When Street Fighter burst onto the scene in the early 1990s, it was a game changer. Literally. The dynamic characters, colors, controls, and more changed fighting video games forever. And at the time, after people played the game in an arcade, they went home to watch Saturday morning cartoons, listen to CDs, go to the video store, and complain that there were no more Star Wars movies.
Yes, the early 1990s were a different time, but it’s in that era when Street Fighter‘s origin really took shape. And while the upcoming movie is very much an effects-driven, modern Hollywood blockbuster, director Kitao Sakurai wanted to find a way to pay homage to that era. He ended up deciding to make the flashbacks in the movie 2D animated, and in this new video, he digs into them. Check it out.
We were already pretty excited to see Street Fighter, but now, after learning this, excitement is through the roof.
Street Fighter truly is one of those video game franchises that put its stamp on basically every era. It, of course, started with the first game in 1987, which had the DNA of what made it special but was otherwise limited. The second game, released in 1991, was the most important and popular one, due to the huge variety of characters and moves available. I will literally never forget going to a friend’s birthday party, seeing Street Fighter II, and just standing around and watching people play. I’d never seen anything like it and was completely obsessed.
At that time, if you wanted to play that game, you had to go to the arcade. It took a while for it to get a home console port, but once it did, oh boy, did I play a lot of Street Fighter II. Over the decades since, the franchise has seen different styles, iterations, and, famously, a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. But this new version, with little decisions like the 2D animated sequences, really feels like it gets what made me so drawn to the game almost 40 years ago.
Street Fighter opens in theaters October 16.
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