Street Fighter – A New Game Plus

If you looked at my game collection, you might say “wow, you sure like fighting games!” And I would say “uh, excuse me, I don’t know you, how did you get into my house?” But after you explain that you are madly in love with me and broke into my house to steal a lock of my beard hair and my heart, I would settle down a bit and explain that, even though I have some of the newest games in the Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, SoulCalibur, King of Fighters, Dead or Alive series (and more!), I don’t actually consider myself much of a serious fighting game fan. I think I have some kind of compulsion to rekindle the years in my youth when Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II were the absolute biggest things in gaming.

I like fighting games, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t make any real attempt to learn move sets, combos, etc. The way it usually goes, is: I see a newly released fighting game in a series that I once loved a lot; I don’t immediately buy it because I’m afraid I might not like it as much as the older one; I eventually cave and buy it; I don’t like it as much as the older one; I stop playing after a few hours.

But some of my favorite games are fighting games. I’ve spent dozens and dozens of hours playing Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Alpha 3, SoulCalibur II, Super Smash Bros. Melee and a few others. I don’t stick with fighting games that don’t grab me, though, because there’s usually not much narrative or lore to follow to a conclusion. The Injustice games do a great job at weaving a story in with gameplay, but very few fighting games that I’ve played put that much time and effort into narrative. So, for me, if there isn’t an engaging story, there has to be something else that hooks me. Fun, accessible controls, incredible graphics, fun multiplayer, etc.

The SoulCalibur series has interesting enough lore, but the reason I got into it in the first place was how absolutely stunning the graphics in the second game were. The series became, for me, a place to see some of the best looking characters and environments on any given platform. I loved the second and third games, but despite purchasing and playing IV and V, I didn’t connect with them in the same way that I did with the other games. When I heard SoulCalibur VI was coming out I was excited by the potential for an SC game on the current generation of hardware. With graphically impressive games like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and Red Dead Redemption 2 out there, SoulCalibur VI has the potential to be the most beautiful, detailed fighter of all time. That’s what I was thinking, anyway.

SoulCalibur VI doesn’t look bad by any stretch of the imagination. It is a pretty game. But it’s not as mind-blowing and breathtaking as I thought it would be. Look at the ground in this screenshot:

The background is blurry for style, but the area of ground in focus is blurry and muddy, too. It looks like something from a last-gen game. The characters look decent, but some of the same rough details show up on their costumes:

I don’t like crapping all over games, so I’m not doing this to be spiteful or suggest this is a ‘bad’ game. It could have been a limitation of the engine that they used, I don’t know. I’ve read that Bandai Namco didn’t want to make this game at some point, so I’m glad that they made it and I know I’m being a bit nitpicky, but I guess I was hoping for something a bit more cutting edge. The story mode is cool in theory, but ultimately the writing was a little stilted and it didn’t hold my interest for long. So this was one of those fighting games that I mentioned earlier, where I bought it hoping that it would be as good as the one(s) that I really loved, but I ended up giving up on it after just 7-8 hours.

Similarly, I was super excited when I picked up Street Fighter: 30^th Anniversary Collection, but I only ended up trying to play the original Street Fighter (yeesh, it is rough) and playing through Chun-Li’s story in Street Fighter II. I’ll probably get back to it, but with so many big titles being released early this year it’s hard to be motivated to revisit games that I’ve already played. *shrug emoji* I did appreciate the development notes and images from the different games’ productions, though. I can’t wait to dig deeper into that stuff at some point.

Chun-Li is probably my very first video game crush. True, my love for Princess Peach originated earlier, with Super Mario Bros. 2, but I didn’t exactly think of her as a crush. I just liked playing as her. With Chun-Li, though, I was smitten.

Like many, many kids in the early 90s, I was obsessed with Street Fighter II. I only made it to arcades occasionally, but when the game was released for the SNES in 1992, I was all over it. Even though each character’s story is fairly shallow and consists of a small batch of dialogue and a few short scenes, I played and replayed each character just to have a reason to play the game. Chun-Li and Guile were my favorites, though, so I felt the need to beat their story campaigns on the hardest difficulty (having said that: fuck Bison and Sagat on the hardest difficulty. So cheap. I hate them and I want them dead.).

Chun-li SFII — Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQaDLTeawX4

Chun-Li’s story is a basic revenge plot, where she is hunting down M. Bison, who killed her father, but I loved that she had her own journey and wasn’t tied to other fighters. Even as a kid I remember that making her unique, even if I had no clue about the significance of her being the first playable female character in a fighting game. I just knew that she was strong, she was fast, she was (in my opinion) the best fighter, she was absolutely beautiful, and she showed that she wasn’t afraid of expressing both extreme focus and youthful jubilation (“Yatta!”). And how can I leave out her trademark blue qipao? The combination of the elegant silk dress and hair ribbons with her seriously spiked bracelets and hardcore combat boots perfectly represent her personality and spirit.

I haven’t played every single iteration of Street Fighter that’s come out, but I’ve played most of them. Chun-Li remains my favorite character. She’s always very fast and her long legs allow her a nice reach, and I love using her wall jump to get out of being cornered. The story of Street Fighter seems complicated and a little ridiculous to me at this point, so I’ve lost track of the twists and turns of Chun-Li’s backstory, but she remains a fierce and beautiful warrior, dedicated to justice. For that reason she will probably always be my main.