Street Fighter the Movie Broke My Heart

[Saotome Kaneda]

I regret not being around to sticky this.

[polarity]

Doesn't another one of Chun's 3S win quotes say "I'm a fighter, not a news reporter!"? That's obviously a reference to the movie.

[vasili10]

Doesn't another one of Chun's 3S win quotes say "I'm a fighter, not a news reporter!"? That's obviously a reference to the movie.

And only an overseas quote.

[Numbski]

(FWIW: Not to nit pick, but I think it is important to draw a distinction between the digitizing we did for SFTM, versus "motion capture" which typically refers to the capture of motion in 3D space via marker sets and whatnot.)


I do know that. I wasn't feeling well, and realized it after submitted, but was too tired/lazy to go back and fix it. I figured you get what I meant. ;) I am kinda of curious if you were capturing down to targa files, tiff, mpeg, or whatnot. So far as the rights, I didn't know if Capcom owned the rights to that kinda stuff, or if IT does.

[True Grave]

Started playing SFTM Arcade again today, meh still crappy. But I kinda like guile, he plays enough like 2D guile i guess and his kicky-super is kinda neat.

However- WTF is with Guile's win pose?

[Vynce]

This thread has roused me to register and join the forums as well.

What an excellent read this has proven to be! I've never experienced the game for myself, but I wrote it off as a joke the minute I saw it in an old Babbages flyer, years and years ago. It really answers a lot of questions, to read about the lament of a developer and the sub-par game he helped to create.

...Although, I suspect the team behind the Big Mother Truckers (sp) franchise knows what they're getting into when the time comes to work their magic every so often.

[EVAWINGZERO]

This is an incredible thread, keep it coming man

[anoon]

I have just written up a few more short sections on digitizing characters, then I'll mention backgrounds a bit. After that I think it's probably about time to delve into my analysis of the final product.

Enjoy.

[anoon]

TWO GUILES
Guile was captured twice: Once with Van Damme and once with his double. As previously mentioned, the actors had originally agreed to a full shoot with us which was part of their contract for the film. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, Van Damme could only provide us with four hours of his time. On the upside though, his double really was an incredible likeness, and we were afforded the opportunity to do a full session with him, which ended up being a very good thing. In our haste to try and capture a full shoot with Van Damme, we largely ignored many of our digitizing hardware restrictions, namely that the actors had to perform their moves as slowly as possible. The end result was that a good deal of the Van Damme footage was extremely difficult to clean up, so we mixed and matched parts from the takes with his double to make a complete moveset. To Jean Claude’s credit, he did work extremely hard while he was in our studio. Though he didn’t quite understand the whole speed limitation of our hardware, he did four hours of rapid paced action, nearly non stop and his improvisation during the shoot led to a few new moves for Guile.

TWO CAMMYS
Cammy was another character that had two digitizing sessions. We were originally slated to be in Australia to digitize for two weeks of daily shoots, then a trip home to begin work on the character data. For whatever reason, our shooting schedule didn’t work out as planned with the actors. We were nearing the end of the second week and we still had a large number of characters to shoot. One of them was Cammy, and we were afraid we weren’t going to get Kylie up to our set. As chance would have it, we met Kylie’s double, Emma Kearney, at one of the after hours parties. It turned out that she was very interested in helping us out, so we scheduled a session with her and went down to wardrobe.

Like Sawada, Cammy’s costumes in SFTM are the khaki officer’s uniform and the blue camouflage field outfit. At the time we felt that the officer’s uniform was not the best choice for a fighting game costume, and the field outfit was fairly boring and blue to boot, (which would have made clean up difficult, due to the blue screen.) In the end we opted for a costume more true to the Cammy’s SSF2T look.

I am not sure that Emma knew what she was getting into when she agreed to the shoot, but she was a trooper and did a fantastic job. I don’t imagine too many young actresses would relish the thought of standing around an old warehouse in a skimpy leotard, covered in baby oil under a bank of hot lights, all the while surrounded by a bunch of video game nerds.

Not surprisingly, shortly after we had our successful Emma shoot, Kylie’s schedule freed up, and she was eager to do a digitizing session with us. Seeing as she was one of the big ticket names in the film, we had to digitize her as well. In retrospect, we probably should have devised a different costume for the Kylie shoot. That way, we could have had a Kylie Cammy, and a third female character hidden away in the game, (assuming we had the time to clean the Emma data up.) Maybe it was all for the best … I suppose if we put Emma in, that means that Blade wouldn’t have made the cut, and we all know what a tragedy that would have been!

[True Grave]

I suppose if we put Emma in, that means that Blade wouldn’t have made the cut, and we all know what a tragedy that would have been!

Alan Blade not in the game?!

NNNNNOOOOOOooooo!!!!!!

[Return of Shiki]

I just wanna say, while I've never actually played SF The Movie: The Game...it AT LEAST looks 100x better than Tattoo Assassins.

[s-kill]

re: s-kill
Please give us Gyakuten Saiban 3.

Don't boss me. Also, stay tuned to Capcom's Phoenix Wright forums this week for some relevant stuff (pending legal approvals).

PS-- while I'm at it, there's plenty of solid evidence (hard, science-y evidence even!) that fighting games are still very viable as a genre.

I'm not sure how such a sad sack "the sky is falling!" mentality set in amongst fighting game players (this mentality has been around for *over 15 years*, despite the genre's strides), but it's not well-grounded in reality. Get happy and go play a game!

xo,
Seth

[anoon]

TWO KENS
We did the first Ken shoot in Australia, as scheduled, though he ended up getting a double dose of digitizing by the time we were through. It’s probably safe to say that any Street Fighter fan that saw the film version of Ken would agree that Damien Chapa was not exactly the best match for our red shoto brother. After returning from Australia, we began cleaning the Damien Ken up and putting him in, though we weren’t super happy with the results. We had a dilemma: not only did our digitized Ken not look like the Ken we knew, he didn’t exactly move as fluidly as him either. Ken was hugely popular; how could we not deliver a great Ken?

As things turned out, Chun Li was never captured in Australia, so we had a pickup shoot slated to happen in Chicago for her. Since we were going to have the camera and equipment rented out already, we captured two additional characters in Chicago: Sheng Long, and a second Ken.

Our project lead/lead designer found our second Ken; I’m not sure where. He was a young guy barely out of high school I think, if at all, but he had martial arts training and most importantly: long blond hair. His costume was a red gi, though it did not feature the torn sleeves and pant legs. Instead, his long sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. The shoot went well, and we approached Capcom with the idea that we sub in second Ken for Damien Ken. Capcom ultimately decided that we had to go with Damien Ken however, and second Ken’s raw capture stayed on his CD. We were disappointed at the time, but looking back, Capcom made the right decision with Damien Ken in my opinion.

RAVEN???
One of the fight/stunt coordinators on the film was famed martial artist Benny “The Jet” Urquidez. Our Lead Designer/Engineer was a huge fan of his, and we had a hole in our schedule, so we made arrangements to digitize Benny. We went down to wardrobe, and they made a costume: Black quilted vest, red athletic/karate style pants with a black stripe, and taped up feet. His session was a bit different than the others. I believe it was the Lead Designer’s idea, (and a great one at that, IMHO,) to digitize Benny performing his moves set in several different styles. The plan was to include Benny in the game as the character “Raven.” His unique ability would be that he could change fighting styles on command. I wrote the character background, which was approved by Capcom as far as I remember, though I have completely forgotten the specifics. While we never got to put Raven in the game due to time restrictions, it wasn’t too long before a Street Fighter character with a similar style switching ability debuted: Gen of Street Fighter Alpha.

[MiLky]

Wow, I never knew Benny was supposed to be in that game! He has one of the best on screen fights with Jacky Chan ever, I think it was in Armour of the Gods. Would be cool to see some pics of Raven too.

[Sano]

Man, you scared me there. When I saw Raven's name I thought you were going to say "We were big fans of the Wolfman and Perez Teen Titans comic and DC gave us the greenlight to use Raven in the game, but we couldn't due to legal issues but Capcom did let DC make the Street Fighter The Movie comic." :rofl:

Seriously though, DC's comic book adaptation of the Street Fighter movie is beyond horrible...

EDIT: Man, I gotta try sketching out those designs of Sheng Long and Raven for fun one of these days when I'm not so busy...

[Sarge]

It seems like you get this thread, almost... There IS a reason it was posted here and not wherever you linked in from..
What are you talking about?

I meant if I had heard all of this great development talk way back in 1994, I wouldn't have been able to contain myself waiting for this game. It's easy to look back now and say, "Wow it's a shame it didn't turn out like that," but how often does that happen, games are hyped for months/years only to be crap. But we never get this kind of insight afterward either. I wish more developers would reach out like Mr. Noon has.

Back on topic, you keep talking about secret characters, Mr. Noon, had it been considered to use the 2nd Ken as a secret character like "Evil Ryu"?

On a related note, which game was it that featured Ken's evil double?

[Veib]

On a related note, which game was it that featured Ken's evil double?

SvC Chaos has Violent Ken.

[Darklightjg1]

Excellent read. I can't wait to see your section on what you would do differently. It would've been very interesting to see the "other" Ken; too bad he didn't make the cut.:sad:

I just beat the game playing with Ryu and Guile and I actually wouldn't mind buying it if it were released on XBLA *wink, wink... nudge, nudge*. I don't care how broken it is; it actually feels good to be able to "Shoryureppa" with normal Ryu for a change. :rofl:
Infinites and stuff aside, I think it would be perfect for some good times (as well as some great laughs) on live. :rofl:

[anoon]

T.HAWK
T.Hawk was never digitized. I don’t have the details, but for whatever reason, Greg Rainwater did not show. It became apparent that after the first few digitizing sessions, many of the actors weren’t coming up to do their session with us. This was largely the reason we were not able to leave Australia after the originally scheduled two weeks and instead stayed for a month. In the end though, just about everyone was digitized, with just Ming Na and Greg Rainwater holding out. Fed up with wasting time, dealing with Hollywood personalities, and with members of our team missing their families, we headed back home. Capcom arranged to have Chun Li shot back in Chicago, but T. Hawk went missing. (At the time I figured it was no big loss in my book, I never liked T.Hawk anyway.)

DHALSIM
Dhalsim was another character that was never digitized. I don’t recall there being any scheduling conflicts or contract negotiations involved, just that digitizing him posed a few problems: First, there was concern that the actor would not be able to perform the session. Second was costuming: would players accept Dhalsim in lab coat? Asking the actor to strip down to a yellow diaper didn’t seem like it was going to fly. In the end, Dhalsim was such a small part of the film we figured we’d skip him, unfortunately.

DEE JAY
Dee Jay was actually digitized in Australia. I feel really bad that he never made it into the game. Miguel Nunez was a really cool dude, and one of the actors that genuinely showed enthusiasm for the video game aspect of the job. Again, time was Dee Jay’s primary enemy, though the costuming situation didn’t help much either. Initially we didn’t feel that the Bison Soldier outfit that he wore in the film was going to be a great look for Dee Jay, so we aimed to recreate the costume from SSF2T as best as possible. The best we could do on short notice was a pair of plain grey athletic pants.

[anoon]

One more little section after this about characters that might make for a fun and interesting read, then on to backgrounds and how we developed them.

Couple of responses to questions and comments for now:

However- WTF is with Guile's win pose?
There were a few different Guile win poses. I assume you are probably referring to the hair comb one? What can I say? That was Jean Claude's interpretation. We didn't have a lot of time to direct him during the shoot.

AT LEAST looks 100x better than Tattoo Assassins.
Ah... Tattoo Assassins. The coin op video game industry is very small. Everyone knows everyone else for the most part. Management of I.T. knew management of Data East. We had heard that they were working on a digitized fighting game during production of SFTM, but didn't know too many details beyond "huge budget, hollywood people involved, Back to the Future, etc." Towards the end of SFTM, (might have actually been right after we finished,) a couple of us were invited over to the Data East offices to have a look at Tattoo Assassins.

So obviously it was not the best game I had every played, but I do appreciate the fact that I got the opportunity to play on a real TA arcade game. A pretty rare event, as I do not believe any made it out into the real world.

FWIW: It is my estimation that Tattoo Assassins shared an ailment with Bloodstorm, which I will get into when I discuss SFTM's gameplay.

Would be cool to see some pics of Raven too.
Hang in there, I hope to share a couple of goodies at the end of the thread. ;)

Man, I gotta try sketching out those designs of Sheng Long and Raven for fun one of these days when I'm not so busy...
I thought about doing the same, but it seemed like it would be kind of anticlimactic compared to locating the original sketches and data.

had it been considered to use the 2nd Ken as a secret character like "Evil Ryu"?
No, we didn't consider that really. This was before the whole Dark Hadou storyline. With the Sheng Long dragon aspect thing we did suggest that there was a power that could consume a character and take over their will, but we didn't develop that stuff beyond that allusion in the Sheng Long description.

Speaking of "dark" characters, we did create and implement the black Super Bison in SFTM. I believe this was inspired by the final scene in the film in which we see Bison's hand rise from the rubble after the credits. You may not have seen this character however, as you have to play tag team mode all the way through. Not sure how many people did that.

[True Grave]

T.HAWK
T.Hawk was never digitized. I don’t have the details, but for whatever reason, Greg Rainwater did not show. It became apparent that after the first few digitizing sessions, many of the actors weren’t coming up to do their session with us. This was largely the reason we were not able to leave Australia after the originally scheduled two weeks and instead stayed for a month. In the end though, just about everyone was digitized, with just Ming Na and Greg Rainwater holding out. Fed up with wasting time, dealing with Hollywood personalities, and with members of our team missing their families, we headed back home. Capcom arranged to have Chun Li shot back in Chicago, but T. Hawk went missing. (At the time I figured it was no big loss in my book, I never liked T.Hawk anyway.)

I agree. For some reason i never liked T-Hawk either, and in the movie, he was the most forgettable character. He might have had 1 line maybe, and thats it.

DEE JAY
Dee Jay was actually digitized in Australia. I feel really bad that he never made it into the game. Miguel Nunez was a really cool dude, and one of the actors that genuinely showed enthusiasm for the video game aspect of the job. Again, time was Dee Jay’s primary enemy, though the costuming situation didn’t help much either. Initially we didn’t feel that the Bison Soldier outfit that he wore in the film was going to be a great look for Dee Jay, so we aimed to recreate the costume from SSF2T as best as possible. The best we could do on short notice was a pair of plain grey athletic pants.

Dee Jay MADE it into the home version of SFTM. As did blanka.

Hate to break it to ya, but Blade was Nowhere to be found in it(in case you didn't know).

There were a few different Guile win poses. I assume you are probably referring to the hair comb one? What can I say? That was Jean Claude's interpretation. We didn't have a lot of time to direct him during the shoot.

Wait...he is SUPPOSED to be combing his hair back in the win pose? It does not look like that at all.

It looks like van Damm is just stretching out to show his abs, and "pose" for the camera.

[Sarge]

I had absolutely no idea that T. Hawk was even in the movie until many years later. There was not a single person in the film that struck me as a giant Native American warrior.

It's really a shame that the alternate Ken didn't even get consideration as even a pallette swap like Blade.

[True Grave]

Both shoto brothers were screwed in the movie. Neither actor was much like his game counterpart.

Also from what little i've read on places like IMDB, damien chapa(movie ken), went on to become a sleazy and hated movie director along the lines of Uwe boll(minus the recognition).

[A_Rival]

The funny thing is, a couple of friends and I were playing this on our MAME cabinet in my living room(this was the first time I ever played the arcade version) and I couldn't help but notice that the gameplay was a lot different then the PS1 version I had played only a few weeks back. One of the guys I was playing with owns the PS1 version, but tried to tell me they were identical, which I thought was bullshit.

Now I know the truth thanks to this fabulous thread. The info is up at wikipedia as well, so I can now rub it in his face!

The juggle system in the Arcade Version is pure hilarity! Bring a bunch of SF players together one night and play; I guarantee you'll get a shitload of laughs before you switch to a proper fighting game!

BTW Alan, what software did you use to clean up the sprites after you captured them? Where there any special considerations you had while capturing them(as in lighting, camera settings, etc.) to the computer?

Also, do you live in the bay area? I'd love to buy you coffee and chat game stuff sometime!

-A_Rival

[Sarge]

Both shoto brothers were screwed in the movie. Neither actor was much like his game counterpart.
I hear that. It wasn't bad enough that they got poor actors to play them either, they looked like weaklings and their story was almost completely cut. Let's ignore the fact they're the true main characters.

[True Grave]

I hear that. It wasn't bad enough that they got poor actors to play them either, they looked like weaklings

Its like casting just picked the first two generic white and generic japanese guys that walked in the door.

[Airthrow]

Wow, I never knew Benny was supposed to be in that game! He has one of the best on screen fights with Jacky Chan ever, I think it was in Armour of the Gods. Would be cool to see some pics of Raven too.

Actually it was in Wheels on Meals, great scene though!

[BKB]

Benny the Jet being captured but not used in a video game....?

Now that breaks my heart. :sad:

[1/2Man1/2God]

I Like Chicken..

[Digitalbooty]

How did I just stumble on this today? if we have a SF:TM tourney at evo this year, I promise I'll come.

[No Mercy Video]

Im gonna have to disagree on that, but thats just me.

Thank you anoon for all the info so far, best read in a long time, thanks for the advice on my game as well.

[Kung Fu Man]

Well, might as well cut to the chase outright: I'm sorry that bit about Blade being the worst remained in that wikipedia article. As it stood before, well, this thread there wasn't much information at all and that was expanded instead of being removed to counter someone trying to nix said article, and never got removed because I couldn't actually find any further info. Heck I think this is the most info this game has *ever* gotten.

As it stands I should point out the reasons people make those statements have nothing to do with you but simply the disliking on the palette swap nature, and I myself happen to like Arkane :P So I sincerely appologize and mean no personal offense :sweat: As it stands you might take a personal hand at editing those two: many SF related articles tend to be sorely lacking or misinformed on wikipedia.

Btw, you mentioned considering a redo of the game and mugen...I might be able to assist you there if you ever want. I think the only obstacle would be ripping the sprites, though enough fiddling with artmoney would probably allow for cycling through said sprites.

One final note: while Blanka himself is not in the game, his ending still is, and if you cheat to play as Super Bison you'll end up getting it, so that much of him was in.

Btw, who was the main guy behind the stages? And what's the story behind the apparently debug stage with the white floor and black background if any?

[Psicoso]

I am here for two reasons.

1) KFM with the foot in the mouth :P
2) I want to know about Wes Studi and Andrew Bryniarski! :O

Actually, since Capcom basically said 'Here, do what you want. We really don't give a shit,' would y'all still have tried as hard if y'all had known that to begin with?

[TS]

And only an overseas quote.

Meaning the English version, right? Do you know if the bracelet quote the same way, one of Capcom USA's edits?

[Ultima]

re: Ken/Ryu actors

Hey, I thought Ryu's casting went about as well as it could. If they tried to get someone who looked anything remotely like Ryu, they would have had to get a white guy.

Also, RIE-YOU for life! ^_^

[r3ko]

I hear that. It wasn't bad enough that they got poor actors to play them either, they looked like weaklings and their story was almost completely cut. Let's ignore the fact they're the true main characters.

Well I for one was pleased that the movie wasn't a complete "we love you so much Ryu, no other character will get a look in" tribute, like the Alpha anime movies were.
I've watched the movie a ton of times, and while i'll agree its bad, its like its got a "its so bad its good" kind of vibe to it.

BTW, Anoon, this thread is great, a very enjoyable read.

My Question: Since you guys went down the same road as MK and went with digitised graphics since Capcom where feeling the heat abit from MK in America. Why was not the game mechanics in some way copied from MK, such as high/low punch/Kick, and similar motions, fatalities, block button, etc? Cause it seems to me that alot of people played either MK or SF, and making SF look like MK but not play like MK would give little reason for MK fans to switch over. Since MK probably got alot of thier playerbase by stealing them away from SF in the first place, by not only offering a different type of graphics but a totally new and unique style of fighting game. Similarly most of the SF2 players were probably thinking that MK was more gimmicky than revolutionary and stuck with SF2, and making SFTM look MK would instantly put off the SF players to go play it. Its almost as if the game was made so that no one would want to play it.

[Sano]

It's funny but Byron Mann looks a lot more like Ryu now than he did back then, compare his SF2 portrait with the one below.

http://www.afan.dk/byronmann/bmpic/index-pic.jpg

Timing is everything I guess...

Not that I'd want him to reprise the role or anything only because I never want to see any other SF movie associated with that movie in any kind of way ever...

[z2AkumA]

Long time reader, but I never post. I maybe have 3 posts. Been a fan of SF forever. Thanks for such a great read. I wish more developers would do this for a variety of games.

No matter how hardcore a gamer is the whole development side is still a mystery/ pipe dream for all of us.

[z2AkumA]

anoon - how far into development do you start to realize the game isn't going to be as good as you hope?

[dookeh]

hey akuma.

tw shin akuma here.

Anoon - awesome read. very interesting stuff. brings back memories of my youth in the arcades. I hope that you get the chance to work on another fighting game in the future. LIVE arcade maybe?

[Kung Fu Man]

I've watched the movie a ton of times, and while i'll agree its bad, its like its got a "its so bad its good" kind of vibe to it.

It's actually a pretty good action-comedy (emphasis on comedy) when you pay attention to the humorous bits instead of take it on seriously. What a lot of folks tend to forget too is that a lot of video game movies of that time were bad or grossly inaccurate to a point of there wasn't anything to salvage...I think the first MK film was one of the few decent ones out of the rest of that lot, and that undid any good brought by it thanks to the second film. Oy!

Though I'm confused why everyone's upset Ryu and Ken weren't top dogs: this was based around SF2, and the main protagonists there *were* Guile and Chun-Li because they both had a personal beef with Bison the size of Texas. Ryu and Ken were basically just Ryu and Ken at that time: Sagat wanted to beat up Ryu and that was really the extent of their whole involvement that counted for anything.

[aerialgroove]

Its like casting just picked the first two generic white and generic japanese guys that walked in the door.

And on top of that Ken is not a white guy, but an Asian (3/4 or something) with blond colored hair.

But after reading this thread I'm really shocked about Capcom's management having so much influence and being on the set and all while not giving a damn how the movie turns out and contradicts to everything that happens in the games.

[r3ko]

Though I'm confused why everyone's upset Ryu and Ken weren't top dogs: this was based around SF2, and the main protagonists there *were* Guile and Chun-Li because they both had a personal beef with Bison the size of Texas. Ryu and Ken were basically just Ryu and Ken at that time: Sagat wanted to beat up Ryu and that was really the extent of their whole involvement that counted for anything.

Your right, but what you gotta remember is that Ryu was the star or SF1 and hes the starting character thats highlighted when you press start. And from a story point of view hes a much more important character than Guile and Chun-li throughout the SF universe. So its no wonder why people see him as the main character. The fanboys probably want the next street fighter game to be called "Street Fighter 4: The the chronicles of Ryu" or some crap like that.

I also don't know why the Ryu fanboys complain about him not being the star of movie, its not like he was left out of the movie like Feilong. If the Ryu addicts are that dissappointed they should go watch Street Fighter Alpha the movie and Street Fighter Alpha Generations, complete Ryu fests. I swear whoever made those films probably wanted to have Ryu's babies.

[SNkNuT]

there's no perfect movie of a game, though mortal kombat is very close. street fighter is a good example of this. its too hard to please everybody. they have to make it appealing to people that don't know what street fighter is and so the result were subpar to the fans. add to the fact that the people who worked on the movie didn't really know what SF was. i think street fighter is decent movie. it has some funny moments and we all liked it in someway, otherwise we wouldn't be making jokes about the movie.

[anoon]

what software did you use to clean up the sprites after you captured them? Where there any special considerations you had while capturing them(as in lighting, camera settings, etc.) to the computer?
Last night I wrote up a bit about the character art pipeline. I'm trying to post once or twice a day, so expect this information maybe tomorrow sometime.

I couldn't tell you the specifics of the camera as I wasn't in charge of operating it. As far as lighting went, we had a bunch of film grade lighting equipment. We started with your typical stage lighting rig of key light, fill light, kicker/back light, and then added from there. We had extra lights on the ground to keep the lower half of the character as illuminated as the upper portion. I think I mentioned the baby oil trick already, which was used to boost the highlights on the actors flesh.

Also, do you live in the bay area? I'd love to buy you coffee and chat game stuff sometime!
Sorry, I'm still in Chicago. But thanks for the offer!

I'm sorry that bit about Blade being the worst remained in that wikipedia article
Hey No worries. Blade is not a great character. I always half hoped that he might get a make over and appear in the Alpha series, but I guess not. It would be neat to see what the Capcom guys would do with him. On that note, he does share a couple of similarities to Rolento: knife projectiles, military theme, jumps around a lot....

Btw, you mentioned considering a redo of the game and mugen...
While that might be fun, I wasn't seriously considering it. I already have a number of other things to keep me busy. Besides, I'd have to get the original data and permissions to use it. I just don't see that happening.

who was the main guy behind the stages? And what's the story behind the apparently debug stage with the white floor and black background if any?
Background art was split up between a few of us. I did Bison's Lair, Temple Ruins, Tong Warehouse, and Catwalks,(Bison's Command Center) There were two other primary background artists. One did Dhalsim's lab and the Dungeon, the other did the A.N. Headquarters. There was a secret background that took place ontop of Bison's Temple at night, but I really can't remember who did that one. Come to think of it, I'm not sure it actually got put in the game. There's a section on backgrounds coming up within the next couple of days.

I want to know about Wes Studi and Andrew Bryniarski!
Wes was a very serious guy. All business. I liked him. He did a great job on our set.
Andrew was cool too. Very full of energy. A real character. He was very serious about playing Zangief and really immersed himself in the role. I think it shows in the final product of both the film and the game; Zangief is one of the characters that really fits his traditional Street Fighter representation.

Actually, since Capcom basically said 'Here, do what you want. We really don't give a shit,' would y'all still have tried as hard if y'all had known that to begin with?
Well... I'm not sure I would characterize Capcom's attitude towards the product or us exactly like that. I'm sure they cared about the project. These days I tend to think that perhaps they didn't realize what it was we were going to deliver until it was too late. But to answer your question: We absolutely would have tried our best, no matter what. We were contracted to do a game, and you always do your best. It's no help to anyone's career or the franchise your hired to work on to slack off and not care.

Why was not the game mechanics in some way copied from MK, such as high/low punch/Kick, and similar motions, fatalities, block button, etc?... ...Its almost as if the game was made so that no one would want to play it.
In the very beginning I do believe that was proposed by one of the team members. It definitely seemed like the 5 button config was an American fighting game trademark. One considerastion in favor of the 5 buton layout was that if we did use the MK button config, perhaps arcade operators would be more likely to convert their MKs to SFTMs. These types of concerns are very real issues in coin op. You have to remove as many barriers as possible when it comes to convincing the Arcade Operators to buy your game. Most of us are familair with the poor stage of the equipment in the arcades back in the day. There were/are very few Operators that could be bothered to install anything propoerly and then maintain it afterwards. I'm not putting the blame squarely on them for this, but is it any wonder the arcades died?

I've debating how to approach the following subject: There were conflicting opinions amongst the team members as to how SFTM should ultimately play. I mean to discuss this when I write the final section in which I evaluate the game and offer my opinions on what we could have done to make a better product.

how far into development do you start to realize the game isn't going to be as good as you hope?
I couldn't tell you the exact date that I realized SFTM wasn't going to be everything I had hoped. There were a lot of little signs along the way I suppose. I do very specifically remember the first incident that raised a red flag in my mind. The story is a bit long, so I think I'll save it for a bit later. Please stay tuned.

I hope that you get the chance to work on another fighting game in the future. LIVE arcade maybe?
You and me both, brother. I'd love to do another fighting game. The current crop of consoles are loaded with features that would lend themselves to a pretty amazing fighting game. Who knows what the future may bring?

Live Arcade is a very interesting proposition. Certainly match making over Live would have to be a given for a modern fighting game. Whether it is through the Live Arcade interface or an via an in game mode that is part of a larger product is the question. Depends on the product really.

Ken is not a white guy, but an Asian (3/4 or something) with blond colored hair
Funny you should mention that. Now, you have to keep in mind this was before internet access was truly widespread and that there wasn't a lot of (any?) data coming out of Capcom regarding the background info of the SF universe. Pretty much all of the info available was what you got after you played through the game with each character. Two win screens with a handful of sentences. Done. I remember when the Capcom JP guys told me that Ken was Japanese. I was like "What are you talking about? He's obviously American!" They explained that actually he was Japanese, but was so enthralled with the U.S. that he left Japan and moved over seas. His hair is dyed in an attempt to be more American.

[Kung Fu Man]

Yeah, I was about to bring up a lot of info on the actual SF universe wasn't exactly widely known at this point, and a lot of it is still strewn all over or getting rewritten by latter games.

There was something related to that though I guess that should be asked: "William Guile"...where did that come from exactly? As well as some of the other first/last names for characters specifically for the movie, game and latter US cartoon...did you guys cook those up or was capcom behind them? (I'm half suprised nobody's asked about these yet)

[aerialgroove]

...its too hard to please everybody. they have to make it appealing to people that don't know what street fighter is and so the result were subpar to the fans. ...
Sounds like SFII the animated movie. Both SF fans and other anime fans love it for good reasons. Plus it has a well balanced importance to Guile, Chun Li, Ryu and Ken with Ryu still being the main character. And it's not crap. It can be done with real live movies too, if Spielberg or Scorsese makes them.

...I'm half suprised nobody's asked about these yet

They exist since the GiJoe characters were out (Ryu Hoshi, Chun li Xiang,...) but only Ken Masters stayed from that time. Read my pure speculation about the name in my rip off section:
http://fightingstreet.com/folders/variousinfofolder/ripofffolder/ripoffpage2.html
(scroll down to "Ken Masters & He-Man")

[Maj]

What the fuck? Ken dyes his hair? I'm not entirely sure that i'm willing to accept that. Though ... if Ken really is a fob ... it would kind of add up that his stage is on a dock next to a boat. Still, who the hell thought it would be a good idea to come up with this random backstory about him really being Japanese? Makes no sense to me.

[ZenFire]

I just found this thread today and I agree with others it's one of the most interesting things I've ever read on SRK. I'm glad you overcame your shame and decided to share all this info. When you talk about this being a black page in your career it sounds quite depressing and sad. If it's any consolation a lot of things doomed this game to fail, including but not limited to the crappy movie it was based on. Looking back it's probably easier to see why so many ppl are excited about all this info being brought out into the light since we as fans are pretty much starved for information on anything SF. The most striking thing in all your posts is technical stuff. I keep forgetting how far technology has come since then... 2x burners, 1GB HDD's, 8bit color sprites... amazing you guys did what you did.

You say you're proud of the art in the game. First off, what exactly do you mean by that? If you mean the cleaned up captures, then I'd have to agree. Those sprites look surprisingly good and have a warm coloring that makes them seem more real than MK3 cartoonized sprites (which seemed flatter due to heavy postprocessing). You used the word art which makes me wonder if you mean all the games graphics combined or what I thought you meant: the artistic theme/feel of the game. I think many older games (probably american games moreso) share a lack of artistic direction in that they don't have a specific style. They don't have a real 'feel' of any kind. SFTM is no exception imho. I look at the character selection screen and there is nothing there that appeals to me on any level. It's just pictures and names on a metal plate, on top of... yet another metal plate. That's the only recurring theme I can find: metallic looking plates and fonts. SF2 achieved so much more with only larger mugshots of the selected character and an eliptical globe and accompanying airplane. What's the art part you were talking about?

How much input from gamers (if any) did you guys try to get before designing the game? Did you guys think "we're gamers and we like SF so we don't need to hear from other ppl" or was market research not part of your 'dev-cycle' at the time?

As a fan of SF storyline and universe I really hated having to tie real life ppl to characters, especially since they didn't resemble them in most cases. It would have never worked imo, since SF has allways been cartoony and translating it to real life would have allways fallen short of what we have come to know and love. Be it due to physical proportions or laws of physics. I guess my question is: Do you think that part of the game's failure is due to the fact that the real life versions of beloved fictional characters were not embraced by fans of the series? Do you think if in a world where SF did not exist a game such as SFTMTG (which would have no history or legacy to follow) would have done better?

I'm a bit conservative when it comes to some things, so I can't help but grimmace at the thought of actors portraying SF characters. Do you share that feeling at all? I understand that you had no say in the matter and that it was decided to be that way before you were even involved, but did it not strike you as something fans would dislike?

You mentioned some of the actors were excited about the capturing process. I actually wondered about that from page one of this thread. So I'm gonna ask for some elaboration, which ones were notably excited about the prospect of being in a game and (maybe more interestingly) which ones were unenthusiastic?

thanks for a great read so far.

EDIT: LOL @ SF the movie being Van Damme's biggest success.
@Maj: I'm pretty sure that SF canon guide on gamefaqs says that Ken is Japanese. It only stands to reason he bleaches his hair.

[TS]

What the fuck? Ken dyes his hair? I'm not entirely sure that i'm willing to accept that. Though ... if Ken really is a fob ... it would kind of add up that his stage is on a dock next to a boat.

Hahahaha.

Anyway, characters in Japanese games/manga/anime etc always have weird hair colors...Rose's is purple, Akuma's is red, whatever. So someone having blonde hair doesn't really mean much, other than that it signifies being white very often. I think a big part of it is just to keep everyone from looking too similar, which is especially a problem with manga characters, as most manga are still drawn in black and white, and you don't wanna give everyone black hair.

About Ken having Japanese heritage, I think Capcom considers him American, regardless. Same with Guy. Even if he is part Japanese (or fully so like I assume Guy is...though like Ryu sometimes he looks Mexican, but whatever), being born and raised in America = being American, no matter where your parents are from. This is the way I've heard Japanese look at it in general, though I can't confim.

Karin, on the other hand, is Japanese, but has blonde hair. Just one of those things...

[mrdhalsim]

Great story, anoon. Any kind of post-mortem is way overdue for a lot of us.

About the term "fireball" for hadouken, while it may be true that Americans were/are not so familiar with the concept of chi, that's not really the reason. You have to go back to SF1. Ryu and Ken said "fight--" (hands back, gathering frames)"FIRE!!" (release).

Years later in college, I met this one guy from Greece, who was trying to pick up Hyper Fighting for the first time, and he asked me "how do you do, the ice?" which made just as much sense as any, seeing as how, by then, hadoukens looked a whole lot more like ice than either of the other two descriptions....

[Maj]

Personally i think that the phenomenon of Ken and Ryu being genetically identical from the neck down would have been more impressive if they originated from entirely different nationalities. I dunno, i guess it's not a big deal, but it just seems so weird to me that they felt the need to mix it up that way. Especially since that kinda trivia only shows up as a tiny footnote in some random art book released years after the game.

Writer #1: So, Ken is from California right?
Writer #2: Nah let's make him Japanese.
Writer #1: Wtf, he looks like a total white boy surfer.
Writer #2: Who cares? Just make something up! The fans love arguing over shit that makes no sense.

The only other place i remember Ken's background being mentioned was in one obscure line in the SF2V anime series, and let's not forget that giving Zangief a mullet was the least insane thing those people did. I mean, does anyone really believe that they had Ken's official hair color sorted out back when he was designed for SF1?

[aerialgroove]

I don't want to get into this Ken thing so much as it's just one example of what differs the movie from the game, but Ken doesn't look white. Unlike Balrog (Vega in the US) and other white characters, he alsways had black eyebrows. They made it even more obvious in SFII the animated movie. But I too was surprised first.
Wether his passport says American or Japanese is not the point. I'm talking about the look.

I just used this example to show that Capcom Japan didn't tell the film crew and storywriters enough, in fact confused them with statements like the Sheng Long = god stuff. So I see it as mainly their fault, as they just stood there and said nothing.

[Ultima]

Maj:

Just to clarify (since no one else has so far), Ken is 3/4 Japanese. His mother is Japanese, and his father is half-white, half Japanese. He was born in the US, but he has spent a lot of time in Japan (hence how his father managed to ship him off to Gouken to get some discipline). Yes, he dies his hair. It's always been this way, apparently (even back in SF1, his eyebrows and hair didn't matched). I think his natural colour is light brown, but I'm not sure.

re: Hadoukens

In my country, we often referred to Hadoukens as "waterballs" (when you get hit repeatedly by Hadoukens, we called that "getting bathed with water").

[No Mercy Video]

I find that intresting as well as ive always refered to them as fireballs, as in.

You throw one more fu**ing fireball and im going to break your arm

When you get hit repeaditly with a fireball, you then break that persons arm.

I love that they are refered to as various things in other parts of the world. Funny that fire and water being opposites.....

[BKB]

Waterballs?! too good! :tup:

[Digitalbooty]

Ok, one thing that has been bothering the fuck out of me. WHY couldn't they have aAT LEAST made Balrog the "controls" dude and Dee Jay the "camera operator?" The movie really isn't THAT bad, it's just so hard to watch because they butchered the real storyline so HARD.

[aznflict]

The movie really isn't THAT bad, it's just so hard to watch because they butchered the real storyline so HORD.

*fixed

[Gojira]

Wow, here I was wondering why a SF Movie thread was stickied here and it turns out to be something like this.

Anoon, you are something else. I always have to give props to developers who are willing to discuss the things that went wrong with a game that was not well-received, but you certainly picked the most interesting way by coming on here and talking with largely the same group that put it down. That takes guts and balls and everything above, below, and in-between. Major props.

I just have one easy question: From concept to final build, about how long did it take to fill out a game of SF:TM:TG's magnitude?

[Darklightjg1]

I think he said 9 months to a year or something.

[Vynce]

My (trivial) question: Have you looked into getting a SFTM arcade cabinet? You could keep it chained up in your garage, and put out cigarettes on its screen whenever you had an awful day.

Or, I guess you could display it in your living room. I guess.

[anoon]

CHARACTER ROLL CALL
Depending how you count it, SFTM contained about fourteen to eighteen characters when released. (Characters that had full fighting move sets and were either playable by human, or AI.) We held a good number of digitizing sessions more than that, and originally proposed even more characters for inclusion. Here’s the break down, roughly in the chronological order that we shot them, followed by the ones that were pitched, but never made it.


DIGITIZED, AUSTRALIA
E. Honda
Ryu
Ken
Zangief
Dee Jay
Sawada
Fei Long
Sagat
Bison (Super Bison) [Raul Julia’s Double]
Akuma
Blanka
Balrog
Guile [Van Damme]
Guile [Jean Claude Van Damme’s Double]
Cammy [Emma Kearney]
Vega
Cammy [Kylie Minoque]
Blade (Kyber Arkane F7)
Raven

DIGITIZED, CHICAGO
Ken [Second actor]
Chun Li
Sheng Long

NOT DIGITIZED
T. Hawk
Dhalsim

PROPOSED
Geki
Eagle???
???
???

I know for sure we proposed Geki (The ninja) from the original Street Fighter 1, (Fighting Street,) but we wanted to make the character female. Capcom did not want to do a gender switch, so they instead suggested we make a new character and supplied us with a short list of popular Japanese female names. Once we were on the track to make Street Fighter The Movie (The Game,) rather than some uber Street Fighter, our Geki fell by the wayside. In retrospect, our Geki would have shared numerous similarities to the later Ibuki of SF3.

The last three characters escape me at the moment, but I want to say that there were four additional characters included in our early documents that were never digitized. They were all Capcom characters from other games, with at least two, maybe three from the Street Fighter series. The name Eagle seems to stand out as one that might have been included. I am 100% certain that Mike Haggar was not one of them as I despise Mike Haggar. (I have a theory that any game prominently featuring Mike Haggar is doomed to failure.)

[vasili10]

Maj:

Just to clarify (since no one else has so far), Ken is 3/4 Japanese. His mother is Japanese, and his father is half-white, half Japanese. He was born in the US, but he has spent a lot of time in Japan (hence how his father managed to ship him off to Gouken to get some discipline). Yes, he dies his hair. It's always been this way, apparently (even back in SF1, his eyebrows and hair didn't matched). I think his natural colour is light brown, but I'm not sure.



One more addend to Ultima's, almost all of the above was explained officially once SF2 Dash came out, even though Ken's look was that way from SF1. Gouken of course wasn't named until much later, Super X that is.

Geki planned for SFTM might've resembled Ibuki? Interesting.

[Kung Fu Man]

I am 100% certain that Mike Haggar was not one of them as I despise Mike Haggar. (I have a theory that any game prominently featuring Mike Haggar is doomed to failure.)

Yep, that Final Fight and SlamMasters series, how epic flops they were. :(

...wait...

(Not to mention Haggar was one of the characters a majority of folks kept hopes up for appearing as a playable character in the latest SFA collection even if they all knew it wasn't going to happen)

[Psicoso]

(I have a theory that any game prominently featuring Mike Haggar is doomed to failure.)

...First-hand experience says so?

[WebScud]

(I have a theory that any game prominently featuring Mike Haggar is doomed to failure.)

:rofl:

[Superking]

Capcom Fighting All-Stars comes to mind. :rofl:

[Athanasy]

I love you, sir.

[Master Bigode]

I don't want to get into this Ken thing so much as it's just one example of what differs the movie from the game, but Ken doesn't look white. Unlike Balrog (Vega in the US) and other white characters, he alsways had black eyebrows. They made it even more obvious in SFII the animated movie. But I too was surprised first.
Wether his passport says American or Japanese is not the point. I'm talking about the look.

I just used this example to show that Capcom Japan didn't tell the film crew and storywriters enough, in fact confused them with statements like the Sheng Long = god stuff. So I see it as mainly their fault, as they just stood there and said nothing.

Hey, owner of fightingstreet.com,That's the exactly the same thing I have been thinking for Years !
The movie/game doesn't suck, the info Capcom has given Suck !

[aerialgroove]

I'd say both suck. At the time the game was released for Saturn I liked that it had movie sequences, everything I played before was SNES. But today I think it's pretty lame compared to all other SF titles. Or half finished, at least the Arcade version, which is basically what anoon says himself. However it would have never fit in with the other games, even if the physics and all would have been better. I wonder what Capcom had planned with Sawada if the movie was a success. What's he doing now?

[True Grave]

Yep, that Final Fight and SlamMasters series, how epic flops they were. :(

...wait...

(Not to mention Haggar was one of the characters a majority of folks kept hopes up for appearing as a playable character in the latest SFA collection even if they all knew it wasn't going to happen)

Haggar is a classic character from the good old Final Fight days. It does seem that when he stars in any recent fighting games, that they suck.

Like Final fight 2D fighter for Sega Saturn, Capcom all-stars, and he might have been in final fight: streetwise, which I thought was lousy.

[anoon]

Update:

While I have written a handful of new sections regarding characters and backgrounds, I have taken it under advice not to post them. Therefore, I apologize for the lack of updates in the last week.

Private Shoryuken messengers, I will respond to each of you. Sunday is mail day!

Alrighty... a brief mention of a specific background I was intimately familiar with, and then an (hopefully,) interesting insight into what might have been.

Let's skip to backgrounds quickly, and then a look back at the project as a whole.

[anoon]

CHARACTER PIPELINE
...

THE BACKGROUND ON BACKGROUNDS
...

BISON’S LAIR
One of the things that the film version of Street Fighter the Movie did right was the sets. The carpentry, construction, detailing, and finish work on the stages was absolutely incredible. Of these masterworks, Bison’s Lair (AKA: his bedroom,) was one of the most elaborate and convincing. The room was filled with all manner of high quality props befitting an egomaniacal dictator: champagne glasses with the Bison logo imprinted on them, an authentic looking painting of him on his horse, the red winged skull sconces and so forth. It was truly something impressive to stand there and drink in. I was happy to have worked on that background for the game. Perhaps I am biased, but though more than a decade has passed since I worked on that asset, I feel that in some ways it still holds up and am proud of the result.

On set, the room was octagonal, so representing that as an in game asset was a challenge; fighting game backgrounds of the day were simple affairs, consisting of a floor plane, a backdrop, and some mid plane objects to give the illusion of depth. It is important to remember that texture mapping a photo of a wall onto the interior of a polygonal octagon wasn’t something we were really able to do efficiently. This was also not only before the time that we were blessed with Photoshop’s fancy, pseudo 3D/distortion effects; it was before we had access to Photoshop at all. All of the perspective in that room was completely faked the hard way. We took a large volume of photography on set, which were scanned in and knocked down to the appropriate bit depth. All perspective or appearance of 3D was completely faked by the scaling and editing of the image data in 2D applications.

In game we pulled some pretty neat tricks off with Bison’s Lair. We did a full color, palletized “shadow” in order to create a reflection on the floor. The area on the wall around the wall sconces was a data solution, (animation,) to simulate flickering of the fire. The lighting pass on the background art was faked and baked in, in 2D, so that the environment was brighter on the right hand side near the fireplace. I campaigned management to grant engineering time towards tying the characters to the environments in terms of lighting. This was granted, and the programmers delivered an awesome palette shifting technology: as the characters moved into the darker areas of the playfield, the palette color registers for the player and shadow, (reflection,) art were adjusted in real time to better match the background art. While subtle and only appearing in Bison’s Lair due to time restrictions, this was trailblazing work; no other game was paying so much attention to lighting at the time. (FUN FACT: Speaking of lighting, I hid my initials in the texture of the wall near a sconce. I believe they are in the upper leftmost corner of the scene.)

[No Mercy Video]

How many colors were used in each character palette?

[CgHuReInS]

Update:

While I have written a handful of new sections regarding characters and backgrounds, I have taken it under advice not to post them. Therefore, I apologize for the lack of updates in the last week.


"Taken it under advice not to post them"? Is this like a legal issue or something, as in we'll never get to see what you wrote? Or is this just going to come later?

[aerialgroove]

I just realized how terrible the acting in the movie was. Check out Chun-Li "hmm, I'm thinking" or Zangief "I'm angry roar!". Ken's Shoryuken is just ridiculous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFVlYBEbJns
And Balrog/Vega's mask looks like a kid made it from aluminium foil.

Also why can't Guile, the typical American soldier, speak English properly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjMwWAK3p00&mode=related&search=
Warning OVERACTING!

[Numbski]

Also why can't Guile, the typical American soldier, speak English properly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjMwWAK3p00&mode=related&search=
Warning OVERACTING!

Ooohh oooh! Can I answer!

Because he's a typical american? :D

[Ultima]

If there's character info that can only be received via PM, allow me to sign up to the list, thanks.

[BKB]

Also why can't Guile, the typical American soldier, speak English properly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjMwWAK3p00&mode=related&search=
Warning OVERACTING!

"Come HOUT frahm behind dee curtahn WIZART!"

I forgot about that line! It was my favorite when I was younger :rofl:

[kev_the_bev]

regarding the PM, same here.

[MiyagiShin X]

regarding the PM, same here.


count me in on that.

[Josh-TheFunkDOC]

I want in on the PM action, please.

This is the best thing on SRK, anoon, thanks a lot! =)

-Josh

[Wolfkiller]

I haven't been keeping up, but what the hell I'll take a PM and read backwards later.

[True Grave]

I just realized how terrible the acting in the movie was. Check out Chun-Li "hmm, I'm thinking" or Zangief "I'm angry roar!". Ken's Shoryuken is just ridiculous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFVlYBEbJns
And Balrog/Vega's mask looks like a kid made it from aluminium foil.

Also why can't Guile, the typical American soldier, speak English properly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjMwWAK3p00&mode=related&search=
Warning OVERACTING!

Bison: "You have made me a happy man"

Guile: "next Ahh mayk you ah dead won"

Yeah I got a chuckle out of that line back in the day.

[Hydra632]

If there is any Private Message only info being passed out I'd like to receive it as well.

[CptMunta]

^Indeed add me to that list. anoon's posts are really interesting.

[anoon]

Hey guys, sorry, I'm not going to post or PM the "missing" sections. I apologize. It really was rather dry anyway. I had made mention of some of the software we used along the way as we took the raw art data and put it in game. It's largely irrelevant these days anyway, so you aren't missing much. If you're one of the guys that PM'd me for advice regarding cleaning up your own data for something you're working on now, trust me: the tools are much better these days. I'd be happy to make some recommendations centered around a modern toolchain.

How many colors were used in each character palette?
I think I briefly mentioned this earlier and somebody may have answered already, but to be sure: Each charater had a 256 register palette. Register 0 was the background color, (transparent,) and register 255 was an invisible color that we used to line the art up, frame to frame in our proprietary frame data tool.

Have you looked into getting a SFTM arcade cabinet?
lol, no. First off, I wouldn't be surprised to find that every SFTM was converted into something else, so there probably aren't any around. Second, I wouldn't want to wake up every morning to Jean Claude's visage staring me in the face from on high, looking down and silently mocking me as if to remind me of my failures!

Seriously though, I do own two marquees. One really thick, huge plexiglass one that was meant for the giant SSFT2 style cabinet marquees, and another, "typical" cabinet marquee, which a buddy got off of ebay and had framed for me as a gift.

Ok, one more fun background section. A glimpse into what might have been...

[anoon]

A TECHNOLOGY TOO LATE?
During the development of SFTM, Virtua Fighter and the 3D games were first hitting the scene. While we weren’t exactly fond of the low poly, untextured artwork, we saw that there was something amazing about moving around the arena in 3D. I believe it was this exciting new revelation that fueled one of the most interesting developments I saw during my time at I.T. One of the programmers devised a way to simulate a 3D arena just by layering and scaling various pieces of 2D artwork. The demo he put together was a simple box, not unlike a boxing ring without ropes. On this he had placed our Zangief and Cammy art facing off. By scaling the assets by differing factors, he approximated the effect of the camera swinging back and forth from character to character. While apparently fairly performance intensive, it really was convincing as a 3d scene, and we had digitized, recognizeable characters rather then Virtua Fighter’s flat shaded, shoe box men. Unfortunately, this development came too late in the project for us to implement across the game. Who knows what it would have done for SFTM? It was absolutely, undeniably stunning for its day.

[Colt Steele]

Damn, what a gold mine of a thread. Sorry I'm all late to the show, but many thanks anoon for the info and insight.

Also why can't Guile, the typical American soldier, speak English properly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjMwW...elated&search=
"Heez pra-bubbly hiding!"

[Koiyuki]

Interesting insight into gaming and how it comes to be. I can only hope anoon has been able to work with better people, and on better games.

[True Grave]

lol, no. First off, I wouldn't be surprised to find that every SFTM was converted into something else, so there probably aren't any around. Second, I wouldn't want to wake up every morning to Jean Claude's visage staring me in the face from on high, looking down and silently mocking me as if to remind me of my failures!

LOL.

Van Damme: "Alan Blade...are you man enough to play as me today?"

Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!!

[HeartNana]

Awesome thread, great read and thanks for taking the time to post everything you can! :tup:

[Kung Fu Man]

As far as the movie's characters go, they did do a few of them pretty well.

Zangief's big, dumb, and noisy; his game counterpart...may lack the dumb part, we'll never know. Grappling with bears isn't a smart idea anyway. Plus he has some of the best lines in the whole mess.

Honda and Balrog (ignoring the fact for some reason the big guy got made Hawaiian here O_o) weren't all that bad either, offering up some comic relief. Gotta remember too SF2 didn't do much to really give too much fleshing out to the characters here, and this was well before SFA3. Plus this Balrog's at least got something for a persona: vg Balrog's cliche as heck.

Bison was done pretty damn well too IMO. He wasn't just a dictator: the guy was an outright madman *and* an asshole to boot. Raul Julia actually did the character pretty well, and if memory serves did the character for his kids mainly or something like that. Bison kills Chun-Li's father, considers it a trivial event, and even tries to seduce her. Guile kills his ass, his failsafe revives him and he voids the "unarmed combat" bit of the little battle with Guile, zapping the hell out of him.

And even after he gets killed again, when all's said and done and the credits are gone, he gets revived *again*. It just somehow makes him more of a villain.

Anyway, there's my two cents, dispute how you will.

[Airthrow]

There is no dispute man, Raul Julia made the movie!

[Josh-TheFunkDOC]

I still insist that Street Fighter is not the worst movie Raul Julia ever did.

That, my friends, would be Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. Made for PBS somewhere in the mid-80s, based on a sci-fi short story but added a generic EVIL CORPORATION and all sorts of cracked-out scenes. Raul even does a Humphrey Bogart impersonation, I shit you not.

The only positive to come out of that, really, was that the film was later used in one of the all-time best (imo) MST3K episodes.

Also, dunno if this was asked before, but the guy who played Honda was named Peter Tuiasosopo...any relation to Marques Tuiasosopo (Raiders backup QB)?

Thanks, and keep up the awesome,
Josh.

[Sp00ky]

Raul Julia is still amazing despite how awful of a movie they put him in. His scenes are worth watching.

[aerialgroove]

Raul Julia was a very good actor but I don't think you can see it at all in this movie. They made him play stupid and that's what he did. He could have given the character a new aspect or something but they wanted a simple stupid action movie on the level of an 80s cartoon episode.

[Shotokan Symphony]

Bullshit. He delivered the movie's BEST LINES.

Victor Sagat: Guile? Alive!
Bison: Of course! His death was designed to ingraitate his spies with you!
[mockingly covers one eye]
Bison: I guess you didn't SEE that, did you?

[mrdhalsim]

Honda and Balrog (ignoring the fact for some reason the big guy got made Hawaiian here O_o) [...]
Anyway, there's my two cents, dispute how you will.

eh... I still don't see what the big deal is with Raul Julia, in this or any movie for that matter.

But Honda being Hawaiian is appropriate. Hawaiians make some of the best sumo wrestlers of all. Mongolians and Bulgarians tend to dominate in the basho as well, but they would be slightly ahead of this movie's time and unlike the character _E_. Honda was based on.

[True Grave]

Raul Julia is still amazing despite how awful of a movie they put him in. His scenes are worth watching.

Raul Julia totally got the character down. He made a great bison, and was the best part of SFTM.

To this day when I picture Bison in real life, I see him. Unlike the rest of the cast(Damien Chapa as Ken? Nope!).

[anoon]

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. Things have been extremely hectic recently with all kinds of exciting developments.

I promise to wrap this up soon with my evaluation of the game and a proposal of sorts as to how I would improve the game.

I am also trying to track down some content for the very end!

[Optimus Prime]

thaKingRocka , I just realized (right after seeing your avatar) that that actor (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0484739/) in your avatar would've made a better T. Hawk.

anoon, I'm not sure what Ming-Na Wen was wearing for the movie, but if your game development team had the chance/resources/etc., would you have tailored an outfit that more closely resembles her original game dress, kinda how you ultimately decided to clothe Kylie Minogue for your video game?

[True Grave]

Bullshit. He delivered the movie's BEST LINES.

Victor Sagat: Guile? Alive!
Bison: Of course! His death was designed to ingraitate his spies with you!
[mockingly covers one eye]
Bison: I guess you didn't SEE that, did you?

Also this one:

Bison: For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday.

[thaKingRocka]

thaKingRocka , I just realized (right after seeing your avatar) that that actor (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0484739/) in your avatar would've made a better T. Hawk.

i was a little kid and i remember asking my dad about billy in that greatest of movie moments. my dad said "he's ready to fight". i seem to have memories that he also said that billy was ready to die, but i wonder how accurate a child's memory can really be. i think that's just what i inferred. regardless, at that moment, my fear and worry for the character i had already grown so fond of changed to respect and admiration for his ability to face certain death. they could have ended the film with his death and i would have been satisfied. if he was okay with his death, then i was too. the rest of the movie seemed inconsequential to me despite how good the movie was.

who'd've thought a kid could get so much from predator, huh?

after seeing the treatment the warriors got from rockstar, i would like to see them try a predator game. maybe capcom should cut t. hawk and introduce billy to the sf universe :)

[Kyokuji]

The movie really did have a couple good lines.

A.N. Official: Colonel Guile! Colonel Guile, these instructions...!
[accidentally drops them into the water]
A.N. Official: Stop them, please!
Colonel William F. Guile: Hey, I would love to! But some moron just canned me!

Bison: Ah! Doctor Dhalsim! How is your research today?
Dr. Dhalsim: The same. Warped. Corrupted. My science twisted to serve perversion instead of peace.
Bison: Tell you what. After I've crushed my enemies, we'll see about getting you published. That should cheer you up, hmm?

Cammy: Cammy here, are you all right?
Colonel William F. Guile: I'm okay. I'm just half dead.
Cammy: And Bison?
Colonel William F. Guile: All dead.

Colonel William F. Guile: It's the Collection Agency, Bison. Your ass is six months over due, and it's mine.

Zangief: General Bison is a bad guy? If you know then why do you work for him?
Dee Jay: Because he paid me a freakin fortune, Man! If you know what's good for you you'll save your own ass!
Zangief: ...you got paid?

Dee Jay: Oh, Yes. My mama didn't raise no fool, baby.
[he sees someone coming]
Dee Jay: Oh man, I should have stayed at Microsoft.

[vinhhhh]

Zangief: General Bison is a bad guy? If you know then why do you work for him?
Dee Jay: Because he paid me a freakin fortune, Man! If you know what's good for you you'll save your own ass!
Zangief: ...you got paid?

When I seen that in the movie I litterally fell off my chair.

[Sarge]

I've read quite a few things regarding Raul Julia's acting in this film, and essentially, he did exactly as he thought a true dictator would, researching and watching real-life dictator's actions and in-action to supplement his performance. Granted, the dialogue may have been written for him, but his delivery of lines like, "..it was Tuesday," and his constant condescending tone to his subordinates were actually quite good and believable. It might look like overacting, but if you met a real-life dictator and had no reason to fear him, you'd probably find him just as ridiculous.

The rest of the movie, I'm afraid, seemed to have difficulty deciding what it wanted to be. The story, though completely and canonicly inaccurate, was just badly conceived and written. And while the acting was decent for what it was, an action movie, I've seen bad action movies with better dramatic dialogue, yet the humorous dialogue was great. Inconsistency like that is what made the movie bad. The game, even had it been perfect, I'm afraid would have most likely suffered anyway because of its connection.

[No Mercy Video]

When I quit my job at Square-Enix I sent out an email that quoted guiles speach to the troups.

[solemnly] Troopers, I just received new orders. Our superiors say the war is cancelled. We can all go home. Bison is getting paid off for his crimes, and our friends who have died here will have died for nothing. But, we can all go home. Meanwhile, ideals like peace, freedom, and justice, they get packed up. But, we can all go home.
[angrily]
Well, I'm not going home. I'm gonna get on my boat, and I'm going up river, and I'm going to kick that son of a bitch Bison's ass so hard that the next Bison wannabe is gonna feel it! Now, who wants to go home... and who wants to go with me?

[catalyst_nc]

When I quit my job at Square-Enix I sent out an email that quoted guiles speach to the troups.

[solemnly] Troopers, I just received new orders. Our superiors say the war is cancelled. We can all go home. Bison is getting paid off for his crimes, and our friends who have died here will have died for nothing. But, we can all go home. Meanwhile, ideals like peace, freedom, and justice, they get packed up. But, we can all go home.
[angrily]
Well, I'm not going home. I'm gonna get on my boat, and I'm going up river, and I'm going to kick that son of a bitch Bison's ass so hard that the next Bison wannabe is gonna feel it! Now, who wants to go home... and who wants to go with me?

Stop... stop... just stop...

You had me at, "Hello."

You had me at, "Hello..."

[True Grave]

Bison: Ah! Doctor Dhalsim! How is your research today?
Dr. Dhalsim: The same. Warped. Corrupted. My science twisted to serve perversion instead of peace.
Bison: Tell you what. After I've crushed my enemies, we'll see about getting you published. That should cheer you up, hmm?

LOL! The way Raul Julia delivers those lines is Gold :rofl:

Spoken like a True dictator who does not care.

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

As far as the movie's characters go, they did do a few of them pretty well.

Zangief's big, dumb, and noisy; his game counterpart...may lack the dumb part, we'll never know. Grappling with bears isn't a smart idea anyway. Plus he has some of the best lines in the whole mess.

Honda and Balrog (ignoring the fact for some reason the big guy got made Hawaiian here O_o) weren't all that bad either, offering up some comic relief. Gotta remember too SF2 didn't do much to really give too much fleshing out to the characters here, and this was well before SFA3. Plus this Balrog's at least got something for a persona: vg Balrog's cliche as heck.

Bison was done pretty damn well too IMO. He wasn't just a dictator: the guy was an outright madman *and* an asshole to boot. Raul Julia actually did the character pretty well, and if memory serves did the character for his kids mainly or something like that. Bison kills Chun-Li's father, considers it a trivial event, and even tries to seduce her. Guile kills his ass, his failsafe revives him and he voids the "unarmed combat" bit of the little battle with Guile, zapping the hell out of him.

And even after he gets killed again, when all's said and done and the credits are gone, he gets revived *again*. It just somehow makes him more of a villain.

Anyway, there's my two cents, dispute how you will.

Right on. Street Fighter was a fun ride, and if you base it strictly on the game without any of the peripheral information (sourcebooks, etc), it does a pretty decent job of tying everything in together. Plus, the cartoon follow-up seems to help make it more game-relevant as well.

I just see it as an alternate universe, myself, where Guile is more the focus than Ryu and Ken.

Bullshit. He delivered the movie's BEST LINES.

Victor Sagat: Guile? Alive!
Bison: Of course! His death was designed to ingraitate his spies with you!
[mockingly covers one eye]
Bison: I guess you didn't SEE that, did you?

Hell yeah.

The movie really did have a couple good lines.

A.N. Official: Colonel Guile! Colonel Guile, these instructions...!
[accidentally drops them into the water]
A.N. Official: Stop them, please!
Colonel William F. Guile: Hey, I would love to! But some moron just canned me!

Bison: Ah! Doctor Dhalsim! How is your research today?
Dr. Dhalsim: The same. Warped. Corrupted. My science twisted to serve perversion instead of peace.
Bison: Tell you what. After I've crushed my enemies, we'll see about getting you published. That should cheer you up, hmm?

Cammy: Cammy here, are you all right?
Colonel William F. Guile: I'm okay. I'm just half dead.
Cammy: And Bison?
Colonel William F. Guile: All dead.

Colonel William F. Guile: It's the Collection Agency, Bison. Your ass is six months over due, and it's mine.

Zangief: General Bison is a bad guy? If you know then why do you work for him?
Dee Jay: Because he paid me a freakin fortune, Man! If you know what's good for you you'll save your own ass!
Zangief: ...you got paid?

Dee Jay: Oh, Yes. My mama didn't raise no fool, baby.
[he sees someone coming]
Dee Jay: Oh man, I should have stayed at Microsoft.

The lines were great. The movie is just simple fun. I don't think they ever planned to sweep the Oscars, just to let people have a good time.

And I just had to throw this (http://guilddelivers.ytmnd.com/) in. Sort of a small way of saying to Anoon, "You're the man now, dog."

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

[Sarge]

Right on. Street Fighter was a fun ride, and if you base it strictly on the game without any of the peripheral information (sourcebooks, etc), it does a pretty decent job of tying everything in together. Plus, the cartoon follow-up seems to help make it more game-relevant as well.--LBD "Nytetrayn"

As long as you ignore some of the character's endings. :wgrin:

[ShardZ]

omg. Anoon, you're awesome for sharing all this.
*braces for the thrilling conclusion*

[Mjcool]

Hey Anoon...

Wanna play SFTM over Kailerra sometime?

That's basically my way of saying "You're still cool with me".

Also, I didn't read every page of the topic yet, so forgive me if this was asked already, but did you work on any other games?

I know SFTM was developed by the guys that made Golden Tee Golf and Bloodstorm...

[HoneyBBQGrundle]

So I'm playing cvs2 today and in between matches I glance over at the screen next to me, "World Class Bowling Deluxe", and whose name do I see in the credits? Alan Noon. He's everywhere.

[Master Bigode]

Also why can't Guile, the typical American soldier, speak English properly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjMwWAK3p00&mode=related&search=
Warning OVERACTING!

What are you talking about ?
His English is incredible ! (http://vandammebisonspeech.ytmnsfw.com/)

[anoon]

Long time, no update. The past couple of weeks have been super busy! I've entered a graphics contest, so my entry has been eating up all of my free time.

I'm not sure what Ming-Na Wen was wearing for the movie, but if your game development team had the chance/resources/etc., would you have tailored an outfit that more closely resembles her original game dress
Actually, no. I'm currently writing up my thoughts on what I would do differently if I had the chance to do it all again. I will comment on the characters and costumes there.

I glance over at the screen next to me, "World Class Bowling Deluxe", and whose name do I see in the credits? Alan Noon.
Ha, yep. World Class Bowling was a fun little game. I did some "exciter" animations for it. Be sure to check out Silver Strike Bowling, a more recent, spiritual successor to WCB, also by Incredbile Technologies. (In fact, the guy who ran the camera and capture hardware for SFTM led the Silver Strike Bowling project.)

Ok, I don't want to air too much dirty laundry, but it's kind of hard to tell the story of SFTM without a glimpse of the team dynamics, as they definitely impacted the final product.

[anoon]

WHERE DID IT ALL GO WRONG?
A game geek’s dream come true; the career opportunity of a lifetime; the ultimate in fan service; the promise of Hollywood and Silicon Valley synergy delivered! SFTM should have been all of these things.

Unfortunately, this was not to pass.

Ultimately SFTM was not a great product. It was neither commercially successful nor critically well received. It did not sell, and obviously players have no love for it.

Making games is difficult work. So much can go wrong. Each team member has their own ideas as to what will make for a great game.

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

I believe it was shortly after we returned from Australia and had just begun the real grunt work. There was a meeting at our offices between the project leads, I.T. management, management from Romstar/Gamestar, and project management of Capcom Japan. The Capcom JP guys began asking questions about the fighting engine. The issue of the combo system came up. One of our team members answered by describing SFTM’s combo system to be as a MK2 style, "pop 'em up, juggle ‘em" type system. While this alarmed me greatly during the meeting, I kept cool, not wanting to rock the boat with all of those important people in the room. I figured that perhaps our guy was just telling them something to keep them satisfied, as I did not understand how that type of game play fit into a Street Fighter game.

Though I did not believe it at the time, I came to realize later on that this proposal was not just lip service. That's what we got: juggle combos.

Should I have spoken up? That meeting was probably not the best place to enter into a heated debate. Should I have argued against the excessive juggle combo system later? Probably, though I doubt it would have made much of a difference. Truth be told, things got pretty ugly towards the end of the project. Tensions were running high on the team. Many of the improvements I wanted to make were disregarded outright, largely because of personality conflicts, as far as I can tell. This was truly unfortunate as the game suffered as a result.

One example would be that of the throws. When they first went in, throws were not implemented in true Street Fighter fashion, but rather more akin to a Mortal Kombat style throw: All throws would launch the character the opposite direction from which you initiated the move. Naturally I commented that Street Fighter allows you to decide which way to throw, and we should remain true to that convention. A heated debate ensued and in the end I had to sit down and demonstrate throw mechanics on a Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo machine. Then, after remaining “broken” for weeks, throw directions were eventually implemented, though incorrectly; pushing right while throwing tosses the character to the left, and vice versa. There was no good reason for implementing throw directions backwards. I can only assume it was done out of spite. While the backwards throws may not have been the key reason SFTM did not succeed, this story illustrates one of the little things that could have easily been fixed to make the game just a little bit better.

[anoon]

I went up to my parent's place this weekend and unearthed a couple of SFTM things from storage.

The first is my original Sheng Long sketch. Wow... it is hard to look at: Goofy pose, bad anatomy, etc. It looks like it must be the first drawing of him, because he is wearing a headband instead of a blindfold. I'll scan it and put it up once I get my web page up and running. If I had the time, I would like to do a new sketch to prove that I can actually draw!

The second thing is a 3 page document titled "SF3: Character Stories." This doc would have been written early on in the project, possibly before we actually landed the deal, and before we knew we were doing Street Fighter the Movie rather than Street Fighter 3. The interesting thing about it is that it lists all of the characters we intended to put in the game; looks like my initial post listing the characters we proposed was incorrect. According to this doc, we pitched:

Ken
Ryu
Guile
Chun Li
Blanka
E. Honda
Dhalsim
Sagat
Vega
Cammy
Fei Long
Dee Jay
M. Bison
Sheng Long
Akuma
Geki
Gunloc
Retsu
Lee
Mega Man

So now we see where Blade's Gunloc reference came from.

I had completely forgotten about Mega Man as a hidden character. That would have been an interesting costuming and digitizing session.

Poor T. Hawk never stood a chance of making the game.

[Sano]

Ha ha live action Mega Man would of been sweet. Would you of hired a little boy to wear his outfit I wonder? Would of been cool.

Can't wait to see the Sheng Long sketch. :tup:

[kev_the_bev]

Ha ha live action Mega Man would of been sweet. Would you of hired a little boy to wear his outfit I wonder? Would of been cool.

Can't wait to see the Sheng Long sketch. :tup:

All I can say is...

http://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/1104774873-00.jpg

[Shotokan Symphony]

link doesn't work, even after copy and paste
:/

[Numbski]

They're blocking referrers. You have to bring up their homepage, THEN copy and paste. Lame, I know, but that's how you see it. It's an image of the MM1 box art.

[ShardZ]

actually...
http://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/1104774873-00.jpg?
aaand works. :D

[Ki Shima]

actually...
http://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/1104774873-00.jpg?
aaand works. :D

looks like nobody told the designer that mega man never had a horse untill half way through the design :rofl: :rofl:

[fluxcore]

actually...
http://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/1104774873-00.jpg?
aaand works. :D

Reminds me of Hesh from Sealab...

What a bizarre take on SF3... mega man?! :D Thanks for continuing with this, Anoon. Still as good a read as when you started.

--flux

[aerialgroove]

actually...
http://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/1104774873-00.jpg?
aaand works. :D

Strange the link works for me with IE but not with Firefox.

[RayBladeX]

Hey guys, check out this SF: the Movie related music video. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRFU5diCD8M

This was taken from the Sega Saturn version of the game.

RBX *PTS*

[Pimp Willy]

We recently released FEAR for the Xbox 360, which should also be out on the PS3 any time soon. I would love to work on a another fighting game someday.

Wow, that's odd and a small world. I actually tested for FEAR pc and FEAR 360 at Vivendi. I kinda remember seeing an alan noon in the database too. I had no idea that I (in some 6 degrees of separation kind of way) was working with such a legend. And to think, at the office we spent our breaks playing Street Fighter ; )

Still only a few pages in, but good read so far!

[Vic Viper]

Well, looks like Jedite made a 3 part review of SF: The Movie:

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwxReUey9pk

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL41NCnhXE8

Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMHx6GfPtPE

Edit: Its mainly about the movie. But he only mentions the game for 30 seconds.

[RowJoe]

I read the whole thread and it's probably my favorite thing I've ever read on SRK. Really interesting stuff, especially since I usually thought games with digitized graphics were kinda special. I miss the early to mid-90s. The games, the movies, TV...sigh...

[aerialgroove]

Well, looks like Jedite made a 3 part review of SF: The Movie:
I like the second part.

[True Grave]

Hey guys, check out this SF: the Movie related music video. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRFU5diCD8M

This was taken from the Sega Saturn version of the game.

RBX *PTS*

I remember that. For some reason that song pops into my head occasionally.

[Airthrow]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kLrWgVPeCzI

[aerialgroove]

Van Damme and Raul Julia interviews on the movie.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lI6VK5xpRss&mode=related&search=

[_MJ_#R]

<-------------

[Das_Lynx]

This thread has to be one of the most interesting things I've ever found on the internet. Seriously.

[tynissan]

I have truly enjoyed this thread. Anoon, you are the man!

[ZenFire]

There are Mugen versions of SFTMTG Blanka and Dee Jay floating around. Did these leak?

[kev_the_bev]

There are Mugen versions of SFTMTG Blanka and Dee Jay floating around. Did these leak?

Console versions.

[ZenFire]

Console versions.

Oh right

[Burning Ranger]

This has been fascinating, Anoon! Thanks for posting your info the "movie" game.

[Deinbeck]

Street Fighter the Movie Broke My Heart.
Alan Noon
01.23.07

It’s true. I am certainly not proud of this fact, but I am one of the people responsible for one of the most loathed games in fighting game history. I apologize.

It was the project of my dreams. A one in a million, golden opportunity. I was in the right place, at the right time. I was going to be part of something sensational. I was going to help design and create the next Street Fighter! But what should have been a career defining moment turned into a nightmare; a nightmare that haunts me to this day.



Honestly man, I'd give my left leg to be part of the 2d fighter tradition. Regardless of the game, what I wouldn't give to work on a 2d arcade fighter. I even thought Time Killers was neat when it first hit the arcades, they're all gems and all add to the legacy I think. Thanks for posting, this has been interesting, and be proud that you got to add to the genre.

[wtfisthissheeeet]

people can slag of sf the movie but I'd rather play sf the movie then 3s

I had fun with playing this in the arcade, it wasn't crap in my eyes

the console versions sucked though

[anoon]

STREET FIGHTER THE MOVIE, WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
On many occasions over the years, I’ve thought about what we should have done differently with SFTM.

For starters, we should have stayed truer to the film in terms of character design. That would have meant costumes DIRECTLY from the film. If Sagat wore a suit in the movie, he should have appeared that way in the game. Cammy should have worn her fatigues or officer’s uniform. We took some liberties with costumes in an attempt to keep them truer to the original game and to facilitate the digitizing process in some cases, but ultimately, we were hired to make a game based on the movie. What we ended up with was an odd amalgam of movie and game based costumes. This would have meant better communication between our group, Capcom JP, and the movie studio.

In terms of the roster, Akuma should have been hidden, if included at all. Greg Rainwater should have been coerced into performing his digitizing session with us so we’d have a T.Hawk. Dee Jay should have appeared, as well as Dhalsim. We should have cleaned up the Blanka footage and included him as well. A non-transformed Carlos Blanka would have been interesting too. I would still include Blade, though a better name, or even “Bison Trooper” would have been a better choice, as well as excising the silly Gunloc reference and his palette swap clones. This would have made for an extraordinary amount of work however. More character artists would have been required.

As far as animation goes, I initially asked for the original Street Fighter character art so that we could alter our digitized content to match the source material. If this request made it through our organization and back to Capcom, I do not know. It appears as if the team doing the console versions took this approach, and as a result I think their game is better for it. Gaining access to those materials should have been a top priority. Matching the animations would have really helped with the over all “Street Fighter-ness” of the product, (though I would look to increase the over all frame count of each animation.)

Perhaps reducing the color count in the characters would have been of benefit. Our characters were from palettes of 256 colors. I heard that Mortal Kombat 2’s characters were 64 colors. I think that bought them a few advantages. One, our characters shimmered a lot from frame to frame. With fewer colors, hopefully some of that could be reduced. It would have also made manipulating the digitized images to match the original character art a bit simpler as well.

As far as game play went, I would still have argued against the excessive air juggles. Air juggles went on to great success in the VS. series, but that style of play is definitely different from what makes Street Fighter, Street Fighter. The day I found E.Honda’s infinite juggle should have been evidence enough to tone it down. I only scored a 143 hit combo because I was too bored to keep it going.

“Hit stun” is a small feature that has a big effect on the feel of a game. On each hit, the game pauses for a split second. It really adds to the impact of each strike. From what I recall, SFTM either did not have, or had very small measures of this feature and as a result the attacks lack any real bite.

Priority was a hot button issue. Much like the great throwing debate, I had to prove my position on the matter. I claimed that Street Fighter’s fighting was entirely rules based; that is: The result of any move vs. move conflict is always consistent. SFTM did feature that quality. Late in the project I proposed a priority table system for each character versus character scenario. The owner of I.T. set me up with a laptop and I stayed awake for many consecutive days filling out those tables. I’m told the tables were put in, but I’m not sure to what extent. It didn’t seem like a lot of programming time was devoted to implementing them correctly, and there wasn’t enough time left on the project to fully test it. Consulting Capcom and attempting to get their source code so that we might remain true to the classic Street Fighter game play should have been another top priority.

SFTM shared one thing in common with Bloodstorm: balancing issues. In either game, it seems there are no moves that have any real distinct disadvantage in any given situation. It is as if every single move was programmed to be the best move. As a result, game play deteriorates into a spastic button mashing contest and special move fest. There is no pacing, no strategy. I would have liked to have seen this addressed. “Balance” does not mean “equal.” In my experience, many designers do not understand this.

Throws should have been implemented correctly!

The pseudo 3D environment effect would have been something really special. I do not know the performance limitations or restrictions that accompanied it, but that technology would have really gained some attention for the time, had we been able to implement it successfully.

So there you have it: the big ticket items we should have addressed. Would all of this have made the product better? I sure would like to think so, though who can say. Game development is a long and wildly unpredictable process.

[anoon]

CONCLUSION
Street Fighter the Movie. Probably one of the biggest opportunities one could ever have been handed. It’s easy to look back on it now and laugh, (or cry,) over what could have been, but we did the best we could, given the situation. Unfortunately, it just was not good enough.

On a positive note, I like to think that many of the things we tried were indeed decent concepts and did eventually evolve into systems and features we now know and accept in other games of the genre. While there is no direct proof, one might speculate that a handful of SFTM ideas lived on:

-Reimagining characters from older games: (Retsu, Lee proposalsGen, Eagle, etc.)

-Character crossovers: (Mega Man proposalThe VS. Series)

-Fighting style switching: (RavenGen)

-Dark/Super characters: (Super BisonEvil Ryu, Shin Akuma, etc)

-“Possession”: (Sheng Long’s dragon manifestationThe Hadou)

-Ken and Ryu differentiation: (SFTM Ryu favored punches. SFTM Ken, kicks. Ken gained numerous extra kicks in later Street Fighters.)

-Female ninja: (Geki proposalSF3’s Ibuki)

-Air juggling: (SFTMthe VS. series, which went on to be very popular in the U.S.)

-Throw counters: (Counter, Reversal, SlammasterTech Throws/Throw softening

Though Street Fighter the Movie is largely considered the darkest chapter in the Street Fighter story, I still am deeply grateful that I had opportunity to play a part in the history of one of the greatest game franchises of all time.

I hope it has been as much fun to read this as I have had retelling and reliving it all. It has been very rewarding for me to read the responses and answer the questions.

Thanks!!!
Alan Noon

[aerialgroove]

...ne of the biggest opportunities one could ever have been handed. It’s easy to look back on it now and laugh, (or cry,) over what could have been, but we did the best we could, given the situation. Unfortunately, it just was not good enough.

Don't be so hard on yourself. The ones with the big opportunity where the movie makers. The movie sucked and you had to make a good game of it, that's not a big opportunity. You did your best, as you said, and no matter what, the look and story of the game would have sucked anyway.

[Sano]

Thanks for all of the information Anoon. Take a bow man, great thread!

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

[fluxcore]

Since your original post (and a segment on Alphaism radio, thanks Worthless and Mizuki), I've been playing SFTM:TG a fair bit. It's certainly fun to play, simply because some of the stuff you can do is ridiculous (I love Sagat's Tiger Knee -> Fierce -> Tiger Knee -> Fierce -> TK -> TK -> FP etc combos, along with the EVIL EYE PATCH), but there are definitely things I don't understand. Balrog reflects fireballs when blocking? Throw *reversals* and "slammasters"?

I guess the biggest disappointment is that it's not fit for tournament play - which is arguably the point where a true Street Fighter should be. As you say, lots of moves are just too good - and plenty lead to easy infinites. Artistically I think it has many interesting features, but as ever the gameplay is key...

Again, thanks for bringing all this info to light, it's very rare to see such insight into the development process of games.

Cheers,
--flux

[tynissan]

Is that the end? :sad:

[anoon]

Is that the end?

Not necessarily. Shoryuken is on one of my homepage tabs, so I'll be monitoring the thread daily. If any questions get posted, I'll be happy to do my best to answer them.

Also, I spent some time scanning in some photos out of my album, which are initially to be going up on Insert Credit. (More details as I get them.) After a while, I'll put them up on my own site, maybe with some other goodies.

[True Grave]

Thanks for all of the information Anoon. Take a bow man, great thread!

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

I copy & paste that sentiment :wonder:

[Dangief]

Seriously, this is the best thread to ever come out of SRK. You get a cookie.

[EVAWINGZERO]

This thread has been amazing, and even inspired me to finally get my mame arcade up and running, i even got a SFTM:TG Marquee for 9$...... Thanks for getting me back into Arcade Gaming Anoon!

[Pablo_the_Mex]

My xbox runs this game very slowly, but after some changes in the emulator settings I played it for a while (until my emu started crapping out again) and it was a lot different from the console version.

After reading this thread, that game has taken on much more meaning.

Thanks.

[ost3g0]

This was a freakin cool reading. Thanks!

[fruitbane]

Anoon,

Do you think that any of the ideas you and your team brought to the fighting genre were original and hadn't been done before? Were any of them ripped off to become staples for other, more popular games?

[BBCampbell]

anoon:

First off, epic thread. Makes me wish I could have played this more.

Also, Benny the Jet got cut? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOO