Street Fighter: Outside the Cabinet

By: Nadia Oxford
Date: Thursday, December 06, 2007

I've spent the better part of this week working on an extensive Street Fighter article for a game site. Believe it or not, Street Fighter is 20 years of age. Light the birthday candles with a well-placed Hadoken, then prepare to feel old. I know I do.

Street Fighter is an ancient arcade hit. It didn't necessarily father the head-to-head fighting genre (that would be credited to Sega's Heavyweight Boxing or Data East's Karate Champ, both of which predate Street Fighter by several years), but it certainly made it significant.

Of course, when something becomes remotely significant in Japan, its existence is honoured with manga and anime. It's no surprise that Street Fighter has a mountain of the stuff behind it, plus a lot of American contributions to its literary and artistic growth (after something of a rough start).

Udon Comics, a Toronto-based studio, has been publishing a Street Fighter comic series for several years now. The game series does have an extensive story and character roster to work from, and Udon puts much of it to good use. Even lesser-known trivia is incorporated into the story, such as Guile and Ken being brothers-in-law (they don't much care for each other).

Udon's work has established strong ties with Capcom itself; the studio handles a lot of game-related artwork for the company, and is even designing the sprites for the upcoming and very sexy-looking Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD (High Definition).

Incidentally, Capcom has been inspired by outside work in the past, though such occasions were reserved for Japanese-produced anime and manga. The Street Fighter II anime, for instance, inspired design choices for the Street Fighter Alpha series, which featured king bad guy M Bison as a much burlier dictator. The anime is also famous for a climatic scene where Ken and Ryu battle Bison together in a grassy field; that very scene was also incorporated into the game, allowing two players to indulge in a heroic battle against evil (Street Fighter Alpha 3 uses the same idea, except the player is pit against two bad girls--Juni and Juli--in a fight to the death).

This symbiotic relationship between games and anime is a happy one and it's nice to see Western fans getting the chance to work up close and personal with the franchises they grew up with. About fourteen years ago, that opportunity seemed so far away--and it was deservedly so.

America can basically be credited for Street Fighter's success. The original game, which incorporated an easily breakable pressure-sensitive button control system, was a bigger hit in America than it was in Japan. The overseas success spurred Capcom into making a sequel, and the mega-popular Street Fighter II was born.

And Street Fighter II was very popular in America. I have a memory of the boys in my grade six class bragging about how many quarters they'd spent on the game--seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were essentially bragging about how badly they sucked. Either way, America had a lot of Street Fighter merchandise exclusive to its shores. One of these offerings was a short-lived comic by the now-defunct Malibu Comics.

Comic blog 4thletter! <a href=" http://www.4thletter.net/?p=202">has an extensive write-up about the comic</a> that's absolutely worth your time. The comic was so unbelievably bad that Capcom told Malibu to bloody well stop making it. Mind you, this was an officially licensed product. An officially licensed product manufactured in an era where Capcom let anyone do whatever the hell they wanted with Street Fighter. In the not too distant future, Capcom would even approve the script for the wretched live-action movie. Some loser amusement park was allowed to produce a motion-based ride wherein Ryu and Ken (as 4thletter! delicately points out) zap a double-Hadoken into M Bison's balls. Yet, it was Malibu who was told to cease and desist.

And if you think Capcom was just choosing a random victim to set an example…no. Really, no. Malibu's comic lasted for three volumes. It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment Capcom might've decided to pull the plug, but it's fun to guess. Was it the terrible art? Bison's face on the cover for the first issue looks like a Picasso gone terribly wrong. Ken looks almost passable on the cover of the second issue, but his right foot looks like it was struck by leprosy. He's also in a pretty, ahem, compromising position with Sagat leering right behind him. By the third issue, Malibu must've heard the bell tolling because they went for broke and allowed one of their own crappy characters to cameo: "The Ferret." That's threatening. I have a friend who keeps ferrets as pets. The Ferret faced off against sumo wrestler E Honda for no apparent reason, then faded off with the promise of more Malibu cameos.

Malibu's staff, like Udon, claimed to be fanatic Street Fighter fans. It's interesting how one studio treats the series' established continuity with care, whereas the other came off as a fan work written and illustrated by a 12-year-old boy who just discovered his red crayon. Then again, both the comic and manga formats have come a long way since 1993. The 90s was just an awkward time for everyone, and next week I'll prove it by going over the conflicted Street Fighter anime and cartoon.

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