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The story
Street Fighter ZERO launched in arcades in June 1995, followed by ZERO2 in March 1996, bringing an anime-style visual overhaul along with new mechanics like chain combos, air guard, and the ability to use multiple Super Combos. On 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board, opinions split over whether this really amounted to a “revolution.” Some were skeptical, arguing it was “just CPS1 dressed up to look next-gen,” while others recalled that almost nobody in arcades at the time could actually chain into a Super Combo, and that although ZERO1 flopped, ZERO2 brought the series back into the spotlight.
What people said
Was that actually shocking?
they just muscled their way into looking next-gen.
Capcom's always got circumstances like this tangled up in it.
3 flopped completely.
Though I was a console player.
but then Street Fighter ZERO2 came out the next year and clawed it back.
Apparently they didn't have time to make character-specific stages, so I guess it was just under-polished.
the live-action Street Fighter movie tie-in fighter
Capcom's JoJo Part 3 fighter
and Warzard, which for some reason threw in RPG elements
>Warzard, which for some reason threw in RPG elements
Maybe it started out as the third entry in the D&D series before getting switched from a beat-'em-up to a fighting game concept.
By the way, there's also a D&D versus fighting game that came out for PS1 overseas.
The Original Combo system that actually shipped wasn't the one previewed in magazines before release (something that anticipated JoJo's Tandem Combos — where you could build your own custom 'recipes' for rush attacks).
It turned into a combo-focused game.
Original Combos.
Though the precise-timing combos were a downgrade from Vampire (Darkstalkers).
And then there's Lisa Lisa from JoJo — talk about a niche pick.
Considering Birdie and Sagat are in there too, maybe part of the intent was to remake the original Street Fighter — which back then you could only play if you owned a PC Engine — on a current-gen board.
If they'd put Haggar in there, it would've been popular.
Capcom was putting stuff out too — like an arcade substitute for Toshinden, and Arika made Street Fighter EX, plus there was Star Gladiator and Justice Gakuen (known overseas as Rival Schools)…
Star Gladiator and Justice Gakuen were made in-house by Capcom, weren't they?
Sorry, my wording was confusing.
Muscle Bomber (Saturday Night Slam Masters) be like, "Wait, what?"
Muscle Bomber used an outside artist, so it feels like Capcom couldn't push it hard during the Street Fighter ZERO era.
The sequel just turned into a regular fighting game, that's the thing.
This game's 30-40 years old, right?
Which means anyone who played it in real time is at least 50-something by now.
A bunch of middle-aged-to-elderly guys swarming to talk about it is kind of low-key horror.
I'm not even pushing 50, but honestly, the whole 'internet forum' format itself is……
Young people know this series too, thanks to Arcade Stadium (the compilation re-release).
A lot of people think that, but III actually released after ZERO2.
Street Fighter ZERO — June 1995
Street Fighter ZERO2 — March 1996
Street Fighter III — February 1997
The Marvel tie-up made the moves super flashy, which ended up making Street Fighter III look plain by comparison.
(Though III's animation work is far more detailed.)
ZERO2, on the other hand, had pre-release ads in Gamest revealing Zangief, Dhalsim, Gen from the original game, Rolento from Final Fight, and a mysterious girl in a sailor uniform — a complete turnaround from ZERO1 that built real anticipation.
That ad was great.
Really stuck with me.
If I had my current skills back then, I could've been an instant hero…
There's no more pointless time-slip fantasy than that one.
Actually, from what I saw around me, ZERO was the first time you could buffer inputs to cancel into a Super Combo. In X (Super Turbo), the input window was way too short to pull it off at all.
If you change things enough to call it a revolution, it stops being a fighting game.
After Street Fighter II, it was Virtua Fighter, and there hasn't been another one since.
If you want to swap out the whole cast, you might as well change the title, right?
In fighting games, different characters completely change how the game feels to play, so unlike other action games, it's hard to keep the core the same when you swap characters.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Street Fighter ZERO launched in arcades in June 1995, ZERO2 in March 1996, and III — which overhauled the series — in February 1997; as commenters note, ZERO2 actually came out before III. ZERO ran on the CPS1 board, and it also served as a comeback strategy during a period when Capcom was losing arcade traffic to newer-generation titles like Tekken 2 and KOF ’95. What split the thread was exactly what counted as a “revolution”: some praised new features like chain combos, air guard, and multiple Super Combos, while plenty of others were more dismissive, calling it “just CPS1 dressed up to look next-gen” or saying the precise-timing combo system was “a downgrade from Vampire (Darkstalkers).” It’s also easy to overlook how differently ZERO1 and ZERO2 were received: ZERO1’s character lineup and sluggish controls drew criticism, while ZERO2’s roster — revealed early through magazine ads — generated buzz that carried over into real popularity once it hit arcades.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “Was Street Fighter ZERO actually a revolution back then?.”
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