Like A Hurricane: An Unofficial Oral History of Street Fighter 2
A comprehensive oral history of Street Fighter 2, featuring interviews, testimonies, and specially commissioned artwork.
Street Fighter 2needs no introduction. It revolutionized a genre, establishing the basics that most fighting games still follow to this day. It helped Capcom become the household name that the company is today, and its impact on the extinct arcade scene, which focused on high scores instead of face-to-face battles, was life-changing for a significant part of the gaming industry.
But how did this game come to be? How was it even conceived? What were the stakes during its development in an era when fighting games as a concept were completely different than what we know today? All these questions (and plenty more) are answered, at least to some extent, in the book Like a Hurricane: An Unofficial Oral History of Street Fighter 2.
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The tome compiles over 60 voices to give you the most fascinating tale of a classic. Polygon’s editor Matt Leone has worked on this text for over a decade, talking to a variety of people connected to the game in a plethora of ways. The original Street Fighter director Takashi Nishiyama, planner Hiroshi Matsumoto, Street Fighter 2 planner Akira Yasuda, and the lead programmer Shinichi Ueyama are just a handful of the incredible names you can find here.
The oral history format means chapters come with introductions and notes throughout, but are mostly comprised of conversations between groups discussing a specific topic. These people weren’t always in the same room, yet the dialogue maintains a natural flow throughout.
On one hand, this compilation of tales feels like listener in on creative and marketing discussions, how big decisions were taken, and fun facts from behind the scenes. The famous anecdote of how combos were a bug is much more contextualized and fleshed out in this book. Reading about how the original Street Fighter’s cabinet featured pneumatic buttons that recognized different inputs according to how strong you hit them, which ended up hurting players’ hands and fingers, was some fascinating information I’ll never forget.
On the other hand, there was a recurring feeling that I’d heard a lot of it before. It’s a video game story like all video games stories: every game being made feels like a miracle. The almost infinite range of issues in the development, financial pressures, the haunting release date, crunch, creatives tearing each other apart, fundamental features that were an accident, etc. Street Fighter 2 had its good shares of these, but I found the story behind its music to be one of the most interesting ones.
The legendary composer Yoko Shimomura, who would create some of the most memorable character themes like Guile’s and Honda’s, had a rough start at the company. She arrived at Capcom with [relevant degree in classical music], but had never actually composed a song before. When she created her first song for the company and then played it for a room full of people, silence was the only reaction. Instead of quitting, Shimomura started training with Harumi Fujita, another composer at Capcom, and began creating the tunes that would define a generation.
If you’re jumping into Like a Hurricane thinking that you’ll only learn about the original 1991 Street Fighter 2, you’re in for a surprise. Of the nearly 500 pages, less than 50 cover this game. That’s because you’ll also find words for many of the official and unofficial versions that Street Fighter 2 received after the years, as well as other relevant contemporaries (Fatal Fury, Darkstalkers) and the stories behind the next subseries (Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter 3).
Knowing about certain titles might not be as interesting or what you were expecting, but their inclusion is always justified and answers to one motive: to show the legacy of Street Fighter 2, and how it influenced not only the next steps in Capcom, but also everything the rival companies were doing at the time.
Like a Hurricane is also beautifully crafted. Its minimalistic but striking use of black, red, white, and yellow for its text, notes, special pages, and introductions to the next chapters was always a joy, and I poured hours into it each time I sat down to read. The large print font is also appreciated, making the reading more accessible no matter the time of day you pick it up.
Ultimately, Like a Hurricane is crafted with deep love and an invaluable work for a series that has become synonymous with a genre that is living its most interesting days at this moment, with the wild variety of options and the progress made through different technical improvements over the years. This book will please both the fans who want to know the curiosities behind the development of this legendary game, as well as anyone who wants to know more about how we used to perform hadoukens back in the day, and how much has changed since then.
A review copy of Like a Hurricane: An Unofficial Oral History of Street Fighter 2 was provided for this review.
