The not-so classic arcade game that spawned 16 sequels and dozens of console ports

Pounders senior HADOUKEN correspondent, Q–Pounder, reports from the field

In that grand year of 1987, which among other lesser events, marked Q-pounder's 7th birthday, a burgeoning game company decided to release one of the worst games imaginable.

Capcom's Street Fighter was the third one-on-one fighting game of its kind. It followed Data East's dual joystick rattling Karate Champ and Konami's silly Yie Ar Kung Fu (I think that's supposed to mean 1-2 Kung Fu a top-secret Mandarin romanization scheme). SF succeeded in being even less fun than these two mediocre games while employing an overly complicated control scheme with a then unheard of six buttons.

Being seven and barely tall enough to see the washed-out sprites over the cigarette-scorched bezel art, my eyes naturally gravitated to the bank of 14 buttons and two joysticks. This wasn't the pnematic pressure-sensing button console pictured above. This was the balls-to-the-wall six-buttons-for-six-identically-worthless-moves version. I dropped in my quarter and flew to Japan, where I wooped the stand-still AI on the first guy, then jump kicked the second guy to death. Next I flew to America. Apparently, Americans are tougher than Japanese. They were certainly Fought dirtier. An Engrish announcer told me that I'd better get some real skills before I challenged him again, then called me 'Kiddo.' I probably shouted something rebellious back before diving into the abyss and squandering my allowance. Americans proved not tough-E-nuff. Next it was off to China. There my journey ended in tragedy. An old Chinese man quipped the same crack about me sucking too bad. I winced at the word 'kiddo.' But my quarters depleted, I slumped over and walked off, passing on my way out the door dozens of more worthy games. Leaving the smoke-hazy game hall, I turned back to the ugly box flickering in the corner. "Curse you, Street Fighter. May bureaucrats shuffle your sequel's best sound engineers and programmers off to other projects. May your consoles be culled to make way for Froggers and Centipedes at retirement homes across the southwest. May your franchise end in ruin."

Flash forward to the present. After waking with to a too-much-pizza dump and a flipped cockroach on the bathroom floor, I fired up my PS2 to play some classic shooters and sidescrollers on Capcom Arcade Classics Volume II. I scrolled through the roster of 20 or so arcade-perfect ports with added bonus features like marketing fliers, sound test modes and brisk development histories. There it was, glaring back at me. Twenty years of infamy and shame. Street Fighter. I shrugged. The pussy was getting her gym stuff together. I had a good five minutes to kill. The first thing I noticed was that when the announcer starts the match, he says "Lound One." My underdeveloped ears hadn't taken notice of this back in that jukebox flooded game room. It was funny at first but it quickly became distracting. I cut through the first wave of uninspired muscle men and old drunk Chinese dudes. Eventually the game just got too hard. The fact that the characters, regardless of their sociolinguistic background all dished out the exact same "kiddo" line also distracted me. Fortunately, the only thing to be distracted from was the god-awful gameplay.

In case you're wondering, you can still throw hadoukens and do that spin kick thing and that uppercut thing. All you have to do is try the same joystick motion about 20 times and you'll eventually do it. It's just too fickle to be performed with any consistency.

I was going to beat the game so I could relay the ending to Pounders readers. After about 10 continues on a guy half way through the game, I just couldn't go on. Solly!

To think that Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game was only a few years away. Wait! Omigosh. Look! http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30552 They might be making a Street Fighter: The Movie 2: The Game 2! This time focusing on Chun Li. There's some AP pounding inspiration from the past...