![]() It would be released in the West sometime that year as either “Avengers” or “Avenger”: the game’s title screen and many of the arcade cabinets themselves use the former title, but some promotional material uses the alternate title. On February 1 st, 1987, Hissatsu Buraiken – which roughly translates to “Deadly Ruffian Fist” – was released in Japanese arcades to relatively little fanfare. What better place to start than by taking a look at some of the earlier titles that preceded, inspired or even simply shared the name of one of Capcom’s greatest all-time hits? Avengers As naïve as we were back then, the mystery was nothing we really pursued at the time, but SF2 actually owes its existence to multiple titles. Back in my childhood, we just thought of it as “Street Fighter”: even though the “II” was omnipresent, none of us had ever really experienced a “Street Fighter 1”. It popularized the fighting game genre in a way that no previous game had and managed to extend the life of arcades in the West. Street Fighter II is probably one of the most important video games of all-time. As such, I’ve got a fair amount of the games in various forms in my collection as it is: the 30 th Anniversary Collection just affords me the opportunity to own several older titles on the PC, my platform of choice. While Street Fighter is probably no longer one of my favorite fighting game series, it still occupies a special place in my heart. Not long after, I finally had a legitimate home version of my very own: Super Street Fighter II for the Sega Genesis. Of course, that was the IBM-PC version, which was a complete train wreck, but you try telling that to a happy child. I became enamored with the game, almost to the point of obsession and I was incredibly happy when I was finally able to own a version of the game of my very own. Another cousin had the Special Champion Edition on the Sega Genesis and eventually, that first cousin would obtain a copy of Street Fighter II Turbo for the SNES as well. In my case, the first game I played was the original version of Street Fighter II for the Super NES at my cousin’s house when I was around 5 or 6 years old. The 2D fighting game genre is among my favorites across the entirety of mass media, and like a majority of the children of the ‘90s, that love stemmed from the first time I played a Street Fighter game. The thing is, I owe a lot of my interest in video games to Street Fighter. Granted, most games in the series came out here, but there are a few rarities that were Japan-exclusive. ![]() The only limits I’m putting on this series of retrospective articles is that I will be sticking mostly to Street Fighter games that managed to see Western release. Still, considering the fact that Capcom will be releasing a Street Fighter 30 th Anniversary Collection this May – featuring a whopping 12 games – now seems as good a time as any to do a wistful look back at one of Capcom’s most enduring franchises. I plan to mainly just write these whenever I’m not writing something else, so they’ll trickle out infrequently. This series isn’t necessarily going to be as prominent as the other Retrospectives have been. ![]() The thing is, after the Classic MegaMan article ended up being split into multiple parts, any excuse I had for not writing about Street Fighter evaporated. I’ll be honest: I did originally dismiss the idea of doing a Retrospective on the Street Fighter series back when I looked over Tekken last year.
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