The True Story of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game

[Cowdisease]

There is an awesome thread at the Shoryuken forums about the one Street Fighter game Capcom pretends doesn't exist: Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.

Alan Noon, posting as anoon, was one of the developers of the game and decided to create a thread and give a summary of the things he remembered while making one of the worst Street Fighter (and fighting) games ever. Some interesting tidbits include:

On why the actors spoke the special moves in English ("Hurricane! Dragon!") instead of Japanese

LOL. It seemed like such a good idea at the time! Seriously though, it was impossible to get the hollywood actors to say the real japanese wording. IMPOSSIBLE. believe me, I tried. We had an actual SSF2 on the set to demo it. We played recordings. We had the Japanese Capcom guys there coaching. We wrote it out phonetically. I believe we even had sound sessions with Japanese speaking voice actors, but in the end, you have to understand that there was a movement to Americanize the game somehow, so the English stuck. Again, I can go into that further later.

The characters he portrayed in the game.

Oh, and Yes, I played the Bison Trooper characters Blade, Arkane, Khyber, and F7

On the fighting game they were working on before they got the big SFTMTG project

"New Fighter" was pretty darn cool for a prototype. It featured eight or so bald headed, spandex wearing place holder characters that all looked exactly the same, save for palette swaps and special move sets to differentiate them. They all had a nature or element based theme, so we had the fire guy, the ice guy, the rock guy, and so on, as well as my personal favorite: the plant guy. Plant Guy had a sweet, Scorpion-esque move in which a vine grew from his arm and snared the enemy and pulled him in close for a free shot. Sadly, Plant Guy never made it to the final product, which you may or may not now know as Bloodstorm. (Fun fact: We needed to get rid of those dedicated Hard Yardages that were costing us rent. I am proud to say that it was my idea to create giant vinyl BloodStorm cabinet graphics we could stick over the sides of the Hard Yardages. We converted the boards, stuck on the stickers, and off they went. Problem solved!)

On why Sawada has a lightsaber

So, Sawada doesn't actually have a lightsaber. In the days before motion blur, refraction effects, and emissive textures, we did what we could. It's just supposed to be a visual manifestation of the power behind the attack.

On Raul Julia

We did briefly meet Mr. Julia, but sadly, he was very ill at the time, so we did not get an opportunity to digitize him. The actor you see in the game is actually his stand in/stunt double.

He talks about how a small U.S. coin-op company was given the opportunity to make a video game based on the Street Fighter movie. He also talks about the digitizing process they used to capture all the actors (and why it looked so bad), and how Sheng Long almost made it into the game.

Here's the link to the thread.

[gamevet]

I can shamefully admit that I've owned the Saturn version of the game. I blame it on the limited available titles for the system at that time. I don't have that game anymore though.

I kind of wish I had kept it, just because of how bad it was.

[Dolemite]

So this guy is responsible for SF: The Movie Game AND BloodStorm? This dude's like the Hitler of videogames.

[Andy]

blaim

posta

Also, Street Fighter: The Movie the game was awesome. I <3 it.

[Cowdisease]

I can shamefully admit that I've owned the Saturn version of the game. I blaim it on the limited available titles for the system at that time. I don't have that game anymore though.

I kind of wish I had kept it, just because of how bad it was.

The home ports were a lot different from the arcade version and Alan explains why--it was developed by a completely separate team that didn't work on the arcade version. The thread goes into more detail as to why things like the character animations look different in both versions.

[DirtySouth]

Weren't the arcade and console versions of this game totally different? If I remember correctly, the console versions (at least the PS port, which I owned) was basically SSF2 with digitized graphics, minus a few characters, and plus Sawada?

[gamevet]

The home ports were a lot different from the arcade version and Alan explains why--it was developed by a completely separate team that didn't work on the arcade version. The thread goes into more detail as to why things like the character animations look different in both versions.

Yeah, I read the thread it was posted in.

I've only seen the arcade version once and didn't bother playing it; since I had already played the shoddy home version and expected a simular gaming experience.

[gamevet]

If I remember correctly, the console versions (at least the PS port, which I owned) was basically SSF2 with digitized graphics, minus a few characters, and plus Sawada?

It had the Super Moves from SSF2, but it didn't have the controls. The controls felt sluggish and the animation wasn't even on par with Mortal Kombat 2/3.

[gamevet]

posta

Also, Street Fighter: The Movie the game was awesome. I <3 it.

[Nirvana]

Dear lord.. i still own the psx version, too. My boss at the Software Etc I worked at gave it to me for free. I only bothered to keep it around because the actress playing Cammy was cute.