Legendary Street Fighter player Daigo “The Beast” Umehara has been speaking about the incredible impact Street Fighter II had on the games industry back in the early ’90s and feels that we haven’t witnessed anything like it since.
The sequel to the 1987 original, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior sold over 200,000 arcade cabinets and 15 million home versions—6.3 million of which were sold on the SNES alone. It almost single-handedly kick-started the one-on-one fighting game boom which would last for the majority of the 1990s, producing a seemingly endless series of sequels from Capcom and a flood of clones from rival companies.
As spotted by Event Hubs, Umehara talked about Capcom’s famous fighter during a YouTube interview, and tried to explain just how massive it was:
Here’s how big of a boom it was. SF2 was so popular that people were quitting their day jobs to open arcades. All you had to do was have this game, and you’d make money… Supermarkets had it, bathhouses had it, bookstores, toy stores, video stores, laundromats and candy stores. Everyone had the game.
However, he is keen to note that this boom didn’t last all that long:
That boom was only about two years long. It felt like a long time at the time because I was a kid. But I never forgot that fervour. I kept playing the games, wondering if we’d ever have another boom like that.
When asked when the next boom came, Umehara says that it didn’t.
“I’m serious. There hasn’t been one,” he replies. He says that people who assume Street Fighter IV‘s success gave it parity with the second game perhaps weren’t around to experience Street Fighter II’s zenith. “I’m sure people unfamiliar with the SF2 craze thought SF4 seemed like a big moment for fighting games, but… It was a far cry from that first boom. There are reasons for that. More forms of entertainment, more types of games were available.”
He also claims that while Street Fighter 6 has done well to revive the series in recent times, it too is a long way off matching its 1991 predecessor.
[source eventhubs.com]
