Way back in the day, (1993ish) I was involved with the development of a game called Street Fighter The Movie. Turns out that it ended up being not so good. Fighting game fans pretty much despised it, especially the die hard Street Fighter fans. (Myself included.)
Earlier this year, I posted about that project on the forums of Shoryuken.com, a website dedicated to competetive fighting game playing. My aim was to shed a little light on process and perhaps explain why certain things ended up being the way they were in that game.
The thread went on to become one of the most popular on the site, spanning nineteen pages. The major gaming blogs and news sites picked it up, and my little slice of the story has skyrocketed past a hundred and seventy five thousand views as of this date.
So now I'll follow it up with a few goodies!
The original post is here, full of follow up Q&A throughout, as well as a lot of fun fan reaction
The condensed form solely featuring my recounting, (no Q&A,) can be found here:
I scanned in a few pics from my personal photo album, which are good for a few laughs. (Go easy on the clothing and hairstyle in the comments section... it was the early 90's. Grunge was huge.)
Akuma_gets_karate_lesson
Benny_the_Jet_as_Raven
Blanka_angry_Blanka_no_in_game
Blanka_au_naturale
Cammy_Emma
Cammy_Minogue
Ernie_Reyes_as_Akuma
Home_Away_from_home
Honda_gets_a_touchup
I_show_Cammy_Emma_the_finer_points_of_the_Cannon_Spike
Jean_Claude_has_his_fill_of_being_bossed_around
Jean_Claude_performs_stunning_front_flip
Ken_preps_for_Kick_Standing_Close_Forward
Raul_Julias_Stuntman_as_Bison
Ryu_looking_decidedly_victorious
Sagat_inspects_his_performance
Sawada_marvels_at_my_flying_punch_technique
The_movie_lot
Vega_sets_his_feet
Zangief_strikes_a_pose
I almost forgot:
Score: 1
15 COMMENTS:
This post was a major hassle to get correct, what with all of the linking. Blogger was just not cooperating.
Thanks very much for the PDF download. It is a great read, and I was always afraid that Shoryuken would so something silly like delete that thread by accident or something.
Also love the photo album. I know that you have said that you thought that Cammy should really have used the movie outfit (blue fatigues etc), but I will respectfully have to disagree with you there. Do you have any other pictures of Kylie or Emma in the famous green leotard? (Yes, I know I am very shallow!).
Thanks again.
My theory is that SFTM:TG is going the same way as the Movie itself. The film got uniformly slated with bad reviews, but it still continues to pop up regularly on TV schedules, long after "better" films have disappeared from view. Thus it has become a "good" (i.e. fun/cult) bad movie. In similar way the Game, though obviously flawed, remains visible because of the affection for the film, and now because people understand what went into the making of the game (thanks to you Alan). So I see the game living on for ever as a cult item (scary thought!).
Oh, and I also second the request for more Kylie and Emma. I have always liked the quote:- "It's a law of physics that in any way, shape, or form, Cammy is always hot".
Thanks for posting all of that extra stuff and for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the making of that ... unique game. It was really cool of you to go out of your way and write it all down for us Street Fighter fans. Definitely an interesting slice of history.
Hairstyles in the 80's and 90's were committments. No other way to put it. I bet less than 1% of the population made it through that period without sporting an embarrassing look in some photo. You got off light man.
So i finished the Guile combo video that i mentioned a while ago. It's got a handful of SFTM clips so i thought you might be interested.
SF? Guile Exhibition (Evo2k7 Edition)
There are two versions available with two different codecs and filesizes. The HQ version looks much nicer but requires a little bit of extra work. The LQ version is standard WMV format so as long as your Windows Media Player is current, you should have no problems playing that. It's a lot blurrier though. Please do me a favor and right-click-save-as instead of trying to stream them.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks for sharing this Alan. I hope one day we can see more pictures from the set!
I know this is a pretty old post, but I'd like to thank you for sharing this with us. Did ye ever get around to posting sketches and other in-production material?
Ernie Reyes? Wasn't he the kid on The Last Electric Knight or Sidekicks or something like that? Oh well, at least he got a somewhat dignified role in this game.
I can't say the same for Sawada, though... he was completely redesigned in the Saturn version of the game and was goofy as all hell. He attacked you with Japanese stereotypes!
Hey, lookie - someone can buy Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game for the Saturn.
(You're damn right this is a shameless plug, but everything Street Fighter is an obsession of mine.)
I am so Pissed I am not in your industry friends......sad...just sad
Situation remedied, Mr. Bedore
Hey Mr. Noon. Great post there. I love behind the scenes stuff of the videogame industry, especially from the 80/90s. And thanks especially for those hot Kylie Minogue shots. She's gorgeous.
Fascinating, thank you for this :)
Interesting looking at the photos (it seems from previous comments they clicked the Cammy ones like me ;)) but one I did notice was the Akuma one, and you (I am assuming it is you) giving Akuma a tip on how to stand in a fairly accurate Akuma pose.
You seem like a fan of the game, question was how many of the people you worked with daily were fans as well? I just think there was so much wrong in the game mechanics (and your post on Shoryuken stated that whilst playtesting got rid of the bugs, it didn't solve the gameplay tweaks) that it was in part handed to non fans of the game.
Maybe you should've done playtesting. You know, for the good of humankind ;P
(Then again, I've never programmed a game in 10 years, so am not averse in getting mechanics right :P)
Wow... why is this topic getting so many replies, all of the sudden? Is it because it popped up on Kotaku? Because suddenly I keep getting e-mails telling me "There was a reply in "Follow up: Street Fighter The Movie".
Rhys: There were only a couple of us on the project that were fighting game fans. That's not unusual on any project.
I did do playtesting as well, but was often overruled when it came to a number of core gameplay decisions. Also, I was still pretty new to the industry and game dev, so I was not entirely familiar with the process or my bounds. Looking back, I would have done things differently.
The S: No clue why this bubbled up all of a sudden. Cool though.
I read the whole thing and as far as I can see you did an excellent job. As I see it most of the fault lies with Capcom for not sharing or being communicative and with staff disputes leading to an unbalanced game.
You managed to put (Kylie as) Cammy and Sagat in their proper outfits and added Akuma and Benny the Jet. That should make you a hero :) You even tried to correct the mistake of the bad Ken casting XD You did everything that a Street Fighter fan could think of to make it more authentic and more. Well done for documenting this and sharing the photos. You should be proud of the job you did.
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