. So we went with actors. 1350 01:40:29,171 --> 01:40:30,879 Each character was different. 1351 01:40:31,171 --> 01:40:35,212 So each one of them, I had to train them a little bit different. 1352 01:40:35,921 --> 01:40:39,129 Physically, they all they all ran. They all stretch. 1353 01:40:39,421 --> 01:40:45,004 But when it came down to the fight game, we had to train a little bit different for each one of them. 1354 01:40:45,379 --> 01:40:50,504 Once the schedule changed to accommodate Raul, I was putting a lot of the supporting players 1355 01:40:50,879 --> 01:40:54,962 into their scenes, like weeks ahead of when they were supposed to do it 1356 01:40:55,254 --> 01:40:58,962 and they had not been trained beyond just the basics of fighting. 1357 01:40:59,254 --> 01:41:00,712 It wasn't because of the of the team. 1358 01:41:01,004 --> 01:41:02,546 I think they did some great work. 1359 01:41:02,837 --> 01:41:04,671 And Benny also plays a character in the movie. 1360 01:41:04,962 --> 01:41:07,004 You see him here in there being sinister. 1361 01:41:07,671 --> 01:41:10,879 When it came from fighting with the boxing, kickboxing, 1362 01:41:11,629 --> 01:41:17,046 grappling, whether it be sword fighting, knife fighting. That was my thing. 1363 01:41:17,337 --> 01:41:21,754 At the 11th hour, they wanted to add Fei Long, which is a character that was just added to the game. 1364 01:41:22,171 --> 01:41:24,004 It's obviously Bruce Lee. 1365 01:41:24,296 --> 01:41:26,004 I don't know how that fits in the movie. 1366 01:41:26,296 --> 01:41:30,337 So then they said, okay, well, then another character, Captain Sawada, and they had an actor. 1367 01:41:30,629 --> 01:41:35,004 They were pressing on us to play Ryu, but his command of English was not very good. 1368 01:41:35,296 --> 01:41:39,754 And at a certain point they finally realized that he would is English, would never up to the level. 1369 01:41:40,046 --> 01:41:41,587 So they said, he's your Captain Sawada. 1370 01:41:41,879 --> 01:41:44,337 It was a contest. Like who was harder to understand? 1371 01:41:44,629 --> 01:41:47,421 Captain Sawada speaking English or Jean-Claude speaking English. 1372 01:41:47,712 --> 01:41:50,254 You go like, the audience is used to Jean-Claude, 1373 01:41:50,546 --> 01:41:52,629 I would say to them, you know, what about the accent? 1374 01:41:53,087 --> 01:41:57,504 And I'm going to kick that on of a bitch Bison's ass so hard. 1375 01:41:57,796 --> 01:42:00,462 They said, What accent? Because he was looped in Japan. 1376 01:42:00,754 --> 01:42:01,879 In other words, they didn't know he had it. 1377 01:42:02,171 --> 01:42:03,754 So we had dialog in the movie. 1378 01:42:04,046 --> 01:42:06,087 The Jean-Claude character was from Louisiana. 1379 01:42:06,462 --> 01:42:10,712 It fell out of the movie, so his accent remains unexplained. 1380 01:42:11,004 --> 01:42:14,879 It's been on a conference call and I start challenging the stuff about it not being authentic. 1381 01:42:15,171 --> 01:42:18,504 Right. And not being you know, it's not the IP. 1382 01:42:18,796 --> 01:42:21,379 Certainly the video game community are going to have their favorites. 1383 01:42:21,671 --> 01:42:25,962 They're going to have a very clear idea of what is Street Fighter. 1384 01:42:26,254 --> 01:42:30,504 Capcom didn't have enough stake in the way had done their deal, you know, even though 1385 01:42:30,796 --> 01:42:36,296 they had some money into it, they didn't really want to just try and tell Hollywood how to do their movie. 1386 01:42:36,837 --> 01:42:39,087 I think bastardization is the word I use a lot. 1387 01:42:39,379 --> 01:42:40,379 As I'm shooting the film. 1388 01:42:40,671 --> 01:42:42,962 And then a couple of times Jean-Claude would call in sick. 1389 01:42:43,462 --> 01:42:45,504 He admitted to having some drug problems in the past. 1390 01:42:46,129 --> 01:42:48,379 He had such a beautiful heart and respect, 1391 01:42:48,671 --> 01:42:52,046 you know, so when I would ask him to do certain things, he wouldn't argue. 1392 01:42:52,337 --> 01:42:55,504 He said, okay, let's do it, and we would do it. 1393 01:42:57,337 --> 01:43:01,212 We had a really good rapport with one another, even though, you know, 1394 01:43:01,504 --> 01:43:04,587 we all knew that he was going to through some things. 1395 01:43:05,004 --> 01:43:08,379 But going through all that when he got in front of that camera, 1396 01:43:10,337 --> 01:43:11,337 nobody would know. 1397 01:43:11,629 --> 01:43:15,754 Between making sure Raul Julia was on his meds for several weeks 1398 01:43:16,254 --> 01:43:21,087 before we shot him and keeping Jean-Claude off meds, this blew up the schedule. 1399 01:43:21,379 --> 01:43:23,962 So there's a couple of places there were supposed to be fights and there aren't. 1400 01:43:24,296 --> 01:43:26,296 So there's a scene where there's going to be a cage fight 1401 01:43:26,837 --> 01:43:31,379 and was going to be a fight there that did get interrupted by Jean-Claude crashing through the wall. 1402 01:43:31,796 --> 01:43:37,087 But what I discovered that because of the scheduling change, somehow the word did not percolate down. 1403 01:43:37,587 --> 01:43:39,921 To my astonishment, they had not been trained in this knife fight. 1404 01:43:40,337 --> 01:43:42,462 Once I was cutting the picture back and losing the fight, 1405 01:43:42,837 --> 01:43:44,879 we realized we had to punch the fights up again. 1406 01:43:45,254 --> 01:43:49,046 So the last thing we did is we went up to Vancouver 1407 01:43:49,421 --> 01:43:52,462 and we rebuilt part of the sets that we had had in Australia. 1408 01:43:53,004 --> 01:43:59,587 We filmed the big fight between Kena and Ryu, and Vega and Sagat because the version we shot in 1409 01:43:59,879 --> 01:44:04,754 Australia had been cut back so much that it was like really weak sauce. 1410 01:44:05,212 --> 01:44:08,671 And the special moves... Ryu's Hadoken was just a flash. 1411 01:44:08,962 --> 01:44:12,337 They just put a white frame, in that was like, oh God, is that it? 1412 01:44:12,629 --> 01:44:18,129 Finally at the end, the big fight between Raul and Jean-Claude, that was the last week of filming 1413 01:44:18,421 --> 01:44:22,087 and I was determined to get, you know, the video game moves in there. 1414 01:44:22,504 --> 01:44:24,962 No sonic boom in the end fight with Bison. 1415 01:44:25,254 --> 01:44:28,879 And I thought this coming. Sonic boom was going to come, you know, 1416 01:44:29,171 --> 01:44:34,546 maybe when the sort of pseudo psycho crusher is coming towards him, he's going to do something. 1417 01:44:34,837 --> 01:44:37,879 The flash kicks were there, I guess, without the flash. 1418 01:44:38,171 --> 01:44:39,046 But, you know. 1419 01:44:39,337 --> 01:44:43,921 It was funny that the movie called Street Fighter that the end of the day, the weakest thing 1420 01:44:45,004 --> 01:44:45,629 is the fighting. 1421 01:44:45,921 --> 01:44:50,296 And it was just a perfect storm of things that like can sabotage 1422 01:44:50,587 --> 01:44:52,587 you happening all at once. 1423 01:44:54,754 --> 01:44:56,379 So the movie opened on Christmas Day 1424 01:44:56,671 --> 01:45:00,212 and it opened really well and they made 130 million 1425 01:45:00,671 --> 01:45:05,421 on the initial release from Box Office and then the toys and all that. 1426 01:45:05,712 --> 01:45:08,046 So right away they made $100 million dollars. 1427 01:45:08,379 --> 01:45:12,212 And from 20/20 Vision Video Street fighter. 1428 01:45:12,504 --> 01:45:14,587 Now available to own on video. 1429 01:45:14,879 --> 01:45:17,212 20/20 Vision in hindsight, maybe they shouldn't have made it, 1430 01:45:17,504 --> 01:45:19,587 but hell they made a lot of money from it. 1431 01:45:19,879 --> 01:45:21,421 Made a fortune on rental. 1432 01:45:21,712 --> 01:45:23,546 I rented it every year. 1433 01:45:23,837 --> 01:45:27,837 This movie makes over 400 to $450,000 a year. 1434 01:45:28,129 --> 01:45:31,837 To this day. It's always on television and it's a cash cow for them. 1435 01:45:32,296 --> 01:45:33,296 There were two albums, actually. 1436 01:45:33,587 --> 01:45:37,837 We had the soundtrack of the movie, and then there was an album called Songs inspired by 1437 01:45:38,337 --> 01:45:40,462 which had a bunch of hip hop artists and stuff like that. 1438 01:45:42,796 --> 01:45:46,004 They did the Laser Disc special edition from Universal. 1439 01:45:46,296 --> 01:45:49,004 They included Street Fighter with like John Ford and Hitchcock. 1440 01:45:49,296 --> 01:45:52,796 I didn't understand how it got on that rack, but maybe because it was their most recent picture. 1441 01:45:53,254 --> 01:45:57,337 It's kind of the effect with Star Wars, you have diehard Star Wars 1442 01:45:57,629 --> 01:46:01,712 fans of the original three, and anything else that's released later, 1443 01:46:02,004 --> 01:46:06,587 they've almost sort of drank their own kool aid and just told themselves, this must be good, 1444 01:46:06,879 --> 01:46:09,962 even if I don't feel it's good. It is good, I'm just not... 1445 01:46:10,379 --> 01:46:12,171 I'm just not aligning with it yet. 1446 01:46:12,462 --> 01:46:16,962 And I think with Street Fighter you kind of, you so want it to be good that you kind of 1447 01:46:17,254 --> 01:46:22,004 are in a bit of denial at first and you maybe watch it a couple of and you realize that... 1448 01:46:22,754 --> 01:46:28,046 then you see Mortal Kombat and you're like now that a much closer adaptation of the source material. 1449 01:46:28,462 --> 01:46:33,046 Fortunately, you didn't get invited to the press screening of it, but I remember one of the writers 1450 01:46:33,337 --> 01:46:39,337 coming back and he really struggled to describe what he'd seen because he was just laughing so much, 1451 01:46:39,962 --> 01:46:42,129 particularly about like the origin of Blanka. 1452 01:46:42,421 --> 01:46:46,462 Zangief looked the business. Actually does a couple of things 1453 01:46:46,754 --> 01:46:52,046 you can cherry pick from that, that you're like that element in isolation is good. 1454 01:46:52,379 --> 01:46:59,254 Old Thunder Hawk with this little armlet, you know, and all that'll do, that makes him native. 1455 01:46:59,546 --> 01:47:03,129 I don't think that guy probably had a drop of native in him did he? 1456 01:47:04,046 --> 01:47:08,629 And making Honda Hawaiian? Why? And Balrog a cameraman. 1457 01:47:08,921 --> 01:47:15,754 This has been written to troll the audience. Let's makes Sagat the shortest actor in the cast 1458 01:47:16,129 --> 01:47:19,046 and just making Ryu and Ken two-bit hustlers. 1459 01:47:19,379 --> 01:47:26,296 It couldn't be any more sacrilegious to what they represent. 1460 01:47:26,587 --> 01:47:29,504 And what I went to then showcase, and right the wrongs 1461 01:47:29,796 --> 01:47:33,087 in Assassin's Fist, down the line. 1462 01:47:34,421 --> 01:47:37,004 It's kind of a mess, but weirdly enjoyable. 1463 01:47:37,296 --> 01:47:38,546 You got a few laughs out of it, 1464 01:47:38,837 --> 01:47:42,629 but it didn't stand up to the action films of the time by any stretch of the imagination. 1465 01:47:43,129 --> 01:47:45,879 It's something we look back on now as a bit of sort of campy fun. 1466 01:47:46,171 --> 01:47:49,796 But at the time, Street Fighter 2 was kind of important to you. 1467 01:47:50,254 --> 01:47:55,337 You didn't want Jean-Claude running around in a weird, invisible stealth boat. 1468 01:47:55,629 --> 01:47:57,462 It just didn't fit the whole thing. 1469 01:47:57,754 --> 01:48:03,879 But it had Raul Julia in it who was coming off of a huge career high with Addams Family. 1470 01:48:04,337 --> 01:48:07,254 Jean-Claude Van Damme was very popular in the mid-nineties. 1471 01:48:07,629 --> 01:48:11,296 And then I go into the theater with my friends and we're watching this movie 1472 01:48:11,587 --> 01:48:14,962 and then suddenly Kylie Minogue is on screen 1473 01:48:15,796 --> 01:48:18,629 and I go, oh my God, that's Kylie Minogue. 1474 01:48:19,296 --> 01:48:22,421 And all of my friends look at me and they're like, who? 1475 01:48:23,129 --> 01:48:25,462 And that was a little soul crushing for me. 1476 01:48:25,962 --> 01:48:30,796 But it also gave me something to hold on to throughout this horrendous cinematic experience. 1477 01:48:31,087 --> 01:48:33,712 This is the collection agency Bison. 1478 01:48:34,379 --> 01:48:37,587 Your ass is six months overdue and it's mine. 1479 01:48:37,879 --> 01:48:41,837 I don't mean to sound so disrespectful to the people who did the awesome work in there. 1480 01:48:42,129 --> 01:48:44,796 A lot of work that goes into that and that's why I just didn't. 1481 01:48:45,296 --> 01:48:49,129 It just was so far off of the material that it's disappointing, you know, everybody knows it. 1482 01:48:49,421 --> 01:48:52,087 It's really weird. It's really that movie is really weird. 1483 01:48:52,379 --> 01:48:55,837 And then Mortal Kombat, just to continue to kick us in the ass a bit, 1484 01:48:56,129 --> 01:49:00,921 comes out and, you know, and that was a bit campy or whatever, but man, it felt so authentic, right? 1485 01:49:01,212 --> 01:49:04,462 It was to this day, I still love the first Mortal Kombat movie a ton. 1486 01:49:04,754 --> 01:49:07,587 The fate of billions will depend upon you. 1487 01:49:11,296 --> 01:49:12,046 Sorry. 1488 01:49:12,337 --> 01:49:17,462 I avoid watching the Street Fighter movie as much as I can because it always upsets the shit out of me. 1489 01:49:18,087 --> 01:49:23,212 Didn't Jackie Chan have some slight small Street Fighter clip from one of his movies around that time 1490 01:49:23,504 --> 01:49:24,296 that was like a bit of a joke. 1491 01:49:24,629 --> 01:49:28,171 It was cool. City Hunter, and they're actually really faithful, 1492 01:49:28,462 --> 01:49:32,754 although in a spoof, departure from what's going on in the film at the time. 1493 01:49:33,212 --> 01:49:36,546 For example, you see Jackie hit their cab machine on the cruise ship. 1494 01:49:36,879 --> 01:49:42,171 He does not become Honda because he had a lifetime sponsorship deal with Mitsubishi. 1495 01:49:42,712 --> 01:49:45,837 Just the name Honda will screw up my deal here. 1496 01:49:46,129 --> 01:49:47,962 You can't have that, so they actually changed that. 1497 01:49:48,254 --> 01:49:51,129 And if you watch the Blu-Ray, kind of see a little crude of a change. 1498 01:49:51,421 --> 01:49:55,546 Jackie in drag as Chun-Li doing the jumping winning pose 1499 01:49:55,837 --> 01:50:00,004 the sort of knot knees and heels and the kind of peace sign. 1500 01:50:00,837 --> 01:50:06,962 It was very well done for the time, but with what kind of visual effects they had at their disposal. 1501 01:50:07,337 --> 01:50:12,212 But even that was more street fighter than the entire Street Fighter movie I think. 1502 01:50:12,504 --> 01:50:14,129 It's very much like, okay, that's the game. 1503 01:50:14,421 --> 01:50:15,712 In my astonishment now, 1504 01:50:16,004 --> 01:50:20,546 I saw all these revisionist reviews of the movie say, Hey, this movie's actually pretty good. 1505 01:50:20,837 --> 01:50:23,462 The craziest one I've seen now is, you know what? 1506 01:50:24,004 --> 01:50:25,546 This movie is supposed to be funny. 1507 01:50:25,837 --> 01:50:26,546 And there were the reviews 1508 01:50:26,837 --> 01:50:31,087 where the movie came out saying, this movie is so stupid, it's accidentally funny. 1509 01:50:31,421 --> 01:50:36,087 Now, I don't know how you could look at a movie like that and look at some of the dialog like. 1510 01:50:36,379 --> 01:50:38,129 Quick change the channel. 1511 01:50:38,421 --> 01:50:39,754 Obviously is supposed to be funny. 1512 01:50:40,046 --> 01:50:43,296 We can all go back and enjoy the, you know, 1513 01:50:43,587 --> 01:50:48,087 The day Bison graced your father's village is the most important day of your life. 1514 01:50:48,921 --> 01:50:50,796 For me, it was Tuesday. 1515 01:50:51,087 --> 01:50:52,879 It's meme worthy now. 1516 01:50:53,171 --> 01:50:55,337 Game over! 1517 01:50:55,629 --> 01:51:00,171 These things creep into your head and you're like, actually, they must have done something right, you know? 1518 01:51:00,462 --> 01:51:03,337 Oh, here's a great quote from it. What a screw up. 1519 01:51:03,921 --> 01:51:04,462 What a woman. 1520 01:51:06,712 --> 01:51:10,671 Looking out the window at Chun-Li in her black catsuit escaping from there. 1521 01:51:11,087 --> 01:51:12,379 Utterly farcical. 1522 01:51:26,087 --> 01:51:29,004 I watch it and I think it's one of those so-bad-it's-good 1523 01:51:29,546 --> 01:51:32,254 instances where, you know, it's a part of the series history. 1524 01:51:32,712 --> 01:51:35,754 It's one of those things that Street Fighter fans can look back on and, you know, 1525 01:51:36,046 --> 01:51:39,671 maybe not with rose tinted specs, but it is an interesting piece of history. 1526 01:51:48,379 --> 01:51:50,504 Alongside the movie, Capcom has this brilliant idea. 1527 01:51:50,796 --> 01:51:54,004 They've hired a bunch of movie stars to play the beloved Street Fighter cast. 1528 01:51:54,379 --> 01:51:57,337 They'll just crank out a video game that can take down Mortal Kombat. 1529 01:51:57,712 --> 01:51:59,754 It's like Mortal Kombat, but with movie stars. 1530 01:52:00,087 --> 01:52:05,546 The arcade game, the Street Fighter The Movie was a game that was developed kind of alongside the film. 1531 01:52:05,837 --> 01:52:10,046 The developers, which were in North America, of course, they actually worked alongside 1532 01:52:10,337 --> 01:52:11,879 the filming of the movie. 1533 01:52:12,171 --> 01:52:14,129 So they got some time with the different actors. 1534 01:52:14,421 --> 01:52:17,546 They were able to digitize them directly into game. 1535 01:52:17,837 --> 01:52:23,087 Mortal Kombat, this scrappy Chicago team has hired a bunch of local martial artists 1536 01:52:23,379 --> 01:52:26,921 who actually know how to convincingly do martial arts, which turns out not to be one of 1537 01:52:27,212 --> 01:52:29,879 Kylie Minogue's specialties or some of the others in the cast. 1538 01:52:30,296 --> 01:52:32,546 I think of Raul Julia playing M. Bison, 1539 01:52:32,837 --> 01:52:36,796 who's not only not a martial artist but is suffering from terminal cancer as of this moment. 1540 01:52:37,087 --> 01:52:38,504 I mean really you have Jean-Claude Van Damme 1541 01:52:38,796 --> 01:52:42,796 and no one who is able to step into the video capture booth and do this successfully. 1542 01:52:43,171 --> 01:52:44,962 Actually, they were going to use me 1543 01:52:46,046 --> 01:52:47,337 into one of the characters. 1544 01:52:47,629 --> 01:52:51,962 If they did, whoever was going to play against me, they would have had their hands full, that's for sure. 1545 01:52:52,421 --> 01:52:53,587 And then Van Damme himself 1546 01:52:53,879 --> 01:52:58,296 was reluctant to go to work and do all the motion capture stuff, had to be kind of cajoled into doing his moves. 1547 01:52:58,587 --> 01:53:00,254 Ultimately, incredible technologies. 1548 01:53:00,546 --> 01:53:05,837 The makers of Golden Tee that produced this game for Capcom did get the performance out of J.C.V.D. that they needed. 1549 01:53:06,129 --> 01:53:09,879 That wasn't going to be enough to deliver a worthy competitor to Mortal Kombat. 1550 01:53:10,254 --> 01:53:14,671 It really had this look of like fluid motion in a way that Mortal Kombat did not. 1551 01:53:15,046 --> 01:53:22,171 The problem is it also highlighted what made Mortal Kombat work so well, and it was the key framing the positions that they used. 1552 01:53:22,462 --> 01:53:24,254 Oh, hearing about this thing, and I'm upset. 1553 01:53:24,546 --> 01:53:26,629 And then I go look at it and I'm playing it. 1554 01:53:26,921 --> 01:53:30,754 I'm like, Oh, you know, hey, these inputs are off, you know, like trying to give them feedback. 1555 01:53:31,046 --> 01:53:33,004 And of course it's like, who wants that, right? 1556 01:53:33,379 --> 01:53:37,337 The ability to make a fighting game type was, you know, unknown. 1557 01:53:37,629 --> 01:53:39,004 And so I knew how hard it was. 1558 01:53:39,296 --> 01:53:42,962 And so then to see it shipped that way just kind of bugged me up because I thought I was just early. 1559 01:53:43,504 --> 01:53:44,754 And that also comes down to the fact 1560 01:53:45,046 --> 01:53:49,837 Capcom themselves did not share the original source code with these developers. 1561 01:53:50,129 --> 01:53:53,712 So knowing that, I actually think it's an interesting effort. 1562 01:53:54,004 --> 01:53:58,212 It's a cool game and it is worth checking out, but it's very clearly 1563 01:53:58,504 --> 01:54:03,087 not a full on Street Fighter game and it doesn't nail the fundamentals 1564 01:54:03,379 --> 01:54:08,254 and matching the frames of animation that you need to make a street fighter game work. 1565 01:54:08,796 --> 01:54:12,671 I think the failure in that game has little to do with its relationship to Street Fighter 1566 01:54:12,962 --> 01:54:14,754 and more to do with its relationship to Mortal Kombat. 1567 01:54:15,046 --> 01:54:18,671 It played very little like Street Fighter, though they tried to replicate some of those moves 1568 01:54:19,046 --> 01:54:24,212 and the moves just lacked the authenticity of the equivalent game play in Mortal Kombat. 1569 01:54:24,754 --> 01:54:29,587 The Saturn and PlayStation game launched very early in the lifecycle of these systems. 1570 01:54:30,004 --> 01:54:33,462 It was in fact a launch title for the Sony PlayStation in North America. 1571 01:54:33,921 --> 01:54:37,171 Digitized sprites kind of fell out of fashion really quickly, 1572 01:54:37,671 --> 01:54:42,421 and I think there was this general perception that Street Fighters should not be digitized 1573 01:54:42,712 --> 01:54:45,671 and it ended up looking of cheesy as a result. 1574 01:54:45,962 --> 01:54:47,296 It's not my favorite Street Fighter in the series. 1575 01:54:47,587 --> 01:54:52,087 It's definitely one of those ones where it's like, I love watching people play it like Maximilian 1576 01:54:52,546 --> 01:54:55,587 and Matt McMuscles, and anytime that one of those streamers 1577 01:54:55,879 --> 01:54:59,587 pops up that game to play, I'm just I just love I love watching other people play it. 1578 01:54:59,879 --> 01:55:00,587 I can't play that game. 1579 01:55:00,879 --> 01:55:05,046 It's just kind of a slow version of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo 1580 01:55:05,337 --> 01:55:08,296 with a couple of interesting ideas, like the EX moves that they picked up on later, 1581 01:55:08,796 --> 01:55:12,962 but just with sort of quite bad looking digitized sprites, 1582 01:55:13,254 --> 01:55:17,754 it was basically just an inferior version of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, really. 1583 01:55:18,337 --> 01:55:22,087 That has some features that you wouldn't find in other street fighter games at the time, 1584 01:55:22,379 --> 01:55:29,087 such as the full story mode with branching paths and digitized speech sections in their where it was more like text. 1585 01:55:29,379 --> 01:55:33,004 But you know, you're basically following the story while playing the fighting game. 1586 01:55:33,296 --> 01:55:37,921 This is kind of the model that modern fighting games would follow with their story modes, right? 1587 01:55:38,337 --> 01:55:40,046 They were doing it all the way back then. 1588 01:55:40,337 --> 01:55:43,796 And so when you look at it from that perspective and you just play game, 1589 01:55:44,421 --> 01:55:47,379 I think it's a really cool period piece and it still plays well. 1590 01:55:47,671 --> 01:55:50,004 Game over. 1591 01:56:03,587 --> 01:56:05,379 I associate that nineties period, 1592 01:56:05,671 --> 01:56:09,962 mid nineties with the advent of Manga films 1593 01:56:11,504 --> 01:56:12,796 Akira 1594 01:56:14,629 --> 01:56:16,796 Fist of the North Star 1595 01:56:17,962 --> 01:56:19,837 Ghost in the Shell 1596 01:56:21,837 --> 01:56:24,337 Legend of the Overfiend 1597 01:56:27,921 --> 01:56:30,671 Which none of us should have been watching 1598 01:56:34,921 --> 01:56:40,879 Street Fighter two the animated movie. And when that drops, you were like, Oh, My God. 1599 01:56:42,712 --> 01:56:43,337 Yes! 1600 01:56:44,379 --> 01:56:45,546 I was so excited about that. 1601 01:56:45,837 --> 01:56:48,129 And I watched it and I was glued from the first second. 1602 01:56:48,421 --> 01:56:52,046 This right here is what we mean. 1603 01:57:00,671 --> 01:57:04,504 The Sagat, Ryu intro. It was the perfect intro. 1604 01:57:06,462 --> 01:57:07,837 I can't think of any fight 1605 01:57:08,129 --> 01:57:10,712 that would have been more hype than that to open the movie. 1606 01:57:13,796 --> 01:57:17,671 That was better than the entire the Hollywood version. 1607 01:57:18,129 --> 01:57:23,587 The dark screen with the grass rustling in the wind and then the lightning oh, my God. 1608 01:57:28,254 --> 01:57:29,671 Once you knew they got that right, 1609 01:57:29,962 --> 01:57:33,004 you would sort of settle in and trust them to deliver all the rest of it. 1610 01:57:37,337 --> 01:57:40,921 The anime is very different from the mainstream live action film. 1611 01:57:41,212 --> 01:57:43,504 Of course, it focuses Ryu for the most part. 1612 01:57:43,879 --> 01:57:49,337 It makes him the central focus and then brings in the intrigue of he hasn't seen Ken for a long time. 1613 01:57:49,629 --> 01:57:53,921 There's this kind of like rivalry that we saw in the film that being translated to the anime. 1614 01:57:54,212 --> 01:57:55,671 So there's this intrigue. 1615 01:57:55,962 --> 01:57:58,087 I'll see you with fate brings us together again. 1616 01:57:58,379 --> 01:57:58,962 Together again. 1617 01:57:59,254 --> 01:58:04,671 I looked at it and said, well, we'll take Street Fighter, we'll take the world and in, but we'll ground it. 1618 01:58:04,962 --> 01:58:11,546 And the way you ground Street Fighter is the fighting so they brought in the actual creator of K-1 1619 01:58:12,046 --> 01:58:17,754 and had him choreograph the film as a live action film almost is. 1620 01:58:22,046 --> 01:58:25,796 A lot of rotoscoping of the moves and storyboards 1621 01:58:26,087 --> 01:58:29,462 then transported to the main film. 1622 01:58:30,129 --> 01:58:33,587 So they would have actually filmed real choreography, 1623 01:58:33,879 --> 01:58:40,712 and you can see even the way Ryu fights, some of the kicks are very Kyokushin karate. 1624 01:58:41,087 --> 01:58:46,004 At that point, and what we do, it's more about the voice quality, you know, does it fit that? 1625 01:58:46,296 --> 01:58:51,671 And, and I thought, you know, Ryu had this, this kind of, you know, well, you know. 1626 01:58:51,962 --> 01:58:53,421 Not John Wayne, but... 1627 01:58:53,712 --> 01:58:56,671 He definitely was, you know, when he said something, he meant it. 1628 01:58:57,171 --> 01:59:01,171 I'm just passing through here, just the Japanese guy taking in a fight. 1629 01:59:01,462 --> 01:59:02,212 He's not a real chatty guy. 1630 01:59:02,504 --> 01:59:04,379 If you go back and look, you know, so when he did 1631 01:59:04,671 --> 01:59:08,504 say something and so that's, I think was more of what it was about at that time. 1632 01:59:08,796 --> 01:59:10,337 And Ryu is my name. 1633 01:59:10,629 --> 01:59:11,504 It's Ryu. Oh, okay. 1634 01:59:11,796 --> 01:59:16,379 Because I, I don't know, remember, but I might have said Ryu you and now it's, if it's Ryu, you know. 1635 01:59:17,629 --> 01:59:17,962 Okay. 1636 01:59:18,254 --> 01:59:19,296 And that's what I grew up with. 1637 01:59:19,587 --> 01:59:21,421 So that's how I know it is Ryu 1638 01:59:21,712 --> 01:59:23,921 When you watched an original Japanese, 1639 01:59:28,212 --> 01:59:30,962 the soundtrack is so much slower, it's so much more quiet 1640 01:59:31,254 --> 01:59:35,004 and in the background because it's an introspective film, it's all about Ryu's growth. 1641 01:59:35,379 --> 01:59:36,462 It's all about his struggles. 1642 01:59:36,754 --> 01:59:40,421 So the movie decides to kind of give you space and quietness 1643 01:59:40,712 --> 01:59:44,004 to kind of look at him and think like, What is he thinking? 1644 01:59:44,296 --> 01:59:46,046 And then you start thinking. 1645 02:00:11,421 --> 02:00:12,879 The mythology of Street Fighter 1646 02:00:13,171 --> 02:00:17,462 is kind of like a pebble in a pond and the ripples going out with its expanded. 1647 02:00:17,962 --> 02:00:21,337 You see Ryu and Ken training, young, and Ken as the long hair. 1648 02:00:21,629 --> 02:00:28,171 So of course the Street Fighter Alpha games are set before Street Fighter 2 and Ken had long hair 1649 02:00:28,462 --> 02:00:32,671 and had the red ribbon and Ryu actually wore a white one. 1650 02:00:32,962 --> 02:00:36,296 So, you know, oh, so how did Ryu get the red one? 1651 02:00:36,587 --> 02:00:42,171 And it shows where Ryu get injured sparring with Ken and Ken takes off his headband and uses it 1652 02:00:42,462 --> 02:00:46,504 as almost a tourniquet to sort of stem the bleeding in Ryu's head. 1653 02:00:46,921 --> 02:00:48,171 Yeah, that's really cool. 1654 02:00:48,462 --> 02:00:52,962 So the costumes themselves have story and narrative behind them there. 1655 02:00:53,254 --> 02:00:53,754 Thank you, Ken. 1656 02:00:54,837 --> 02:00:56,921 So then, shall we? En garde. 1657 02:00:57,337 --> 02:01:00,462 I got a copy cheap on videos CD of all things. 1658 02:01:00,754 --> 02:01:04,754 I only have anime on video CD. I had like three of them. 1659 02:01:05,046 --> 02:01:07,504 But seeing the Street Fighter 2 one of course very excited. 1660 02:01:07,837 --> 02:01:09,712 And yeah, it's actually pretty good. 1661 02:01:10,004 --> 02:01:14,337 Which blew us away after watching you know Steven De Souza's G.I. Joe movie. 1662 02:01:14,629 --> 02:01:15,962 Are you man enough to fight with me? 1663 02:01:16,254 --> 02:01:19,004 Anyone who opposes me will be destroyed. 1664 02:01:19,296 --> 02:01:23,379 You know, it's nice to see something that was a bit more focused on what the game actually was. 1665 02:01:23,671 --> 02:01:25,546 Yeah, I still think that kind of stands up. 1666 02:01:25,837 --> 02:01:30,337 Something to represent Street Fighter and actually be an enjoyable watch as exciting. 1667 02:01:30,629 --> 02:01:33,337 The characters... I mean, they don't show all the characters. 1668 02:01:33,629 --> 02:01:35,421 That's probably a strength because they then get to put, of course, 1669 02:01:35,712 --> 02:01:38,921 the time into actually showing the ones that they've got on the roster. 1670 02:01:39,212 --> 02:01:43,504 It showed what they want to have the characters be seen like, 1671 02:01:43,796 --> 02:01:46,962 but it also showed they're really limited knowledge of culture. 1672 02:01:47,296 --> 02:01:50,046 So just what are you trying to prove here, Chief Running Mouth. 1673 02:01:50,379 --> 02:01:54,421 I enjoyed the movie for the experience at the time, but after I was like, oh man, I didn't even give this guy... 1674 02:01:54,712 --> 02:01:56,921 And also the other thing is, Dee Jay was my main character. 1675 02:02:01,712 --> 02:02:04,171 So the entire movie, I'm sitting there in anticipation 1676 02:02:04,462 --> 02:02:07,629 waiting for the Dee Jay fight, because all the other fights so far been amazing. 1677 02:02:08,087 --> 02:02:11,671 If you boys can't appreciate my music, then you better haul your sorry asses outta here. 1678 02:02:11,962 --> 02:02:15,879 Like Dee Jay Maximum was outside his shop. He does had a record shop, whatever. 1679 02:02:16,171 --> 02:02:17,962 Of course, the black guys got to associate with music, right? 1680 02:02:18,254 --> 02:02:20,171 Obviously. He doesn't get on main stag fight. 1681 02:02:20,462 --> 02:02:23,296 He doesn't get a platform to to share, to really beat a street fighter. 1682 02:02:23,587 --> 02:02:27,296 He gets to fight these two bit hustlers. 1683 02:02:29,129 --> 02:02:32,129 And then Boxer, the other black guy, also doesn't get to fight. 1684 02:02:32,421 --> 02:02:36,962 He just gets to like burst a few veins and then his shirt... But and that's it. 1685 02:02:41,421 --> 02:02:45,504 So yes, they did what they wanted to do to fortify the way the characters are seen. 1686 02:02:46,129 --> 02:02:49,962 But I felt they didn't really do other characters justice at the same time. 1687 02:02:50,254 --> 02:02:52,004 So yeah, there's a bit of a mismash for me. 1688 02:02:52,296 --> 02:02:56,796 When you watch the American edit, or the English edit, I should say rather, 1689 02:02:57,087 --> 02:03:03,796 from Manga Entertainment, you had all these license bands that that key demographic would listen to. 1690 02:03:11,754 --> 02:03:13,796 And then, of course, just a central soundtrack. 1691 02:03:14,087 --> 02:03:19,087 The overall soundtrack was done by TV composers that were very competent, 1692 02:03:19,379 --> 02:03:22,046 kind of following the action. 1693 02:03:29,962 --> 02:03:31,629 The two aesthetics matched. 1694 02:03:31,921 --> 02:03:34,712 You know, the game was obviously developed by Japanese artists 1695 02:03:35,296 --> 02:03:38,171 and the anime was done in the Japanese animation style. 1696 02:03:38,462 --> 02:03:41,587 So there was definitely this there was a much stronger synergy between the two things. 1697 02:03:41,879 --> 02:03:45,671 Whereas with a live action movie, you know, Jean-Claude Van Damme doesn't look like Guile. 1698 02:03:45,962 --> 02:03:48,337 So it's like, you know, you've got that, but you've got to have Jean-Claude Van Damme 1699 02:03:48,629 --> 02:03:49,421 in there to get the movie made. 1700 02:03:49,712 --> 02:03:55,296 So it definitely felt like a closer, more faithful adaptation of what the games were. 1701 02:03:55,837 --> 02:03:58,462 Anime Fans are fans like no other fans. 1702 02:03:58,754 --> 02:04:01,004 I mean, they just they're diehard. 1703 02:04:01,296 --> 02:04:05,546 And I say this to the fans, you guys are amazing, what they know and what they like. 1704 02:04:05,837 --> 02:04:06,879 And you can't trick them. 1705 02:04:07,171 --> 02:04:13,296 You know, Hollywood cannot fool them by replacing what who they've grown up with is that voice. 1706 02:04:13,587 --> 02:04:15,504 No, we need to get a stars name to do that. 1707 02:04:15,796 --> 02:04:17,004 They don't... They won't have it. 1708 02:04:18,796 --> 02:04:25,337 It's taken it from just two people on a fighting stage to a living, breathing world. 1709 02:04:25,629 --> 02:04:29,587 And when you ask for something, you might get it. 1710 02:04:32,671 --> 02:04:36,296 It was darker. It was more faithful. 1711 02:04:38,004 --> 02:04:41,212 Of course, to the last fight with the tag team of Ryu and Ken 1712 02:04:44,837 --> 02:04:46,754 There was some sick moments in that fight, man. 1713 02:04:53,087 --> 02:04:55,712 It enriched the mythology. 1714 02:04:57,671 --> 02:04:59,671 There's a real world now. 1715 02:05:00,212 --> 02:05:02,837 It was like being in the cinema. 1716 02:05:05,921 --> 02:05:09,254 I was just blown away every second. 1717 02:05:14,254 --> 02:05:15,962 That was Street Fighter, right? 1718 02:05:24,921 --> 02:05:26,921 Colonel William Guile. 1719 02:05:27,212 --> 02:05:29,254 One of the greatest martial artists in the world, 1720 02:05:29,546 --> 02:05:34,212 travels the global tournament circuit, using it to conceal his top secret mission as leader 1721 02:05:34,504 --> 02:05:38,712 of an elite group of international crime fighters known only by their code name: 1722 02:05:39,171 --> 02:05:40,379 Street Fighter. 1723 02:05:41,504 --> 02:05:44,004 Yes, Yes. 1724 02:05:46,171 --> 02:05:50,504 The Street Fighter animated series was something that I only caught in clips in 1995 1725 02:05:50,796 --> 02:05:53,921 because I was already almost a Junior in High School. 1726 02:05:54,212 --> 02:05:57,296 Guile, once again, is the main character in this show, 1727 02:05:57,837 --> 02:06:04,171 and he is almost like a hybrid of Duke from G.I. Joe and Matt Tracker from Mask 1728 02:06:04,462 --> 02:06:09,962 and he's trying to stop M. Bison's, you know, evil forces. 1729 02:06:11,837 --> 02:06:14,379 You could tell that the cartoon writers 1730 02:06:14,671 --> 02:06:18,421 didn't quite know where to go with Street Fighter 2 as a concept. 1731 02:06:19,254 --> 02:06:22,087 They lean on this idea of all of them 1732 02:06:22,379 --> 02:06:25,504 are paramilitary, experienced, independent... 1733 02:06:25,962 --> 02:06:30,212 agents that Guile can just call on at any time, and they all have special powers. 1734 02:06:30,796 --> 02:06:36,879 The problem is, is there is a line in the second episode where Guile tells Chun-Li: 1735 02:06:37,171 --> 02:06:41,254 Remember the Street Fighter Code of Honor, discipline, justice, commitment. 1736 02:06:41,754 --> 02:06:44,129 You can't abandon your team for personal motives. 1737 02:06:44,462 --> 02:06:46,087 And a lot of the characters 1738 02:06:46,379 --> 02:06:51,546 in Street Fighter mimic characters in this martial arts genre of the secret tournament. 1739 02:06:51,837 --> 02:06:56,754 A secret tournament is all about the individual and their individual goals, whatever they are. 1740 02:06:57,046 --> 02:07:02,129 But once you try and square peg that round hole into a G.I. Joe / MASK format, 1741 02:07:02,421 --> 02:07:05,629 it falls apart. It falls apart very quickly. 1742 02:07:06,087 --> 02:07:08,546 And then when you glom bad animation onto it, 1743 02:07:09,962 --> 02:07:11,921 you might as well put a fork in it. 1744 02:07:22,671 --> 02:07:27,004 I think when the interest started beginning to wane on Street Fighter, 1745 02:07:27,296 --> 02:07:30,504 was sort of that period between Super and Super Turbo. 1746 02:07:30,796 --> 02:07:34,046 Now was a time where we explored a lot of the other fighting games that are out. 1747 02:07:34,504 --> 02:07:40,504 By the time Street Fighter 2 had reached the end of its lifecycle, both Nishitani and Yasuda had left the project. 1748 02:07:40,796 --> 02:07:44,712 They were working on a different Capcom game, X-Men: Children of the Atom, 1749 02:07:45,004 --> 02:07:47,462 which ran on the Street Fighter 2 engine and looked a lot like it. 1750 02:07:47,754 --> 02:07:51,296 In some ways you can consider that game to be the true sequel to Street Fighter 2. 1751 02:07:51,629 --> 02:07:55,171 Primal Rage came out a little bit later and my friends didn't play it but 1752 02:07:55,462 --> 02:07:58,337 Primal Rage was a game that I played in and day out. 1753 02:07:58,629 --> 02:07:59,796 I had a binder that I carrried with me 1754 02:08:00,087 --> 02:08:03,587 that had other moves, lists and secrets that I discovered, as well as the 3-D fighters, 1755 02:08:03,879 --> 02:08:07,712 which started to appear around that time, like the Virtua Fighters in the Tekkens. 1756 02:08:08,004 --> 02:08:14,587 Virtua Fighter tried to be a little bit more realistic in its portrayal of characters as much as they could be, given the polygon limitations 1757 02:08:14,879 --> 02:08:17,504 Tekken kind of tried to mix up their character designs 1758 02:08:17,796 --> 02:08:21,296 and had a little bit more fun with that and the environments and stuff like that 1759 02:08:21,879 --> 02:08:25,796 they didn't really care about as being as realistic as Virtua Fighter was. 1760 02:08:26,212 --> 02:08:30,587 Once we get to the late nineties, the general public playing numbers are just falling off. 1761 02:08:30,879 --> 02:08:35,171 Arcade titles generally are slipping and the home console market is doing what it does. 1762 02:08:35,462 --> 02:08:39,421 Street Fighter is still a viable property there, but not the world leader it had been a couple of years earlier. 1763 02:08:39,754 --> 02:08:43,337 That feeling that because it's not 3-D it doesn't count anymore so you got Capcom 1764 02:08:44,046 --> 02:08:46,879 in the early days of the 32-bit generation was still just porting 1765 02:08:47,171 --> 02:08:51,129 to Fight Streeter Zero, Darkstalkers, stuff like that over to the Saturn and the PlayStation. 1766 02:08:51,421 --> 02:08:53,421 I do think it's a bit of a shame that some of the others are forgotten. 1767 02:08:53,712 --> 02:08:57,879 I think Street Fighter Alpha doesn't get the love it deserves, especially Alpha 2, which is fantastic. 1768 02:08:58,171 --> 02:09:02,712 This was arguably one of the finest periods for 2-D fighters in the history of gaming. 1769 02:09:03,254 --> 02:09:06,671 People didn't realize at the time what they had and they just felt 1770 02:09:06,962 --> 02:09:08,879 maybe we have too many of these games now. 1771 02:09:09,296 --> 02:09:14,129 And then when you had the stuff like Tekken and Soulcalibur starting to take off 1772 02:09:14,629 --> 02:09:19,754 with the flashy, new, full 3-D graphics that started to feel like the future, right? 1773 02:09:20,087 --> 02:09:24,046 Street Fighter just started to feel a little bit older at that point. 1774 02:09:24,462 --> 02:09:30,587 Still very compelling, but it didn't have that same push, that same sparkle from the arcade. 1775 02:09:30,962 --> 02:09:35,754 I think fighting game fans quickly found out that the Saturn was the place for 2-D fighting games. 1776 02:09:36,087 --> 02:09:40,004 If you like 3-D, then PlayStation was the place to go. 1777 02:09:40,712 --> 02:09:43,587 So when Street Fighter 2 did inevitably arrive on these platforms 1778 02:09:43,879 --> 02:09:47,254 and their more evolved forms, they actually are a pretty good fit. 1779 02:09:47,546 --> 02:09:53,796 Really, the first time where everything about the arcade version could technically be replicated on these machines, 1780 02:09:54,087 --> 02:09:59,837 right, there didn't have be a compromise except in one area, and that's the loading of course. 1781 02:10:00,129 --> 02:10:03,254 I still stuck with it at that point because I still loved 2-D art. 1782 02:10:03,546 --> 02:10:04,712 I still thought it looked fantastic. 1783 02:10:05,004 --> 02:10:08,254 I still thought it gave these characters, a life that you don't get from 3-D. 1784 02:10:08,546 --> 02:10:09,587 But it did seem to be... 1785 02:10:09,879 --> 02:10:13,754 You could see from the way the press was talking, in the way that even your mates were talking to. 1786 02:10:14,046 --> 02:10:15,254 No one was talking about Street Fighter anymore. 1787 02:10:15,546 --> 02:10:16,879 It was like... have you played Tekken? 1788 02:10:17,171 --> 02:10:19,754 How have you played Virtua Fighter? Street Fighter was seen as old news. 1789 02:10:20,046 --> 02:10:24,171 You're seeing the competition that was nipping at Street Fighter 2's heels superseded 1790 02:10:24,462 --> 02:10:30,129 and the games that they put out subsequent to the original did have innovations and changes. 1791 02:10:30,712 --> 02:10:34,504 But after a few years, all of us were sitting around going... 1792 02:10:34,796 --> 02:10:36,296 Where's that three? 1793 02:10:37,796 --> 02:10:40,379 When I was working in the press in the early days in my twenties, 1794 02:10:41,004 --> 02:10:45,337 I was invited over to Capcom's U.S. offices. 1795 02:10:45,629 --> 02:10:48,837 I got an opportunity to see an early version 1796 02:10:49,129 --> 02:10:52,379 of Street Fighter 3 running on actual CPS-3 hardware, 1797 02:10:52,671 --> 02:10:58,837 and I just started looking at the intro sequence and I was just like, Oh my God, this is this is amazing. 1798 02:10:59,129 --> 02:11:03,254 And I jumped in and I, I was like, shocked that 1799 02:11:03,754 --> 02:11:06,796 the cast of characters as far as returning cast was very limited. 1800 02:11:07,087 --> 02:11:09,921 It was just Ryu and Ken and everyone else was new. 1801 02:11:10,254 --> 02:11:15,587 They tried to reboot everything, all these new characters and just strange new styles and ideas. 1802 02:11:15,879 --> 02:11:17,379 And I love it. It's beautiful. 1803 02:11:17,671 --> 02:11:18,171 It plays great. 1804 02:11:18,462 --> 02:11:21,754 It looks incredible, but it felt too unfamiliar, I think. 1805 02:11:22,129 --> 02:11:25,337 And when you combine that with the rise of 3-D, 1806 02:11:25,629 --> 02:11:30,296 with the age of the original Street Fighter games with so many different versions. 1807 02:11:33,129 --> 02:11:36,129 So I think it still confuses people to this day. 1808 02:11:36,462 --> 02:11:37,379 You really have to think about, 1809 02:11:37,671 --> 02:11:41,879 especially because the North American and Japanese versions weren't always name the same thing anyway. 1810 02:11:42,254 --> 02:11:45,379 You take all of those elements together and you just have 1811 02:11:45,671 --> 02:11:49,004 this fatigue for Capcom 2-D fighting games. 1812 02:11:49,296 --> 02:11:53,379 But by then the arcades, at least locally to weren't so much of a thing. 1813 02:11:53,671 --> 02:11:58,212 So I didn't play Street Fighter 3 until it came out on the Dreamcast years later. 1814 02:11:58,504 --> 02:12:02,129 As technology progressed and we got towards the release of the Dreamcast and, 1815 02:12:02,421 --> 02:12:07,254 you know, the PlayStation 2, the 2-D fighter was losing its appeal with the mainstream audience. 1816 02:12:19,171 --> 02:12:20,962 I think that the 15th anniversary 1817 02:12:21,254 --> 02:12:25,171 release for Street Fighter was a really special thing for Capcom to do. 1818 02:12:25,462 --> 02:12:29,671 A Hyper Street Fighter 2 was a really neat concept, and what it allowed you to do 1819 02:12:29,962 --> 02:12:35,129 is choose any version of a character throughout Street Fighter 2 history. 1820 02:12:35,504 --> 02:12:42,129 So would Guile from Street Fighter 2 be able to defeat Guile from Hyper Fighting or something like that. 1821 02:12:42,421 --> 02:12:44,337 And this is a game where you could do that. 1822 02:12:44,962 --> 02:12:49,879 We had been working with Capcom here at Digital Eclipse on the Street Fighter 30th anniversary collection. 1823 02:12:50,171 --> 02:12:53,796 For me, that was like a kid in a candy store because my history of Street Fighter, 1824 02:12:54,087 --> 02:12:59,212 my love for Street Fighter, now years later, being able to dive deep into that world again, 1825 02:12:59,504 --> 02:13:03,962 bring the excitement of Street Fighter back to fans, what can we do to get them excited again? 1826 02:13:04,254 --> 02:13:08,921 This is a celebratory collection of Street Fighter's arcade history. 1827 02:13:10,879 --> 02:13:13,171 Street Fighter's Legacy is really about a combination 1828 02:13:13,462 --> 02:13:17,379 of that pop culture apex, where this was a mass cultural phenomenon. 1829 02:13:17,671 --> 02:13:22,337 Everybody knew it, loved these characters, but then also, and equally, 1830 02:13:22,629 --> 02:13:27,462 these are just well-balanced, fun, memorable games that have spurred awesome tournament play for decades. 1831 02:13:27,754 --> 02:13:33,046 And as this franchise has found its footing again in the last few years, it's all about combining those things. 1832 02:13:33,337 --> 02:13:36,379 You talk about the history of all games ever made. 1833 02:13:37,296 --> 02:13:39,504 It has to be in the discussion of the top five games. 1834 02:13:39,796 --> 02:13:42,837 I mean, it must be because of its contribution. 1835 02:13:43,421 --> 02:13:48,837 They probably brought in more female game players and fighting game players than ever before. 1836 02:13:49,212 --> 02:13:53,087 The thing that really hammered home for me was that it was one of those games that everybody knew about. 1837 02:13:53,379 --> 02:13:55,379 You know, you could have a conversation with a member of your family 1838 02:13:55,671 --> 02:13:57,837 who've got no interest in video games whatsoever. 1839 02:13:58,462 --> 02:14:02,754 And know what Street Fighter 2 was, just like they knew what Tetris was and Mario was. 1840 02:14:03,046 --> 02:14:08,129 It was one of those games that just became a household name, even with people that weren't remotely interested. 1841 02:14:08,421 --> 02:14:09,879 More and more people are coming up to me 1842 02:14:10,171 --> 02:14:13,921 with the Blu-ray and the DVD and they say, this is my favorite movie from childhood. 1843 02:14:14,254 --> 02:14:18,504 This was the first action movie a whole generation of kids was allowed to see. 1844 02:14:18,837 --> 02:14:22,546 So in hindsight, well, it's pretty tame for Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. 1845 02:14:22,879 --> 02:14:27,712 But if you've only seen Disney movies, this is like, Oh my God, look what's going on here. 1846 02:14:51,171 --> 02:14:54,087 So Street Fighter 2 contains a lot of... 1847 02:14:54,587 --> 02:14:55,504 This is my childhood. 1848 02:14:55,796 --> 02:14:58,504 This is my history. This is where I got started. These are the origins. This is. 1849 02:14:58,879 --> 02:14:59,754 I know this. 1850 02:15:00,046 --> 02:15:02,587 A lot of players find the new games quite scary, quite intimidating. 1851 02:15:02,879 --> 02:15:06,879 There's all these features and meters and resources I have to manage and it's just too much. 1852 02:15:07,379 --> 02:15:09,087 Just let's just go back to the classic. 1853 02:15:09,379 --> 02:15:12,254 Well, I know when it was simple, you know, and there's a lot of people that feel that way. 1854 02:15:12,587 --> 02:15:15,462 People who haven't played video games for 20 years can pick up a controller 1855 02:15:15,921 --> 02:15:17,879 and they know the motion is for a fireball. 1856 02:15:18,171 --> 02:15:20,337 Its just like getting on a bike again. You never really forget. 1857 02:15:20,754 --> 02:15:24,337 So I think because they were there first and because you have got this strong brand 1858 02:15:24,629 --> 02:15:27,129 that's really iconic with retro being such a big thing now 1859 02:15:27,421 --> 02:15:29,379 and you can get Street Fighter in so many different formats. 1860 02:15:29,671 --> 02:15:31,004 That appeal is still there. 1861 02:15:31,296 --> 02:15:35,712 The core foundation of Street Fighter, combined with very popular characters, 1862 02:15:36,004 --> 02:15:39,879 I think these are the two elements that have kept it relevant for all of these years. 1863 02:15:40,337 --> 02:15:45,754 Everybody knows the Street Fighter characters. They're as iconic as Mario or Sonic. 1864 02:15:46,046 --> 02:15:50,796 Just something about Street Fighter that's worked without cereal and without action figures. 1865 02:15:51,087 --> 02:15:53,712 I almost would like them to go back to basics. 1866 02:15:54,087 --> 02:15:57,171 Let's see a much more edgy Street Fighter. 1867 02:15:57,504 --> 02:16:01,837 Think of when Alpha 2 came out or Alpha, and you're seeing this the level 1868 02:16:02,171 --> 02:16:05,796 from the animated movie in the fields with the grass and a lightning storm. 1869 02:16:06,379 --> 02:16:07,962 And you're like, Yes. 1870 02:16:08,254 --> 02:16:10,046 When have Street Fighter fans ever said, 1871 02:16:10,337 --> 02:16:14,421 Oh, this is too dark and moody and edgy, ever. When does that ever happen? 1872 02:16:14,712 --> 02:16:18,754 So why don't they go down that hole as far as it can take you? 1873 02:16:19,254 --> 02:16:20,546 Because there are plenty of fans that are like: 1874 02:16:20,837 --> 02:16:27,212 I don't like this cartoony eyes bulging, kind of goofy cartoony Street Fighter. 1875 02:16:27,504 --> 02:16:29,296 I really want to see something fresh 1876 02:16:29,587 --> 02:16:33,421 with Street Fighter 6 that makes me want to pick up the pad and play it again. 1877 02:17:18,629 --> 02:17:20,129 Street Fighter it always has a place for people 1878 02:17:20,421 --> 02:17:24,212 that want to play a simple fighting game because it just looks very bare bones for me. 1879 02:17:24,546 --> 02:17:30,421 That is why it's still really popular and quite frankly it's a very amazing game, is just a really good game, 1880 02:17:30,712 --> 02:17:33,254 you know? Why are you having that meal is just a nice meal. 1881 02:17:33,587 --> 02:17:36,171 There's no I can't really give you a complicated answer. 1882 02:17:36,462 --> 02:17:38,212 It's just really, really tasty. 1883 02:17:38,504 --> 02:17:42,754 I'm just glad that I was part of something that was so much loved. 1884 02:17:43,129 --> 02:17:45,379 There's a lot of nostalgia that keeps them alive. 1885 02:17:45,671 --> 02:17:48,129 The way it moved and sounded. 1886 02:17:48,421 --> 02:17:52,546 It's always going to represent a moment in time that got something exactly right. 1887 02:17:53,046 --> 02:17:54,462 There was just something magic about it. 1888 02:17:54,754 --> 02:17:57,629 I mean, people who have never seen it will stop and look at that game. 1889 02:17:57,921 --> 02:17:58,962 I've watched it happen. 1890 02:17:59,254 --> 02:18:02,712 It was the game that launched this entire genre. 1891 02:18:03,004 --> 02:18:07,379 I mean, it was the one. And it was massively successful at doing it. 1892 02:18:07,671 --> 02:18:13,046 It's not like we're talking about a game that is the unsung hero of the fighting genre. 1893 02:18:13,337 --> 02:18:15,504 This is the hero. The original. 1894 02:18:15,796 --> 02:18:20,421 Starting with Street Fighter 2, today is the best introduction 1895 02:18:20,712 --> 02:18:26,087 you can have to the community, to the genre, because the basic reflexes, 1896 02:18:26,462 --> 02:18:30,962 the basic intuition you need for a competitive fight can be found in Street Fighter 2. 1897 02:18:31,421 --> 02:18:34,796 It's just classic old school gaming and it doesn't get old. 1898 02:18:35,254 --> 02:18:36,337 It still holds up. 1899 02:18:36,629 --> 02:18:39,837 So no matter whether you play classic Street Fighter, 1900 02:18:40,171 --> 02:18:43,629 sort of late nineties Street Fighter or, you're into the more modern stuff. 1901 02:18:43,921 --> 02:18:44,921 It's it's all good. 1902 02:18:46,171 --> 02:18:48,629 It's ability to just work as a tournament standard 1903 02:18:48,921 --> 02:18:51,837 as e-sports has evolved and tournament standard really not only 1904 02:18:52,129 --> 02:18:57,587 with the modern titles like Street Fighter 4 and 5 but Super Turbo stands up is an incredibly tournament 1905 02:18:57,879 --> 02:19:02,504 friendly, well-balanced, competitive game that allows the greatest players to shine. 1906 02:19:02,796 --> 02:19:06,962 To me, it's wonderful 30 years later that we're still talking about something 1907 02:19:07,254 --> 02:19:10,754 that was so iconic and cool and still popular with everybody today. 1908 02:19:11,046 --> 02:19:12,337 It's fantastic to be part of it.