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Page 2 of 6
In the
mid-1980's, however, one-on-one fighting games were in their infancy, and the limitations
of technology prevented them from catching on. It was hard enough back then to program a
game to recognize the fast motions of a joystick, let alone have eight or ten megabytes
worth of game graphics or enough RAM to display one tenth of them at once. So programmers
did what they could, and the results were mediocre. Lacking animation to walk fluidly,
characters staggered on the screen, and in the absence of a fluid control scheme, some
moves took five or ten tries to execute while others shot out so quickly that opponents
never had a chance to defend against them.
Ken vs. Ryu in Street Fighter II
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By March of 1991, when Capcom debuted Street Fighter II, the technical problems had
been solved by the company's R&D staff . At the time, it was arguably the finest
action game programmers had ever assembled under one roof. Utilizing Capcom's proven CPS
arcade chipset, which had powered the revolutionary large characters and colorful
backgrounds of Final Fight, Yoshiki Okamoto's team developed a joystick and button
scanning routine that would revolutionize the industry. Unlike the programming in the
company's earlier Street Fighter, the new control mechanism could quickly sense certain
types of motions - like holding the joystick back for two seconds and then pressing it
forward with a punch button, or rolling the joystick from down to back with a kick button
- and accurately spit out special moves in response. The technique had been tried in
Street Fighter, but the technology wasn't accurate enough. Now it worked. And wherever the
earlier game's animation had been choppy, it was now silky smooth - smoother than anything
in arcades at the time. Armed with some of the best artists in the business, Capcom's
Street Fighter II team sifted through pages of character and background designs before
settling upon 12 incredible stages and fighters to populate them. Most crucially, the
decision was made to allow players to choose from eight characters - each with different
looks and moves - and face off against either the computer or human opponents.
Next: More on the History of Street Fighter
Street Fighter, Dark
Stalkers, Final Fight, Star Gladiator, and all related characters and likenesses are TM
& © Capcom Entertainment 1997. All rights reserved. Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men, and all related characters and likenesses are TM & © 1997 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.
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