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Street Fighter II: The World Warrior

1991JapanFighting game

Capcom fighting arcade game from 1991. Its eight playable characters from different countries represent, among others, sumo, sambo and a style derived from karate.

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is a fighting video game by Capcom, released in March 1991 on arcade machines with the CP System board. The game was designed by Akira Nishitani and Akira Yasuda. Home versions followed from 1992. The player chooses from eight characters from different countries – Ryu, Ken, E. Honda, Blanka, Guile, Chun-Li, Zangief and Dhalsim – and fights one-on-one duels. Each character represents a fighting style tied to their nationality. Among the martial arts, the game features sumo (E. Honda), sambo together with professional wrestling (Zangief) and, among the computer-controlled opponents, boxing (Balrog) and muay thai (Sagat). Ryu and Ken use the Ansatsuken style, which in the fictional world of the series is derived from karate. Chun-Li is a Chinese fighter; we have not been able to document her specific style in sources. According to English Wikipedia, the game is credited with popularizing the fighting game genre in the 1990s and with inspiring other developers to create their own series.

Martial arts in this work

KarateFeaturedBoxingFeaturedMuay ThaiFeaturedSamboFeaturedSumoFeatured

Fact and fiction

Real martial arts appear in the game only through the characters and their origins: E. Honda is a Japanese sumo wrestler, Zangief a professional wrestler and sambo fighter from the Soviet Union, Sagat a Thai muay thai kickboxer and Balrog a boxer. The style of Ryu and Ken, Ansatsuken, is fictional and within the series is derived from karate. Dhalsim is presented as an Indian yoga master who breathes fire, so this is a purely fantastical portrayal; moreover, yoga is not a martial art in the narrower sense. The boxer character Balrog (under this name in the international versions of the game) is, according to English Wikipedia, a pastiche of the real boxer Mike Tyson.

Details

Developer
Capcom
Publisher
Capcom
Platforms at release
Arcade

Characters and their fighting styles

  • Ryu — Ansatsuken (fictional style)
  • Ken — Ansatsuken (fictional style)
  • E. Honda — Sumo
  • Zangief — Sambo
  • Chun-Li — Kung Fu
  • Balrog — Boxing
  • Sagat — Muay Thai

Other titles

  • ストリートファイターII -The World Warrior- (Release title, JP)
Further sources on this topic (1)
  1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_II