Between 1991 and 1993, as a child, I wanted one game at home more than anything else in the world. And the machine under my television couldn’t give it to me.
If you grew up in that era, you know the feeling. The gap between what glowed inside the arcade cabinet and what you could actually play at home. For me, that whole wait had one name: Street Fighter II, The World Warrior.
200 lire at a time
The first time I played Street Fighter II was in the summer of 1991, in a café in a small Tuscan town. I was about 10. It was the only cabinet in the place, and a game I’d never seen before.
I scrolled through the characters and they all looked strange to me, but strangely interesting. For my first game I picked Dhalsim. I had no idea who he was, and I lost. Badly.
One game cost 200 lire. Lose, and you’d have to put in another coin to try again.
A few games later I landed on Ryu, and that was it. My favourite character somehow found me, and a 35-year relationship began. With Ryu, I should specify.
Street Fighter II became one of my favourite games ever, and an obsession shared with my friends in the arcades. If you didn’t live through that period, it’s hard to explain how badly I wanted to play my favourite arcade game at home. The distance between the cabinet and the home consoles of 1991 felt enormous.
The picture that broke me
At home I had a Sega Mega Drive, my second console after the Master System. All my friends had one too, so for us the console war with the Super Nintendo barely existed. There was nobody on the other side to fight.
And it was a great period. Streets of Rage, European Club Soccer, Moonwalker, Sonic, QuackShot. Long afternoons playing with my friends and my brother.
Then one day I opened Console Mania, the Italian gaming magazine I collected, and read that Street Fighter II was coming to the Super Nintendo. Only the Super Nintendo.
A few months later the magazine twisted the knife. They printed a photo of the Japanese Super Famicom cartridge of Street Fighter II wedged vertically into a Mega Drive slot. I remember the caption saying that this was the only way you’d ever see Street Fighter II on a Sega. As a child, I hated that picture.
But it forced a realisation. My desire to play Street Fighter II at home was bigger than all the games I owned, all the fun I’d had, all the cartridges I could swap with friends.
By then, I knew what I was going to do. I sold my Mega Drive and every game to buy a Super Nintendo.
Christmas 1992
The first game I bought was, of course, Street Fighter II. By Christmas 1992, I finally had it at home, and I remember it being very expensive. Good timing for Christmas, at least.
The SNES version went on to sell 6.3 million copies, according to Capcom. No playable grand masters yet: no Balrog, Vega, Sagat or M. Bison, just the original 8 world warriors.
And it felt noticeably easier than the arcade to me. I could practise without feeding another coin into the cabinet every time I lost.
The controller was a revelation. Compared to the first Mega Drive pad, it was night and day: more buttons (which mattered enormously for Street Fighter II), a smaller shape and a better fit in my hands. Still one of the best controllers I’ve ever used.
And through Street Fighter II I discovered everything else. Super Mario World, Joe & Mac, Super Tennis, Super Soccer, Super Mario Kart. Everything was Super for a reason. Mario Kart alone was responsible for many, many arguments with my brother.
Friends came over constantly to play. Much of 1993 became my Nintendo year, after years of Sega. And the timing was perfect, because Street Fighter II fever was everywhere around us: toys, merchandise, even a Tiger LCD handheld, that glorified calculator.
The Mega CD temptation
Then, in 1993, Sega made me envious all over again.
The Mega CD looked like the future. A CD drive bolted onto the Mega Drive, with advertisements that made it look far more powerful. The rumours about the next generation were starting, and in my mind this was the first taste of it.
Still no Street Fighter II on the Mega Drive, though. So I resisted. I stayed with the Super Nintendo.
Coming home
By autumn 1993, almost a year after I’d brought The World Warrior home, everything changed. Street Fighter II’ Special Champion Edition was on the Mega Drive, and Street Fighter II Turbo was on the Super Nintendo.
I played Special Champion Edition on a friend’s Mega Drive. The graphics looked slightly rougher than the Nintendo version I knew, but the speed was something else entirely. Turbo offered faster play on the Super Nintendo too, but the pull of the Mega Drive release, together with the Mega CD, was too strong.
And there was a practical side: for almost a year I hadn’t been able to swap a single game, because all my friends were still on Sega.
So I switched back. I sold the Super Nintendo and all the games, and once again a Street Fighter II game was the reason to change consoles.
The Mega Drive version nearly took a different form. Hidden Palace’s research on surviving prototypes documents an earlier, outsourced conversion of Champion Edition. There were missing animation frames, less detailed backgrounds and black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.
Capcom developed Special Champion Edition in-house instead, included faster play alongside Champion Edition rules, and increased the cartridge from 16 to 24 megabits. Sega’s official 6-button controller suited the game far better than the original pad. I preferred the Super Nintendo’s colours; the Mega Drive had the stronger soundtrack for me.
Super Street Fighter II deserves its own chapter, because to me it feels like a different game. This story is about that first passage from the arcade to the home console.
And of course, as a child in Italy I had no idea that a PC Engine version of Champion Edition existed, or that there was a conversion for Sharp’s X68000. Probably for the best, otherwise I would have attempted the impossible to get one at the time.
Both sides of the war
I remember those years very clearly and very dearly. The Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo shaped my gaming life as I moved from childhood into my early teens, with strong friendships and a lot of fun attached to every cartridge.
People still ask me which side I was on. I was on both. Thanks to Street Fighter II I experienced the 16-bit era from both trenches, and looking back I’m happy it went that way. The right way to live a console war is to own both consoles, even if, like me, you can only manage it one at a time. What I found on both sides of that so-called war was, in the end, friendship.
This story is dedicated to my friend Nicola. We played Street Fighter II and many other games countless times together, at his house and mine, for many years, until he sadly passed away. The memories of that time are precious to me, and they’re still here.
There will be more chapters to this story.
Watch the full Street Fighter II video on YouTube.
Stay curious. Stay nostalgic.
Because retro never dies, it just respawns.
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