Ryu and Ken are among the most recognizable characters in gaming, thanks to Street Fighter II.

"Cheap!"

Street Fighter II was the ultimate competitive game, but as thousands of players poured millions of quarters into SFII machines around the world, they started uncovering some pretty weird bugs that really messed up the balance--and, in some cases, caused players to come to blows in real life. Guile's "statue" glitch was harmless enough. Guile and Dhalsim could reset the machine, and that wasn't so nice. Guile even had a bugged move, popularly known as the magic throw, that allowed him to toss opponents no matter what they were doing. These bugs were fixed in subsequent versions of SFII, but live on in legend.

Guile was one of the most popular SFII characters, but all eight of them were powerful in their own right.

In 1991, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior appeared in video arcades around the world, single-handedly revolutionizing arcade gaming. Though it was by no means the first game to focus on martial-arts action, SFII featured unprecedented depth and an unforgettable roster--the eight playable fighters all had dozens of their own unique moves and abilities, and plenty of personality to boot. Street Fighter II's fast-paced, tactical matches set an exceptionally high standard for the emerging fighting game genre, and though literally hundreds of such games have since been released, few have even approached Street Fighter II's level of quality.

There wasn't much buzz about the game leading up to its release, but it didn't take long for word of mouth to spread about how amazing Street Fighter II was. The game's outstanding graphics, sound, and music drew players to it, but the finely honed gameplay balance and unbelievably deep learning curve are what kept them playing for years and years. Never before had there been such a complex and competitive game in arcades. Soon enough, you couldn't walk into a convenience store--much less a video arcade--without hearing the telltale screams of "Hadouken!," "Sonic boom!," and more.

One of the most revolutionary things that Street Fighter II did was force players to relearn how to use a joystick. Previous arcade games required fast reflexes, but little in the way of finesse--you'd just pound the buttons and jam the stick in one of eight directions. Street Fighter II, on the other hand, required split-second, precision timing for some of its moves. It's true that its predecessor had similar moves, but that game's unresponsive controls made executing special attacks inconsistent at best. Yet in the sequel, you could truly master a character, getting his or her moves down perfectly and memorizing the exact applications for all of them. When you first started playing, it seemed impossible to master moves such as Ryu's dragon punch or Zangief's spinning pile driver. But with practice, you could do it.

Then there were the combos. No one really expected the combos to work like they did. At high levels of play, Street Fighter II became like an action-packed chess tournament, where players could devastate their opponents by exploiting just a single mistake. It was truly remarkable how the challenge provided by Street Fighter II would scale depending on the player's level of skill and experience.

The game remains legendary to this day among fans of fighting games or video arcades.

In my book, Street Fighter II is the single greatest game of all time, on any platform. One way or another, my life would be very different were it not for that game. I couldn't possibly estimate how much time and money I've spent on the game over the years, and my four years in high school practically revolved around it. I've never been as devoted to any other game as I was to Street Fighter II. Later versions of the game, particularly Hyper Fighting, still look, sound, and play great, and I love to go back to them from time to time.