Games/Video Games, Nostalgia/Games And Childhood, pop culture
On This Day – Street Fighter 1 Was Introduced To Gamers In 1987
On This Day – Street Fighter 1 Was Introduced To Gamers In 1987.
35 Years Ago On This Date August 12, 1987 In Japan Street Fighter The Video Game Was Born.
On August 12, 1987, arcade goers in Japan got their hands on Street Fighter for the first time. What they found was an attempt at refining the gameplay loop of director Takashi Nishiyama’s earlier side-scrolling beat-em-up Kung-Fu Master. The key change made in Street Fighter was that it cut out everything from a beat-em-up except the boss fights. Similar to how FFXIV raids cut out the pointless mob phases of other MMOs to focus on the challenging combat of a boss, Street Fighter was doing the same thing in 1987. These matches would occur over three rounds of 30 seconds.
While the game is messy and unrefined it created a list of mechanics that would become the defining elements of any fighting game. The player had an eight-way joystick for movement and two buttons for punching and kicking. These action buttons were originally analog and allowed for players to refine the power of an attack by how hard they pressed down. Later arcade versions replaced this with a six-button layout, separated into three power levels. This remains the norm for fighting game controls today.
It was also the first game to create combo moves. Hurricane Kick, Dragon Punch, and Psycho Fire were special moves that could only be done if the player inputs the correct string of button presses in quick succession. The player was never told about these special moves and would have to discover them through trial and error.
These gameplay innovations helped show what a fighting game could be, but the thing that truly made this the precursor to the Street Fighter franchise was the introduction Ryu and Ken. Much of Street Fighter can be boiled down to the rivalry between these two fighters who are basically the same but with different colored clothing and hair. Ryu served as the playable character in Street Fighter, but if a second player joined the game for some player-on-player combat, they took the role of Ken. Thus, a legendary rivalry and franchise began.