Sunday 1 September 2013

I Am Street Fighter - 25th Anniversary Documentary



To this day Street Fighter II is easily one of my favourite games. A 22 year old game kept relevant by finely balanced combatants and instant response controls. In the early 1990s its impact was total. Arcade cabinets rigged with official boards and seizure inducing knock-offs were everywhere a child might conceivably end up. I played Street Fighter II in a chippie, a video shop, the corner of a sports bar in Spain, and even in the lobby of a swimming pool in Garston. That particular cab had a version of 1992's Championship Edition crammed into a crumbling coin-op with about half the buttons necessary to actually play the thing. In the Summer before starting senior school I spent an afternoon relentlessly cramming 20p pieces into that punch only machine, trying to get an ending for Vega. I never made it but I did get to suplex my way through a line-up of gawkers, which to an 11 year old was pretty much like winning a Nobel Peace Prize.

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