VGR Street Fighter 1 aka Fighting Street

Kickin' off my FIGHTING MARATHON Reviews, here come the very first Street Fighter game!

What is Fighting Street? Did it age well?
More on that and the review itself right here...

VGR: Fighting Street a.k.a. Street Fighter 1
From Capcom
Played on PC Engine DUO (known as the Turbografx in the USA)

Type Fighting game
Year 1988

Street Fighter, now this is a classic cult well known, well loved gaming franchise!
For most gamers, you say Street Fighter, they think immediatly Street Fighter 2 on the Snes or MD. (depending on which side of the 16 bit era they were)
Then, you have SF fans or hardcore gamers, those will want to pick a Street Fighter Alpha/Zero game or a Street Fighter III. And finally you have the new, younger, modern gamers. They will probably assimiliate SF with the current Street Fighter 4 game.
So, you'll ask me, what about the original first Street Fighter game?

The answer is simple.
Street Fighter 1 was a nice enough game, some older gamers who grew up during the 80s may even remember it, but it wasn't that effective and didn't let that a mark on gaming history.
Maybe also because of his younger brother, Street Fighter 2, which came out later on and surpassed it in many aspects.

But, some of you may already know me by now, I like to give a chance to the underdog and appreciate it for what it is and not how people perceive it in the end.

Here comes a lone challenger!!

Street Fighter came out in the arcades around a summer in 1987.
It was a brand new fighting game from Capcom, a genre that wasn't very successful druing the 80s.
I'll remind you that we were in the middle of the 8 Bit era.
In gaming, there was a first generation of 8 Bit systems such as the Atari, the Odyssey, the Amiga, the Sega SG-1000, the Amstrad and the Commodore. And then, with better graphics and music capabilites there were the Nintendo and the Master System (and some other ones).
On the home systems, platforming was were it was at, while at the Arcades, more energic space shooters were the king. Sure there was the odd game here and there, such as puzzles and others, but that was it.

The fighting genre was only starting, but wasn't really winning the audiences.
There were some nice debuts such as Kung Fu or Karaté Champ. But the genre didn't really pick up.

Capcom's debut in the genre, Street Fighter, was a pretty simple but very important entry for fighting games.
Where older attempts didn't really use "characters" (since they were simpler), Street Fighter was made around its characters.

As in the other fighters of its time, you have only one character, not selectable (that only appear later on).
You play as RYU. The template of the "tournament" was based on beat 'em all of that era.
You have 4 countries to choose from. There you'll fight one champion and then a boss.
In the end, you unlock a 5th region with a sub-boss and the final boss, after that Credits-Game Over-Congratulations you beat the game!

Easy!
And unique for its time!

The scar Ryu inflicts to Sagat in the final stage would be left forever on future SF games.

The game introduced super attacks to perform using special techniques (the now classic HADOKEN nad SHORYUKEN) which are still input the same nowadays.
A second player could join in the same cabinet, he would then play a similar "clone" character, KEN.
(winning with KEN would allow to continue the 1-player mode with Ken, nice trick back then...)

The only problem for this whole concept, was its era.
It feels a bit rigid by today's standards
But a retro gamer (such as yours truly) or someone who played at least once on a Nes will not have that much problem.

The game wasn't very colorful nor were the sounds, music and digits pretty well rendered on the arcade, a limitation imposed by its time.

The game was then ported to most systems capable of handling SF1. But the home systems were pretty limited compared to an Arcade system.
Thankfully the PC Engine was an hybrid 8 bit (the Hucards)/16 bit (the CD upgrade) system...
Street Fighter was renamed for an unknown reason Fighting Street on this console, but sadly it didn't use its 16 bit capabilities, and the game wasn't upgraded. Which can also be a good news now, if you want to enjoy SF1 as it was made originally.
The port was the best of the bunch, it was pretty close to the arcade, a bit more colorful a rearranged soundtrack was for the CD but the original sounds, FX and voice digits weren't upgraded... so they sound a bit silly, in typical 80s japanese Engrish. But it kinda adds to SF1 original charm. It's a product from a whole different era.

The soundtrack is pretty on par with later SF music, be it Alpha or SF3, a nice touch for this PC engine port.

My favorite part of SF1? The message you get when you defeat or are defeated by an adversary. Priceless.

Fighting Street came out and went by pretty unnoticed but it was a major evolution for us fightin' fans.
It created the whole sub-boss and final boss aspect of a 1-player mode for the genre.
It simply made all the conventions made standard in future fighting games, such as that kind of techniques to use or the HUD aspect (life bars, timing, rounds win... the whole presentation inspired future games).

And Street Fighter 2 wouldn't simply be what it is without Street Fighter 1!

Street Fighter 1 is limited compared to any other coming fighting game, but it still is a fantastic 8 bit well crafted game!
Most details in SF1 came out in future SF games, or were redesigned.
Energy bars were implemented in later games for the special attacks, when they became more and more essential to win.
Bonus Stages were already present in Street Fighter, such as the one pictured in the screens I've put at the bottom of this review. They were pretty simplistic and had Ryu break stuff. (2 different Special Stages which are simple button mashing challenges). They would be redesigned using the game engine in later SF games, but they also inspired Bonus stages for other fighting franchises, like Mortal Kombat's Test you Might!
Ryu and Ken (the Player-2 default character) stayed the main characters through the SF franchise and bit by bit became unique different characters and not just palette swaps.

In this game Ryu was up against many world champions such as:
- Retsu and Geki in Japan. In SF3, Ibuki is a ninja from the same clan as Geki.
- Joe and Mike for the United States. Mike who is best known as Balrog in Street Fighter 2, yes that guy. In this game he was still called Mike as a parody of Mike Tyson. Then in the japanese SF2 he was called Mike Bison. But in the releases outside Japan, they swaped some names, between Bison, Vega and Balrog to avoid copyright issues...
- In China, Lee and Gen. Gen would be reintroduced as a mentor for Chun Li in Street Fighter Alpha.
- From England, Birdie and Eagle. Birdie came back in Street Fighter Alpha as well.
- At last in Thailand, the sub-boss was Adon and his mentor Sagat, the final boss. All Street Fighter fans remember Sagat from SF2 of course. And Adon was back in SF Alpha as well and had an explosive appearance in SSF4!

Finally, something I wouldn't dare not to include in this.
Keiji Inafune, best known as the creator and designer of Megaman started at Capcom with this game.
He made the characters artworks and ingame portraits!

Overall, Fighting Street, as it is known on the PC Engine, or Street Fighter 1 is a fantastic classic 8 Bit game!
It may not shine as much as Street Fighter 2, specially in some fanboys' heart (fanboys... how I despise you..),
but it should be totally left forgotten or thrown away!

It made all our fighting game conventions and was really original for its time!
I, for one, will always like playing this one, from time to time, just for fun.
I always find the experience quite unique and fresh.

I recommand it, if you like the genre or not, to check it.
It is neat to know where things you play so often came from. And at least from the historic point of view.

Street Fighter 1 made what other fighting games of the 80s weren't able to, it made fighting character!
Every character has his techniques, his music, his own stage!
You may be only able to play as Ryu (or Ken!) but the whole experience is what imposed Street Fighter as the definitive fighting franchise!

 I give it:

 

 2 / 3 BonusKun!