Street Fighter!

For those who hear the podcast you will know that I am obsessed with Street Fighter at the moment. I have been playing it at any opportunity (and blogging while I'm at work). I don't know exactly where to go with this article, I thought about providing the history of Street Fighter, but other sites do that. Should I inform the masses of the greatness of the characters? Plot? ...lol plot. So that's where my pondering leads me to a conclusion, I will discuss why Street Fighter is the greatest fighting game franchise of all time.

So it all started with the rivalry. That being between Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II, (Street Fighter 1 doesn't exist!!!) Ahem, anyway Mortal Kombat was marketed to the consumer as the 'adult' fighting game because it oozed blood and guts at every turn. What it lacked was good fighting game mechanics. Everything in Mortal Kombat felt stiff, and un-evolved. There was no combo system in place at the time. Characters were limited and far too similar. Pulling off special moves were often difficult and fatalities were nearly impossible even if you knew the button combination. The draw? Graphics and blood. Street Fighter II had game play in spades where Mortal Kombat fumbled around for better pacing and character balance. The ultimate atrocity of the Mortal Kombat series was how utterly stiff it was. Every character in the roster had the same punch and kick with no combo options until later in the series. The kicks were straight and slow and the punches were limited and often useless. In Mortal Kombat the rule of thumb was to throw the opponent or uppercut them, everything else was just setting up those damage inducing moves.

What made Street Fighter head over heels better was EVERY character had a different and unique way of striking. Not only were their special moves different, but strategic strikes were different from character to character. Mortal Kombat failed at being a good fighting game in my opinion because of this fact.

So the war raged on between the two and as history shows Street Fighter came out on top in terms of sales and longevity. But wait, we're not done yet, there's plenty more games to compare Street Fighter to.

Killer Instinct is a fantastic fighting game, but how is it worse than the Street Fighter series? Mainly because there are only 2 Killer Instinct games ever, and their combo complexities tamper with its success. I can understand why KI didn't garner the attention it did, you had to be a master of the character you played in order to compete. I remember a time where I challenged a friend of mine to KI who only had some experience with it. Generally in a fighting game a newb can pick up a character and run with him in a half hour or so. With KI that is NOT the case at all. For me, I knew every character's 10 + hit combo sequences, and varieties of those. This advantage was so severe that I never lost 1 round. Even at Street Fighter II I can lose to an utter newb if they play things tricky enough. Some would argue the tell of a good fighting game is when spamming is not a cause for newb wins but it's debatable. Really though, if Killer Instinct was still around I would almost have to argue it is better than Street Fighter. But since it isn't, Street Fighter wins again.

Let's move on to Tekken shall we? Tekken is my favorite 3D fighter and probably isn't fair to compare to Street Fighter. But I will say one word that makes Tekken worse than Street Fighter. That is "Juggling." Done right a competent player of Tekken can win a match by keeping his opponent in the air with one or two quick series' of attacks. This is often cheap and embarrassing, also proves how broken Tekken tends to be. Street Fighter is not unfamiliar with this issue though for anyone who played Street Fighter Alpha 3 and knew Akuma well. Diago proved the world just what he could do and how broken Akuma was, (Diago is the greatest Street Fighter champion of all time). But with Tekken you could do this with almost any character if you were cheap enough making the game rather imbalanced.

Soul Calibur was also made by Namco makers of Tekken and falls into the same traps as Tekken. The most recent Soul Calibur I find to be well balanced offline but a horrible game online. Because of button lag, a few characters can be exploited in such a way where the person using him in that way cannot lose. I'm looking at you Astaroth and Ivy. After 15 hours of not being able to counter because of button lag, I gave up. For those unaware, button lag is when you press a button and nothing happens on screen for a few seconds. This may sound negligible, but in a fighting game it is VITAL. So basically I see a trick come at me from Astaroth I am used to seeing, I know HOW to counter it, and I even know it's coming, but I can't counter it in time. I would have to be psychic and predict that he's going for the move before it happens and do the appropriate counter before the animation even begins. Why does this make the game worse if the online component is the only thing holding it back? Well because Street Fighter II HD Remix is online and there is ZERO button lag. So Street Fighter wins again.

I could go on and on but I'd rather not. So look for Street Fighter IV everyone, it should be a grand game indeed.

*Ryu: Hadoken! Sagat: Wait, wait what? Ryu: ...hadoken...? Sagat: Yes that, what the hell is that? Ryu: Your end Sagat! Sagat: Sounds like the name of a failed vacuum cleaner to me....*