Street Fighter is nearly 35 years old, and it is still one of the most popular and famous fighting games in the world. No wonder it already has many games from different generations and even today it continues to gain news, such as Street Fighter 6, which will be released in 2022.
Its first version was released for arcades and in these years of existence, the game has gathered many fans. It is a fighting game with characters from all over the world, with classic moves that keep gaining new features with each generation.
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9 facts about Street Fighter
To celebrate the success of this franchise that featured even movies and animations, today we’re going to break down some intriguing facts about it. paying off:
1. Blanca may not be Brazilian, but he is a favorite of the game producers
Blanca’s nationality is still debated among Street Fighter fans. Although most know he is Brazilian, his ancestry leaves a flea behind his ear in this regard. What is known is that Blanca was in a plane crash and crashed in the Amazon rainforest, where he mutated from exposure to electric eels.
Many say he wasn’t exactly born in Brazil, he did fall there when he was young, being actually Jimmy, an American boy. Other theories claim that he was actually born in Brazil.
But regardless of the character’s nationality, he stands out for being a favorite of Yoshinori Ono, the franchise’s producer. He always has a little Blanca doll near him, and he ends up appearing in public on the Internet, even because he himself posts several photos with the doll on his social networks.
2. Many characters are inspired by real people
As with some fighting games, Street Fighter also had many of its characters inspired by real people. The most famous are Balrog and Fei Long, characters inspired by boxer Mike Tyson and actor Bruce Lee, respectively. But they weren’t the only ones.
Many real-life fighters have also served as inspiration for other characters. Kane himself, one of the most famous characters in the franchise, was inspired by a great American karate fighter, Joe Louis. On the other hand, Ryo was inspired by a character from a manga, which in turn was inspired by another important karate fighter, Masutatsu Aoyama.
Another example is Zangief, whose appearance was inspired by fighter Ivan Koloff and DJ inspired by actor and fighter Billy Blanks, who invented the Tae Bo style, a mixture of Tae Kwon Do and Boxing.
3. Chun Li risked getting weaker
Chun Li is one of the most notable features of Street Fighter, being one of the favorites of many players. She was the first female character to come to the game, as she was introduced in Street Fighter 2, and she has already arrived with an important role.
However, she was almost a victim of an idea that could be considered sexist and that was a popular cultural idea at the time. When Chun Li was created, Yoshiki Okamoto, the game’s creator, wanted her health bar to be lower than that of other fighters, saying, “Women aren’t that strong.” But the game’s designer, Akira Nishitani, didn’t like the idea, and luckily, it didn’t come to fruition.
4. Other character ideas were ignored
During the creation of the game, some ideas for some characters were considered and discarded in the process. One is that in Dhalsim’s original art concept, he would have 6 arms, 3 on each side of his body. This idea was inspired by Ganesha, a Hindu deity, because of which the fighter will still have the head of an elephant.
Zangief also underwent a change, but in this case it was a question of the character’s name and origin. Initially called Gobalsky Vodka, he was reportedly banned from the Russian Wrestling Organization after participating in a drunken tournament, thus breaking the rules.
Another character that has undergone changes is Vega, who in his first drafts was a medieval knight, even having a shield, sword and shield. This happened when they were still thinking of bringing participants from different eras into history. But as this concept changed to have participants from different countries, the idea was discarded. Not quite, however, because the mask and blades he uses are a relic of that idea.
5. Final Fight will be a direct continuation of First Street Fighter
Final Fight is a very successful hit game, but many people don’t know that it was initially designed as a direct continuation of Street Fighter. Its original title was Street Fighter ’89 and it even earned the title of Street Fighter: The Final Fight in a promotion for a Japanese magazine.
However, they ended up changing their minds just before the game was released, which just became Final Fight and turned into another franchise. According to designer Yoshiki Okamoto, this was because the two games have different styles, one is combat and one is hit, so it will end up confusing things a lot.
But that relationship somehow still continues, as characters from Final Fight have already appeared in the Street Fighter franchise. Jay and Sodom can be seen in Street Fighter Alpha, Rolento in Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Cody in Alpha 3.
6. Two games were released based on the movie Street Fighter – The Final Battle
Street Fighter won a movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia and Kylie Minogue. Despite the games’ success, the film was not liked so much and got into numerous troubles, becoming the target of criticism. However, he has won two games inspired by this feature.
That is, the movie based on the game won two games based on the movie. Timid? Little. The arcade version of Street Fighter – The Movie is completely independent of the “original” Street Fighter franchise, starting with the visuals. The characters have the look and feel of the actors in the movie and their style is much more reminiscent of the franchise’s competitor, Mortal Kombat.
The idea was really to take the focus off Mortal Kombat at the time, but it didn’t help much because, like the movie, it wasn’t well received. There was also a console version, but this one was made by Capcom itself and it really brings a style more similar to the original Street Fighter series. It was released for PlayStation and Saturn and brought back characters cut from the arcade version, such as Blanka, Dee Jay, and Taken Blade. It wasn’t very successful either.
7. Sheng Long was generated from a game translation error
Sheng Long, master of Ryu and Ken, only appeared in Street Fighter 4, as one of the fighters in the series, but few people know that it was not planned. It all started with a mistranslation. In Street Fighter 2, after the opponent is defeated by Ryu, the phrase “You need to defeat Sheng Long to have a chance to win” appears.
In fact, the correct phrase is “You need to defeat Shoryuken to have a chance of winning,” referring to one of his most famous powers. But it ended up with a translation error in the graph, and in English it was like Sheng Long.
Then, in 1991, EGM magazine ended up publishing a joke on April 1 saying that Sheng Long could be found in the game and even unlocked in the arcade version. Capcom ended up taking advantage of all the facts and finally creating Sheng Long.
8. Groups were also created unexpectedly, due to an error
Other details of the games that appeared unexpectedly are the famous fighting combos, which began to appear in the game mechanics from Super Street Fighter II. It turns out that during the production of the game, producer Noritaka Funamizu ended up realizing that there was a bug in this bonus stage for destroying a car. In error, the character received another blow.
But since he thought that no one would be able to perform this mechanic because it was too difficult and complicated, he ended up leaving it there uncorrected. I was wrong, since many players managed to do the feat, finding the bug and with that one of the most exciting elements of Street Fighter was born: combos.
9. The game contains some records in the Guinness Book
The bug that started the game collections was welcome, both for the success of the mechanics and for ensuring that Street Fighter is one of its Guinness World Records titles. Among them are “the first fighting game to use combos”, “the most cloned fighting game of all time” and “the best-selling fighting game of all time”.
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