Visit the Battleground where the real revolution began.

In a flurry of Super Combos, these monumental releases started a revolution and spawned a generation of arcade warriors. Choose your warrior and battle through 3 classic games in their true arcade form: Street Fighter II: Turbo Hyper Fighting, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition and Street Fighter II: The World Warrior - the original game that started it all!

Review

I blame my friend Chris for my years of wear and tear on various Street Fighter games. Whether it was gawking in awe at our first sight of the Champion Edition machine at the local bowling alley, to the 50+ win streak I had at my local Aladdin’s Castle (and to be ended by that mysterious 8 year old Japanese kid that haunts all arcades), Street Fighter 2 has made one of the most powerful impact craters in gaming history.

Street Fighter 2 came on to the scene around the same time as SNK’s Fatal Fury game. These two seemingly harmless arcade releases would eventually spark the most insane genre beating never before seen in the video game realm. While SNK jumped on the fighting game bandwagon and basically built the Neo-Geo library out of the one-on-one cause, Capcom was fighting a two sided battle; one against SNK’s creativity and one against Midway’s boldest move the company ever took – the Mortal Kombat series.

So what was it that caused gamers to go crazy over just another fighting game? After all, Street Fighter 1 was in no way a killer title, so something had to be there. Turns out it was everything about the game. Very large controllable character sprites, beautiful 2D graphics with a floor that kept the proper perspective as the fighters moved left to right, and a small little glitch called the Combo System.

The original Street Fighter 2 carried 8 playable characters: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Blanka, Dhalsim, E. Honda, Guile, and Zangief. Each World Warrior carried a unique style (well, Ken and Ryu didn’t this time around) of fighting and each had their own story and level. Once you had defeated the original eight, 3 bosses appeared. These consisted of the boxer Balrog, the mysteriously vain fighter Vega, and the previous Street Fighter champion, Sagat. Once he was defeated, the new reigning champion and final boss appeared, the fearsome M. Bison. Several characters’ storylines led to Bison himself, resulting in a true personal victory for the gamer to enjoy.

When push came to shove, players who dealt only in the real life one-on-one battle soon realized that certain characters had higher priorities and lob-sided damage inflictions. Even worse, if one character was picked, they were not selectable by player two. This caused issues where one would wait till their opponent had selected their character, and then choose the appropriate person to counter with. Capcom was let on to this by way of fan mail and magazine articles, and decided that it was time to upgrade their instant celebrity.

Thus Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition was born. Not only did this allow you to choose same character versus same character, but it also unlocked all 4 bosses as playable characters. Ken and Ryu were also slightly tweaked so as not to seem like just a palate swapped head. Ryu became the slightly stronger warrior while Ken became the faster of the two. Several other tweaks took place, and once again the game reigned supreme in the arcades. While the Super Nintendo would get the original version in a home release form, Capcom had one final card up their sleeve for the original version of SF2.

That last tweak would be known as Street Fighter 2: Hyper Turbo Edition. Characters were given new color options, while some got brand new moves, and it also introduced the world to an insanely fast paced game play. This became the flagship of Capcom’s arcade series for quite some time. All 3 versions still seem to hold the crown for most nostalgic trips back down memory lane when it comes to fighting games.

To this day, all three games can still hold their own. Sure, you now have dial-a-combos, combo breakers, cancels, Super Combos, fatalities, tag teams, and a ton of other features, but make no mistake; none of it would have all been possible if it were not for Street Fighter 2.

• One of 6 Capcom games only released in Fighters Edge labels, not the standard black PlayStation strip.



•  Contains the original 3 versions of Street Fighter 2:
  • Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior
  • Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition
  • Street Fighter 2: Turbo Hyper Fighting
  
  
  
• True Story! While Street Fighter II paved the way for what would be known as the "Combo System" in video games, the concept itself was actually...a glitch!
  
  Arcade players discovered that they could cut off animation sequences with proper timing, causing the character to perform a "two-in-one" combo. Capcom wasn't aware of this, but after realizing they had a phenomenon on their hands from the flood of gamer mail, refined this 'glitch' into one of the most beloved past times in all of gaming history. Players now spend hours on their favorite fighting games figuring out what each character's entire combo library is.
  
  And all of this...from a programming error.
• The scar Sagat bears across his chest was given to him by Ryu in the original Street Fighter tournament. Ryu's final move was a devastating Sho-Ryu-Ken (Dragon Punch) that tore through Sagat's chest!
  
  
• The PlayStation version was the first true arcade release on a home system. All previous 16 Bit versions were missing several visuals and animations to fit within their respective console. 



• Amusing little trivia: During a SF2 tournament in Japan at a specific location, Capcom was not allowed to display E.Honda (I think as either a cut out or by a costume player) because the owners of the locale felt his face paint disgraced the sumo tradition. 



• You realize the one character in Chun-Li's background is...choking the chicken? 



• Thinking they may be sued by Mike Tyson, Capcom switched around the boss character names in the USA release. The boxer M. Bison was switched with the claw character Balrog, and then the claw character swapped the name with the end boss Vega.
  
  
• Ryu and Sagat were the only characters to return from the original for the sequel. Eventually Capcom would bring back other original characters in the Vs and Alpha series.
  
  
• The Super NES and later Genesis versions would have an extra ending screen where all the characters would be standing together in a win pose. This was referenced at the end of the god-awful Hollywood movie Street Fighter. 



• For those of you having trouble tracking this down, fear not! All three games will be on the PS2 and Xbox Capcom Generations.



• Chun-Li would later make an appearance in the Super NES game Final Fight 2, eating ramen in the China stage.



• There are actually two color mistakes in the original Street Fighter 2. The first was Chun-Li's portrait. Her face icon showed a red dress, but she's wearing blue. Perhaps this was an intentional hint from Capcom that something more was on its way. The other was Ryu's fireball. Every so often, the game would glitch the blue coloring into red.
  
  This caused massive amounts of speculation until Capcom admitted it was just a glitch. Oddly enough, they kept it in the home versions, and eventually really did give Ryu two different fireballs in later games.



• The most famous Capcom glitch of all time belongs to Guile in World Warrior. Several machines had a bug where if Guile did a certain motion while in mid-air and next to his opponent, the opponent would land in a frozen state, unable to move. This became known as the "Guile Handcuff" glitch.