Dan Geeks Out: Video Game Review #355: Street Fighter

Street Fighter

Arcade

Nostalgia Factor:

Anyone who grew up in the 16-bit era, like me, is familiar with the Street Fighter series. Street Fighter II and its many offshoots and spinoffs were pretty much unavoidable for video game fans back then. But if you asked gamers what they thought of Street Fighter I, the majority of them probably would've told you that they'd never played it.

I'm one of those gamers. I've played what seems like dozens of Street Fighter games over the years, but never the original Street Fighter - the one that started it all. When I reached 1987 on my little video game review tour, I immediately marked this game as one that I absolutely HAD to play. This game seems like a perfect match for what I'm trying to do: play games I've never played before while at the same time documenting the evolution of video games and how they've grown and expanded over the years. What better way to start than with Street Fighter?

Seeing as how I've never heard a single thing about this game before, I was really curious if it would be any good or not. Are you curious too? Read on for my full thoughts!

Story:

Uh, err, erm... There really doesn't seem to be much of a story here. You play as Ryu, and ONLY Ryu, as you battle through a series of ten fighters - facing off against Sagat at the end. Whether this is a fighting tournament or something else completely, the game never really tells you. Once you defeat Sagat, the game ends.

There is a two player versus mode to be found here, and player two always plays as Ken. So if player two as Ken challenges Ryu and defeats him, you can continue the rest of the single player mode as Ken - although nothing really changes since Ken handles exactly the same as Ryu. You also get the exact same generic ending. If you're expecting a big character select screen, each character with their own unique storyline, you've come to the wrong place.

Gameplay:

This game is really, really basic compared with what you'll see from Street Fighter in the future. What's the same? The basic structure of each fight. They take place in three rounds. If you win at least two of the three rounds, you win your match and can move onto face your next opponent. Lose your matchup and you have to keep trying again until you can come out victorious. As far as controls go, there aren't any big combo moves, which I was glad to see. I've never been coordinated enough to pull those off anyway. Instead you get a pretty limited set of smaller options, like different punch and kick moves and a basic hadoken - which I found extremely hard to pull off.

Since you're only playing as Ryu (or Ken if you jump in as a second player), you'll find yourself with only one character to master, which you can do pretty quickly. The hadoken causes huge damage to your enemy if you can hit them with it. It seriously takes off about half of their health bar. I found punches to be relatively useless, and instead focused on kicking or jump kicking attacks. The heavy kick in this game takes off about a quarter of your enemy's health, so mainly I used that. All you have to do if jump around, block, and kick your enemy four times and you've beaten them. Makes the game fairly easy at times. I cruised through the majority of this game with little to no issues whatsoever.

Occasionally I encountered an enemy that would give me troubles with their quick moves or long reach, but since I was playing on my RetroPie, I didn't have to worry about pumping quarters into the machine or anything like that. I could keep just keep trying and trying until I won, which I eventually did. The entire game took me no more than about 45 minutes to complete, and that's with me being generous. It may not have even taken that long.

Replayability is pretty low here. You can only play as one character (even if he has two different skins). There's no story to speak of. I'm sure two player mode can be fun, but with how limited this game is I can't imagine spending more than 20 minutes duking it out against friends. The campaign itself is pretty short. Once I finished it, I realized there really wasn't anything else to see or do here.

Graphics:

Having grown up on Street Fighter II and its variants, this game's graphics came as a bit of a shock to me. I've never seen Street Fighter looking so bland before. The colors are a bit dull. The characters aren't as drawn out or as detailed or vibrant as they are in future games in the series. Some locations in the game look nice, but they seem devoid of the energy and excitement of other Street Fighter games.

Not to say this game is ugly or anything. It's not. If Street Fighter II had never come out and I had nothing to compare this game to, maybe I wouldn't be as harsh on it as I am now. It's just nothing special to look at. Gotta start somewhere, though, huh?

Sound:

There's absolutely nothing special about the sound in this game either. I don't remember any of this game's music or its sound effects. It's that forgettable.

What I do remember is how your opponent always tells you at the end of each fight: "What strength!! But don't forget there are many guys like you all over the world." Such sage advice. I'm glad there is text on the screen telling you what was said, because the voice acting for this one line is so, SO terrible. I wouldn't have been able to understand a word of it otherwise. But I'm a sucker for bad voice acting, so I think this is cheesy and fantastic and I'm glad I got to hear it after every fight.

Overall:

I'm glad I got the chance to play the original Street Fighter. Everyone and their mom has played Street Fighter II, so it was fun to see where it all began. That said, the game itself is very, very mediocre. I'm no fan of fighting games, as you can tell by my lack of fighting game reviews among my 350 something blog entries. It's not my favorite genre out there.

I picked up this game. I played through its single player mode. I turned the game off. There's nothing horribly special about this game. Nothing that will make me want to come back for more. What about the two player mode, you may ask? Well, if I want to play head-to-head against anyone in a fighting game, I'll pick Street Fighter II, or Mortal Kombat, or Eternal Champions, or literally any other game besides this one. Playing this satisfied a curiosity, and that's about it. I didn't derive any pleasure from it. It's not particularly entertaining. It's just kind of there as a piece of video game history.

Play it if you also want to scratch that curiosity itch, but don't expect a great game.

THE GRADE:

D+

1982 reviews:

1983:

1984: