Street Fighter IV: Oh No

How do you top perfection? Why attempt to improve on perfection, if you’re not sure how to approach it? Oh, right. Money.

Street Fighter III: Third Time’s the Charm

If Super Turbo is the most fun fighting game ever made, then Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is the most beautiful and tightly designed.

Super Duper Street Fighter II Turbo

Yes, there were many iterations of Street Fighter 2. Yes, their titles started to become ridiculous. Yes, there have been a million jokes about them. But 1994’s Super Turbo is the greatest version of the series. This here is the epitome of 90s arcade culture. It’s the fastest, toughest, most intense fighting game ever made. And it became obsolete only a few months after it was released.

Street Fighter II: The Well-Made Warrior

The creation of Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior is a story of idealism. It reads like the creation story of Star Wars: a congregation of young creators that dreamt so big it seemed impossible they would succeed. But they did. The only thing that was found lacking in the finished product was that soon after release, players wanted more.

Street Fighter I: With Regrets

Street Fighter I arguably set the formula that led to Street Fighter II‘s success: players fight characters around the world 3 rounds at a time, using a joystick and buttons to execute a variety of moves. The graphics looked believable, each character was distinct, there was an attempt made at adding human-sounding voices, and there were bonus stages to break up the repetition of the fights. At a glance, the two games don’t appear too dissimilar. Yet Street Fighter 1 was almost a disaster.