Street Fighter: The Movie (1995)

As a Street Fighter fan I decided to try and defend the video game based on an underrated movie. I enjoyed the live-action movie back in 1994 and it carries my general perspective of Street Fighter.

Many people complain about the movie straying from the game's plot, and all the characters were changed. This isn't necessarily true, the game's plot isn't that deep: you, as one of the Street Fighter characters, try to bust a drug lord and his minions. It's a little deeper than the Super Mario Bros. movie's plot (two plumbers trying to save the day), but try making a 90-minute movie out of it.

Same for the movie's views of the characters. Most of them are close enough to the game's characters. The movie did portray Guile, Bison, Chun-Li, Sagat, Ken, Ryu, Cammy, Zangief and Vega correctly (Guile and Chun-Li both still have personal vendettas against Bison, Ken and Ryu have their rivalries with Sagat and Vega, etc). I had no problems with E. Honda, and Blanka and Dhalsim only briefly appear (I personally prefer the 'Charlie mutated into Blanka' story). The only characterization problem the movie had was that a few characters just weren't shown right. Steven E. DeSouza should've just re-cast the actor playing T. Hawk. Plus, Balrog and DeeJay swapped alignments, but that's all. Most of the World Warriors and Grand Master characters ARE correctly depicted, just the New Challengers (exception being Cammy) just needed better casting.

The arcade game, Street Fighter: the Movie, was released around the same time Mortal Kombat 3 was. (I never got to play the arcade game, but I'm willing to bet SF:TM was the better game) It also contained Come Back moves, red Super moves, juggle-me-til-I-die combos, all that good stuff. Playing as Balrog, Bison, Cammy, Chun-Li, Guile, Honda, Ken, Ryu, Sagat, Vega or Zangief, you play to determine the fate of the AN relief worker hostages and the free world. Also included were Capt. Sawada, Akuma and Bison soldier Blade. Hidden characters were palette swapped Bison troopers, like Arkane, F7 and Khyber (I think Blanka was hidden in somewhere, too).

I like the home version of Street Fighter: the Movie, it played like Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo with movie graphics. However, Blade was gone, and Akuma was now a hidden character again. At least you now got Blanka and DeeJay back. (Wish they spent a little more time on Blanka's design, though.) One thing I did like was the music, the power of the good or bad guy win music gets me pumped.

All I'm saying is, it might not be the best game ever, but you could do a lot worse. (N64 Superman, anyone?) If Capcom ever does a complication Street Fighter game for a future system, they should release the arcade game for it, to give it a bit more publicity.