Street Fighter 6: A master class in game design, part 8

Street Fighter 6 worked incredibly well because of how deeply it was connected to the history of the SF universe. The game was saturated with multiple callouts to the cast, and story of Final Fight. One of my favorite bits came from an NPC resident named Charles. He said; “Park in a place like this, and you’re practically begging for someone to smash it to pieces. Cars are pretty disposable here in Metro City. I mean, hey, the former mayor himself used to go around smashing cars with a steel pipe. Comes with the territory.”

The bonus stage in Final Fight started a trend that would pop up in the Street Fighter series. For some unknown reason players were rewarded by destroying a car in the middle of Metro City. When my best friend, brother, and I played through Final Fight at the Cal State Long Beach arcade we were thrown off by this random stage. The one thing we never forgot was the look on the Mad Gear member as he fell to his knees, yelled out loud “OH! MY GOD!!” and started crying. We lost our minds at the delivery of that line. We quoted it over, and over on the bus ride back to high school, laughing hysterically each time. To this day my brother, and friend still cracked up when one of us said “OH! MY GOD!!” As odd as the bonus game was the story behind it was actually based on a dark period in US history.

Capcom wanted to do everything in their power to appeal to western players. That was why Final Fight featured big, muscular characters solving their issues through violence. That was why Metro City was covered in graffiti, had roving gangs, crooked cops, and corporate overlords. It was a reflection of our culture, our values, and our dark underbelly. At least it reflected the things that the Japanese developers saw thanks to popular media. They were keenly aware about the stories of Japan flooding the US with inexpensive cars in the 1970’s. This lead to United Auto Workers (UAW) employees going on strike, and trashing Japanese cars in protest. They were being undercut by cheap imports, and losing their jobs by the hundreds. The sentiment carried on through the ‘80s, especially in Detroit, Michigan.

Capcom tried to find some humor in this social commentary, that was why the car in the FF bonus stage had a license plate that read JAPAN. It was also the reason that the Mad Gear member was crying hysterically. A minor change in the bonus stage caught my brother, and friend off guard was when the game came to home consoles. We were furious that it was a two-player game on the Super Nintendo, and that Guy was missing. Moreover that the crying man said “OH! MY CAR!!!” when he fell to his knees. It was one of the many things we would notice had been censored. It didn’t matter too much as my friend Robert got the Sega Genesis CD version of Final Fight for a more authentic experience.

Like most from our generation we became die-hard fans of the fighting game genre thanks to the release of Street Fighter II. I remained a lifelong fan of the Final Fight sequels that were developed for the SNES. I loved everything about those games. The new heroes, the character designs, the stages, the villains, and updated game play were all perfect in my book. I poured through the details Capcom crammed into the worlds on each play through. Seeing Chun-Li, and Guile turn up in the backgrounds of FF2 for example got me hyped. To this day I went through the Final Fight trilogy at least once a year thanks to emulation. We were delighted that Capcom never forgot the franchise despite the runaway popularity of SFII. Seeing Mike, and Jessica turn up in the Muscle Bomber / Saturday Night Slam Masters for example was an awesome callout.

Each time the studio managed to incorporate a nod to their FF characters in other games we celebrated. There was no bigger surprise for FF fans than with the release of Street Fighter Zero. A couple of familiar names, and Metro City locations would be canonized as being a part of the SF universe. Players would finally know if Guy was a better fighter than Ryu, was Sodom going to rally the Mad Gear gang around him, or if Rolento had earned his reputation as the top Mad Gear boss? Would the power vacuum in Metro City be addressed with the death of Belger? Would we see a war take place within the Mad Gear organization? Or did the events in SFZ take place before the events of FF?

It turned out that SFZ took place chronologically after the original SF, well before FF, and before SFII. Street Fighter Zero 2 took place about a minute before the events of FF, but still before SFII. Street Fighter Zero 3 took place after Belger was defeated, and just before the events of SFII. Cody had been jailed for murder, but was an escaped prisoner. It appeared as if the crooked officer Edi E. had tried to kill him while in jail, which would explain his breakout. In turn Guy was trying to get Cody to surrender so that he wouldn’t be murdered while on the run. The idea that time was passing quickly between the games was engrossing. It made the series stand out in the glut of arcade fighters. It also gave a lot of material for fans of the FF series as well.

The Street Fighter Zero series came out after my brothers, and I graduated from high school. We played the Sega Saturn versions at home, and would join our friends on weekend trips to the arcades. We played at just about every arcade in the greater LA area, and even parts of Orange County as far south as Irvine. We made a lot of new friends thanks to the arcade community, and stayed friends with many of them to this day. Some of our friends were exceptional fighting game players. People like Elbert aka EGO was a local legend. As a teen he moved to Long Beach from Missouri. His natural talent for fighting games earned him respect in every arcade, and liquor store he visited. These including those in rough towns. From Carson, Compton, Torrance, Huntington Beach, and Long Beach he was well known as a top-level player. We became fast friends thanks to SFII, as well as our mutual love for Hokluto No Ken / Fist of the North Star, and Dragon Ball Z. We were such good friends he asked me to be the best man at his wedding. It was something that could have only happened thanks to fighting games.

EGO, and a few other friends like Dante (think of Chris Tucker if he was good at Marvel vs Capcom) competed in local tournaments. I was pretty good at the SF series, but like I said previously I hated competing against strangers so I steered clear of contests. Just the thought of playing a bunch of strangers would make me nauseous. One of the places we frequented had become a hotspot for tournament players. The Golfland arcade was a little bit down the road from us. It was the same place that legend, and commentator Alex Valle worked at when he wasn’t racking up tournament wins. When I visited the arcade I always wondered if he owned any tee shirts. It seemed like he only wore tank tops. As the ‘90s rolled on we saw the writing on the wall. Little by little arcades were starting to close down. Publishers were focusing more on the newer generations of consoles, and less on arcades, even Capcom was following the trends. Street Fighter III was the last hurrah for the company. As the 1997 gem gave way to the final update in 1999. Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike was the end of an era. We just didn’t realize it.

Past the year 2000 the only thing we had to remind us of the places we used to visit were the tokens. We had several from our favorite arcades, including the former Yaohan Plaza in Little Tokyo. The arcade imported games directly from Japan. It was the place where I played possibly the rarest Sonic the Hedgehog game ever. Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car, a kiddie game set inside a tiny fiberglass cop car. With my friends witnessing I stuffed my 6’7” 300+ lbs. frame into the tiny cockpit to get the whole experience. Would not recommend if you were claustrophobic. Time went on. My friends, brothers, and I were growing up, and spending less time gaming together. Such was life. Many years later I met a very special woman, with a lovely daughter. We realized that we complimented each other so well that we decided to get married. We didn’t have a big budget for a wedding, or reception but we wanted to incorporate the things we loved, our hobbies. This included Disney, and video games. My wedding band was NiGHTS, from NiGHTS into dreams… it was a custom sculpt from our friends, retired jewelry instructor Marcia, and her husband retired cabinetry instructor Larry. My wife, and I walked back up the aisle to the song Dreams, Dreams from the same game, as arranged, and performed by my friend Kevin.

A detail that almost nobody saw from the ceremony was when I presented my bride with Las Arras. This was a symbolic exchanging of coins from the husband to the wife. Where I demonstrated that I would be the main earner, and my wife would handle the budget. Trust me, it was symbolic as we both had to work to survive in this economy. The exchange was a wedding coin tradition that went back to the Roman era. You could get a box of little silver coins from almost any Catholic gift shop for the ceremony. Since we were going above, and beyond with the details we decided that each of the 13 coins would be unique. Some were collected from our friends, and family. One coin was from my brother’s trip to Ireland. A family member from Mexico gave us a peso, my father-in-law had a coin from Scotland. My mom donated an actual doubloon from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean. My fiancé had a Yen coin from her trip to Japan. The rest were at least one coin from the places we had visited as kids. Tokens from arcades no longer with us including the Golfland, Aladdin’s Castle, and Japan Arcade. There was one coin that I thought would be the rarest of them all. I had to ask Capcom for it, and hope that they were listening.

Capcom minted some arcade tokens in 2010 to celebrate the release of Final Fight, and Magic Sword for the Xbox Live Arcade. The Double Impact collection featured Mike Haggar on one side of the token, and the Amazon on the other side. They had a giveaway contest for the coins. I made an appeal on the old Capcom-Unity forums. I told the story about my trip to Cal State Long Beach, and the day my brother, and I became fans of Final Fight. I also mentioned that if I got a token I would make sure to include it in our game-themed wedding ceremony.

An admin was kind enough to send tokens to me, and my fiancé. They also included a can of temporary hot pink hair color. Needless to say that the "trap" line on the can had aged poorly. To say I would remain a die-hard supporter of the Capcom brand was nonetheless an understatement. The amount of love that I had for the Final Fight series seemed to be shared by the SF6 developers. They did an insanely deep dive when fleshing out Metro City. We will explore this on the next blog. I hope to see you back for that. If you are a long time fan of Final Fight, or Street Fighter then I would like to hear your impressions of SF6. If you have never played any game previously then tell me your experiences in the comments section please. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!