Here at Silver Soul Gaming we are excited for the upcoming release of the Street Fighter 30th anniversary collection so we are going to be covering a lot of the games released in the franchise. Let’s kick this off with the first game in the franchise. (Disclaimer. This was played on arcade hardware so experience may be different when the collection is released)
Street Fighter was released in 1987 by Capcom into arcades around the world. This is the first game in the franchise and established many of the key features that define this franchise and many of the other fighting games that came after. These features include the six button attack system and command based special moves.
The game itself has two protagonist characters Ryu and Ken who are pallet swaps of each other. These are the only playable characters in this game, Ryu is designated as player one and Ken is designated as player two. Both characters have six basic attacks which are three punch attacks and three kick attacks with the difference between each attack being their power separated a weak, medium and fierce. As well as the standard punch and kick attacks Ryu and Ken have access to three special command attacks these are the Hadoken (fireball), Shoryuken (uppercut) and the Tatsumaki Senpuyaku (hurricane kick).
Gameplay is based on the formula that influenced and defined the majority of fighting games that followed. You fight a series of opponents in matches that the best of three rounds and progress through each fight with increasing difficulty. What separates this game from the majority of its successors and imitators is the ability to select the stage that you start the game on. You have the option of choosing from between two or four stages depending on the games settings, these stages are Japan, China, USA and England. Each stage is comprised of two fights and after completing both fights you take part in a bonus stage before progressing to the next stage. After all four stages are complete you go to Thailand facing the sub-boss and final boss to complete the game.
The game has clunky and unresponsive controls making it difficult to input the command based special attacks and effectively counter attack. During gameplay I only managed to perform these attacks a few times which is frustrating as when I was attempting to perform the Shoryuken I would jump about spastically which ruined my enjoyment. The only redeeming feature that this game has is the ability to fight against a friend in the two player versus mode where Ken and Ryu battle it out. This is the only fun I had while playing this game. Unless you are a masochist or a truly devoted fan of the franchise do not play this game.
Clunky unresponsive controls and boring gameplay really hurt my enjoyment of the game. The only good thing about the game is the ability to fight a friend. I do not recommend this game to the average player. This gets a 2/5 from me using the star rating, mediocre at best unplayable at worst when played alone.
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