Street Fighter II

For the animated film, see Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.
"SFII" redirects here. For other video games with the same initialism, see SF2 (disambiguation).
Street Fighter II
Japanese arcade brochure featuring the original eight main characters.
Clockwise from top: Zangief, Ken, Blanka, Dhalsim, Ryu, Guile, and Honda. Center: Chun-Li.
Developer(s)Capcom
Publisher(s)Capcom
Producer(s)Yoshiki Okamoto
Designer(s)
Programmer(s)
  • Shinichi Ueyama
  • Seiji Okada
  • Yoshihiro Matsui
  • Motohide Eshiro
Artist(s)
  • Eri Nakamura
  • Satoru Yamashita
Composer(s)
SeriesStreet Fighter
Platform(s)
Arcade
Release
March 7, 1991
  • Arcade
    SNES
    • JP: June 10, 1992
    • NA: July 15, 1992[4][5]
    • AU: October 23, 1992
    • UK: October 1992[6]
    • EU: December 17, 1992
    MS-DOS
    • EU: July 10, 1992
    • NA: April 26, 1993
    Amiga
    • EU: November 15, 1992
    • UK: December 15, 1992[6]
    Atari ST
    • EU: December 20, 1992
    Amstrad CPC
    • EU: December 31, 1992
    Commodore 64
    • EU: August 20, 1992
    ZX Spectrum
    • EU: September 14, 1992
    CPS Changer
    • JP: July 14, 1994
    Game Boy[7]
    • JP: August 11, 1995
    • NA: September 1995
    • EU: 1995
Genre(s)Fighting
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer
Arcade systemCP System

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior[b] is a 1991 fighting game produced by Capcom for arcades, and their fourteenth game to use the CP System arcade system board. It is the second installment in the Street Fighter series and the sequel to 1987's Street Fighter. Street Fighter II vastly improved many of the concepts introduced in the first game, including the use of special command-based moves, a combo system, a six-button configuration, and a wider selection of playable characters, each with a unique fighting style.

Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto and Akira Yasuda, who had previously worked on Final Fight, Street Fighter II is regarded as one of the greatest video games of all time and the most important and influential fighting game ever made. Its launch is seen as a revolutionary moment within its genre, credited with popularizing the fighting genre during the 1990s and inspiring other producers to create their own fighting series. Additionally, it prolonged the survival of the declining video-game arcade business market by stimulating business and driving the fighter genre.[8][9] It prominently features a popular two-player mode that obligates direct, human-to-human competitive play, inspiring grassroots tournament events, culminating in Evolution Championship Series (EVO).[10][9] Street Fighter II shifted the arcade competitive dynamic from achieving personal-best high scores to head-to-head competition, including large groups.[8]

Street Fighter II became the best-selling game since the golden age of arcade video games. By 1994, it had been played by an estimated 25 million people in the United States alone. Worldwide, more than 200,000 arcade cabinets and 15 million software units of all versions of Street Fighter II have been sold, grossing an estimated $10 billion in total revenue, making it one of the top three highest-grossing video games of all time as of 2017 and the best-selling fighting game until 2019. More than 6.3 million Super Nintendo (SNES) cartridges of Street Fighter II were sold, making it Capcom's best-selling single software game for the next two decades, its best-selling game on a single platform, and the highest-selling third-party game on the SNES. Due to its major success, a series of updated versions were released with additional features and characters, starting with 1992's Street Fighter II: Champion Edition; its major successor was Street Fighter III in 1997.

  1. ^ "CAPCOM Investor Relations - History". Capcom. Archived from the original on August 7, 2020. Retrieved May 24, 2019.
  2. ^ "ヒストリー ストリートファイター35周年記念サイト". Capcom JP.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference GM441 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference egmbuyersguide1993 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ "Street Fighter II: The World WarriorStreet Fighter II: The World Warrior (SNES)". NintendoLife. November 20, 2020. Archived from the original on January 14, 2022. Retrieved July 28, 2021.
  6. ^ a b "Can Mega Drive Street Fighter 2 Live Up To All The Hype?". Mega. No. 10 (July 1993). June 17, 1993. p. 22.
  7. ^ "Street Fighter II (GB)". Nintendo Life. Archived from the original on January 14, 2022. Retrieved March 17, 2021.
  8. ^ a b Lemon, Andy; Rietveld, Hillegonda C. (March 12, 2020). "The Street Fighter Lady: Invisibility and Gender in Game Composition". Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association. 5 (1). doi:10.26503/todigra.v5i1.112. ISSN 2328-9422. Archived from the original on April 21, 2021. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
  9. ^ a b June, Laura (January 16, 2013). "For Amusement Only: the life and death of the American arcade". The Verge. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved September 15, 2017.
  10. ^ Skolnik, Michael Ryan; Conway, Steven (November 1, 2019). "Tusslers, Beatdowns, and Brothers: A Sociohistorical Overview of Video Game Arcades and the Street Fighter Community". Games and Culture. 14 (7–8): 742–762. doi:10.1177/1555412017727687. ISSN 1555-4120. S2CID 149397381. Archived from the original on April 21, 2021. Retrieved April 21, 2021.


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