Did you know that it took EIGHT YEARS before the full force of the Saikyo Master was unleashed upon the Streetfighter World? No? Then you better read this history my student!

In 1987, the first Streetfighter game hit the arcades, bringing us the first appearances of Ryu, Ken and an unscared Sagat (boo, hiss!) Note worthy about the first editions of this game was the fact that it actually had a touch sensitive (Thump sensitive?) control pad. Yes, that's right, the harder you hit the pad, the stronger attacks your character would unleash.

Fairly obviously, this led to sore hands and damaged machines. Soon after, a normal button version was released, with 6 buttons. Unfortunately, no one really cared very much, and the game seemed lost in the mists of time, while Capcom concentrated on the Final Fight Series of scrolling beat em ups.

But in 1991, Streetfighter 2: The World Warriors strolled into arcades, and caused more than a little excitement.* Despite being criticised for having too many buttons (at the time 3 was seen as excessive) hardcore gamers soon mastered the controls and destroyed the complainers in two-player mode.

In the original SF2, the bosses were unavailable as player characters. Arcade goers DEMANDED that they be made playable, and in 1992, Capcom released a "Championship" edition to appease their wishes. Also in this edition, you could both select the same character in two-player mode. Yes.

Capitalising on their rampant success, Capcom cranked up the throttle for their next release Street Fighter: Hyper Fighting** which made everything much faster, forcing idle players to "get with the program". Also, characters were given new combos, some had new special moves and everyone had a new selection of outfits! It was smashing!

But not everyone was happy. Where were the new characters? Some of them arrived in 1993 with the release of Super Streetfighter 2: The New Challengers. Unfortunately, the New Challengers proved to be a mixed bag. In particular, the frankly fat T Hawk was horribly unbalanced in early version and parts of the code had to be re-written to eliminate an especially cheesy character. Also, the speed was reduced, for no readily apparent reason, much to many gamers disgust. Things were rectified in 1994 with the release of a Turbo version, which despite introducing Akuma as a secret character and having "special bars" for syuper moves, didn't really set the world alight.

In 1995, Streetfighter took a new direction, with the coming of the Alpha series. A sort of "side story" installment, it changed the character miz around and introduced a raft of gameplay tweaks, like Level Three Super Moves and air blocks. But in this was not the most important aspect. The reason the arcade world was rocked to its foundations*** was that among several new characters was the mighty DAN!!

In 1996, the sequel (still staring Dan) Alpha 2 introduced lots of other inovations with Custom Combos and new backgrounds. In 1997, Capcom released Street Fighter 3, but this attracted less attention than demands for a sequel to Alpha 2. And lo! In 1998, Capcom did indeed release Alpha 3. It is probably the best Streetfighter game yet, featuring every SF character who has been in it, including, of course, Dan. And the world loves it. Despite a raft of spin off SF games, like the 3-D EX series, and the Streetfighter vs. X-men/Marvel/SNK series, Street Fighter Alpha 3 is still seen by many, (including myself) as THE definitive version.

Capcom seems to have finally moved on from Streetfighter 2 now, we're already on the 3rd installment of Streetfighter 3, and Capcom vs. SNK 2, the 6th "vs." game is now on the scene. Happily, Dan seems to have gained alot more recognition than when he made his debut. Dan has appeared in Streetfighter vs. Marvel and Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and most recently in Capcom vs. SNK 2. The future looks bright for Dan, and the Streetfighter franchise just keeps on rolling....all they need now is some good story writers ^__^.

* The first character I ever played with on it was Zangief. And I actually did a spining piledriver at the first attempt. Years of practice later, I would be able to do them again....

** One of our local arcades had a pirate version which was utterly screwed up. The characters (and parts of the background, like the cyclist on Chun Li's stage) would slowly float off the screen, the special moves were mad (A Tiger Uppercut from Sagat made a Yoga Flame come out of his knee, and a Dragon Punch produced 3 HOMING FIREBALLS.....ye gods)

Update! Saikyo fan FBomB AReNa has confirmed that this bonkers machine wasn't a one off. He writes: "I have seen this game, about 5 years ago in the lodge of some campsite in New York. WHen Sagat did his uppercut, fireballs came out. I picked Ken and it gave me Ryu, who's fireballs were homing. I thought it was just broken but apparently this game really exists."

UPDATE! I'd like to thank everyone who has e-mailed in about this edition of Street Fighter, I'm glad I'm not the only one to experience it's madness ^_^
This version of the game is most commonly known as "Rainbow Edition" and was a bootleg of the original Streetfighter 2 code, which explains its craziness. For Streefighter perfectionists and the plain curious, you can apparently get Rainbow Edition on the MAME emulator.... but don't tell anyone I said that. ^_~

*** This isn't entirely true........^-^