Street Fighter the Movie Broke My Heart [Archive]

anoon

01-24-2007, 01:52 AM

Ok, so I started writing things down in a seperate doc, and ended up filling 3 pages with the background history. I'll spare you all that for the moment, as it is late, and just answer the questions already posted.

so.... did you guys test the game for 5 or 10 minutes?
Ok, that was honestly pretty funny. believe it or not, we tested it like crazy. As far as I know, it is bug/crash free. if you are referring to the gameplay... well that's another matter, which I will eventually get around to.

SFTM was absolutely revolutionary... ...There so many goddamn features in that game that were way way way ahead of their time
Well, I think you are probably being overly generous there, but while I wouldn't say anything was "stolen" from SFTM, I do like to think that we did have a few good ideas here and there. There are some pretty interesting similarities between some of the things we did, (as well as a number of things we proposed but didn't get in the game,) versus features that showed up in later SF games in particular. Again, I'm not taking credit for these ideas; just coincidences worth mentioning.

Why was the home version, which was an entirely different game cooked up for the console, WORSE?
Well, either version being better than the other is largely subjective, but thanks anyway. :) In my mind, both had their own unique strengths and weaknesses compared to the other. For example, while we did share the same raw digitized footage, each group processed it in a different manner. Maybe I'm biased, but I personally feel that our character art ended up looking better, while I feel that their game played better as it is truer to the Street Fighter game play. (Funny enough, at the start of the project, I was adamant that the right way to execute the project would be to request the art from the original games so we could have the actors match each pose exactly during digitizing. Ultimately this did not come to pass and each character had an entirely new moveset for coin op. it appears as if the console team did more manual editing of the capture data to create many of the signature Street Fighter poses. I wish we would have done that too.)

Why didn't they just port the arcade?
As far as to why another group (Capcom out of CA office,) did the home port, I don't know the details of the arrangement, but I'd wager that it was largely due to the fact that we were a coin op company that did not have the expertise or experience with the new 3D consoles to do the port.

Also just HOW MUCH of a hand did you have in the Arcade game?
Quite a large hand, honestly. I am credited as Co-Designer, Artist, and Actor. I can go into further detail later.

HURRICANE! DRAGON! Fuck, that's messed up
LOL. It seemed like such a good idea at the time! Seriously though, it was impossible to get the hollywood actors to say the real japanese wording. IMPOSSIBLE. believe me, I tried. We had an actual SSF2 on the set to demo it. We played recordings. We had the Japanese Capcom guys there coaching. We wrote it out phonetically. I believe we even had sound sessions with Japanese speaking voice actors, but in the end, you have to understand that there was a movement to Americanize the game somehow, so the English stuck. Again, I can go into that further later.

Ok, so there's a little info. If people want more, perhaps what I'll do is post a paragraph or two from the doc I started writing every so often.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Shoryuken for the opportunity to come clean!

FragMasterGen

01-24-2007, 02:01 AM

more! tell us more!

Rioting Soul

01-24-2007, 02:32 AM

LOL. It seemed like such a good idea at the time! Seriously though, it was impossible to get the hollywood actors to say the real japanese wording. IMPOSSIBLE. believe me, I tried. We had an actual SSF2 on the set to demo it. We played recordings. We had the Japanese Capcom guys there coaching. We wrote it out phonetically. I believe we even had sound sessions with Japanese speaking voice actors, but in the end, you have to understand that there was a movement to Americanize the game somehow, so the English stuck. Again, I can go into that further later.

I can understand that. But why doesn't Jean-Claude say "Sonic Boom"?

Maj

01-24-2007, 02:40 AM

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

:p
Seriously, whoever is playing during that video is a total scrub. I mean, he's got no idea whatsoever what you can do in that game. Imagine some random 3S player trying to play MvC2 for the first time. That's what you're seeing in that video, no joke.

Ok, so I started writing things down in a seperate doc, and ended up filling 3 pages with the background history. I'll spare you all that for the moment, as it is late, and just answer the questions already posted.

Well, I think you are probably being overly generous there, but while I wouldn't say anything was "stolen" from SFTM, I do like to think that we did have a few good ideas here and there. There are some pretty interesting similarities between some of the things we did, (as well as a number of things we proposed but didn't get in the game,) versus features that showed up in later SF games in particular. Again, I'm not taking credit for these ideas; just coincidences worth mentioning.
Dude just post the the doc file. Don't be shy, haha. And no, i'm not being overly generous. Personally i think the console versions are pretty weak because they try to go in the same direction as ST and fail miserably. On the other hand, i think the arcade version goes in a completely new and bold direction, and accomplishes some interesting things. Don't get me wrong - i don't think there's any way whatsoever to play that game in a tournament setting cuz there are 100% combos and infinites all over the place. But at the same time, it's a really interesting experiment and there aren't too many games that you can say that about. I'm not a fan of the SFTM games, but i do think that the arcade version is vastly, majorly underrated.

fistoftheryustar

01-24-2007, 06:47 AM

this is quite a cool thread.

can you tell us more about akuma in that game. i dont think he was in the movie.

also if you could tell, how hard is it to take someone's movements and put it in a 2-d game (as opposed to the ping pong ball suits used nowdays)?

Spooty Whiteboy

01-24-2007, 07:04 AM

I'm not a fan of the SFTM games, but i do think that the arcade version is vastly, majorly underrated.

I agree with you 100%. I actually really enjoy playing this "crap" game. So much shit that you can do; and some of it is very stupid...which makes it great. It can't be taken seriously, but it is one of the best "fun" games ever.

Shinto

01-24-2007, 08:31 AM

Please tell more.

Why Sawada? Why Blade ? Why Akuma ? were they there for fillers?

No Dhalsim, No Blanka?

FallingEdge

01-24-2007, 08:38 AM

Post up that doc file. I am interested in reading it as well.

As for my question, did you guys seriously believe that the game was good? I mean, I'm not expecting that you guys thought it was the greatest of all time but as you were coding/developing/playing it, what was going through your mind?

altergenesis

01-24-2007, 08:54 AM

Doesn't that question come into into mind when shitty games get released? We only wonder what the hell quality check team was on when they decided to release such a game. I for one, would like to get an opinion of how people saw a shitty game once and for all before they released it.

Vic Viper

01-24-2007, 08:59 AM

I like how the guy doing Ryu managed to pronounce everything wrong.
Jumps were wayyy too fast in that game.

TaSemenMonkeyMadPoo = TatsuMakiSenpuuKyaku :rofl:

altergenesis

01-24-2007, 09:20 AM

Shoroooken = Shoryuken =/

Unreallystic

01-24-2007, 09:24 AM

I can't complain about the arcade release - serious tourny fighter? No. fun way to kill time? YES. I had a ball playing it a few evenings ago. It was broken, and MvC2 is a sign that broken games are just fun. I kinda want to go home and play it now actually.
- :bluu:

Lantis

01-24-2007, 10:17 AM

can you tell us more about akuma in that game. i dont think he was in the movie.

Akuma was portrayed by Ernie Reyes Sr, dad of Ernie Reyes Jr, TEH SURF NINJAAAAAAAA!

Therefore, he is full of win. Obviously he was meant to be the most broken character in the game.

On a side note: Wow, comedy threads in FGD? There's a first....

LingPanda.

01-24-2007, 10:23 AM

Don't get me wrong - i don't think there's any way whatsoever to play that game in a tournament setting cuz there are 100% combos and infinites all over the place.

What about MVC2?

Sano

01-24-2007, 10:28 AM

Thanks for sharing Anoon. Hearing about the process of making the game is very interesting.

I have a question for later once I have the info in front of me.

Shotokan Symphony

01-24-2007, 10:43 AM

Posting in legendary thread.

Semi-serious question: Why were Strata so bad at making music? Rather, what kind of sound system were they using? It sounded like something that belongs on some modded-out bootleg Genesis soundcard.

fistoftheryustar

01-24-2007, 10:47 AM

Akuma was portrayed by Ernie Reyes Sr, dad of Ernie Reyes Jr, TEH SURF NINJAAAAAAAA!

Therefore, he is full of win. Obviously he was meant to be the most broken character in the game.

On a side note: Wow, comedy threads in FGD? There's a first....

Haha is that true? Im a big fan of his demo team (West Coast Action Team) or now, Loopkicks. Ever since like 99.' They're my trick idols

thedude.com

01-24-2007, 11:54 AM

is taaats! maaak! senpuuu ! KYAAAAKK!

anoon

01-24-2007, 12:14 PM

Ok, back again. thanks for the positive responses to the thread itself, even if the game doesn't deserve much (any!?!) praise on its own!

So I have about 5 or 6 pages going at the moment, and I'm starting to think maybe I should get some of this cleared with my former employer, Incredible Technologies. I'm pretty sure I've not included anything questionable from a legal stand point, but I'm still on good terms with those guys, so I'd like to give them a heads up on what I'm about to post. Who knows, maybe they will give me access to some of the goodies they still have so I can share them with you.

I'll answer a few more questions while I'm on my lunch break...

I can understand that. But why doesn't Jean-Claude say "Sonic Boom"?
Honestly, I cannot remember why. He really doesn't say it? It's been so long since I've played the game. I do know that Jean Claude was, ummm... "interesting" to work with. As part of our deal, we stipulated that we'd have each actor available to us for digitizing and sound recording for at least 8 hours. Being the star he is, Jean Claude could only afford us 4 hours, unfortunately. It is very possible we never did a sound session with him. I do not remember doing one with him. Maybe I was focused on other stuff at the time.

So I see there are a lot of questions related to characters. Rightfully so. They probably each deserve a dedicated section each, so I won't say too much here about why one over the other may or may not have been included. I'll add those to my doc for posting later. Please hang tight! There are probably going to be some unexpected surprises to be found. I just finished 2 whole pages on one character in particular that I'm sure will be of interest to Street Fighter fans. I'm cracking up about it now as I finish the section.

I for one, would like to get an opinion of how people saw a shitty game once and for all before they released it.
Game dev is a long and complicated process. You can have the best license, the best engine or hardware, or maybe the best ideas ever, but it only takes one or two weak links in the chain to doom the whole thing. You try to do your best to make something special, but often time it just doesn't come together. As a life long devotee to video games, I can assure you that it is absolutely soul crushing to put so much of yourself into something, only to know that it isn't going to be all that you had hoped. Given unlimited time and resources, every game could be polished into something good, but the reality is that there are very real monetary concerns or time constraints. At some point, the game just needs to be done.

Why were Strata so bad at making music? Rather, what kind of sound system were they using? It sounded like something that belongs on some modded-out bootleg Genesis soundcard
Funny, after watching the Youtube link below, I was struck by how bad the sound was too! I'm afraid sound wasn't my thing, so I can't really comment on the hardware itself. I remember being impressed with the talents of the sound guys that were at I.T./Strata while I was there, so I'm not sure what the deal was.

Shotokan Symphony

01-24-2007, 12:34 PM

Well, the general SFX weren't bad honestly(for the time...), but the music is downright terrible. Kinda par for the course considering Strata's game history.

evilmuffinmanX

01-24-2007, 12:38 PM

whats the deal with sawada?

felineki

01-24-2007, 01:27 PM

So Ken says "Hurricane!" and "Dragon!"... but yet he still says "Hadouken!", too. Huh?

Interesting to hear about what went on behind the scenes with this game. Thanks for sharing with us!

complexz

01-24-2007, 01:39 PM

this thread is great, i too think sf the movie is great fun, and the graphics are really neat(health bars exploding after super finish and such!) . sure its broken but arnet like MOST fighters from that era broken?

its no super turbo but its definatly compairable to mortal kombat 1,2 or 3 IMO and graphically superior to all 3...also IMO

Maj

01-24-2007, 01:48 PM

Speaking of the sound, is there any way to turn background music off while still keeping sound effects on? I know there are some codes (http://www.gamefaqs.com/coinop/arcade/code/583636.html) that can be used to access "classic" soundtracks, but it would be nice if there was a way to turn it off entirely for combo video editing purposes.

What about MVC2?
MvC2 design is a stroke of genius combined with about 50 lightning strikes of pure luck. Somehow that game magically ended up with number of very complicated checks and balances that still give the most advanced tournament players enough of a guessing game / mindgame / rock paper scissors game to be satisfying. I mean, the true test of a good tournament game is whether the person winning the matches comes off as the person with the most skill. If it always looks like it could have gone either way, always looks like winning is a matter of luck, then it's not a good tournament game. MvC2 gameplay has some elements of luck but most of the time you can tell that there are mindgames going on and that somebody just plain got outsmarted.

On the other hand, SFTM has a lot of restrictions on the combo engine but also a lot of very easy ways to get around them. Once you figure out some practical corner infinites, finding midscreen infinites is easy and then you have instant death combos from almost any situation. There's no assists to cover your attacks, there's no second or third character to come in should you make a mistake, and matches can be over at the 5-second mark.

Of course, as everyone knows, there's no end to the fun you can have playing around with the combo engine of a "broken" game. Especially if it has Street Fighter characters in it.

Sano

01-24-2007, 02:07 PM

Thanks for the response Anoon! Yeah, my question was regarding one of the characters. I'll post it up and maybe you can pass it along or put something in your Doc regarding it.

Hyuga

01-24-2007, 03:59 PM

OMFG, were you the actor for the character Blade???

Spooty Whiteboy

01-24-2007, 04:47 PM

OMFG, were you the actor for the character Blade???

The guy who acted for Blade (Arkane, Khyber, F7) was Alan Noon. And since this guy is "anoon" then....I'd say that's a safe bet.

Also, the guy who played Sawada was really named Sawada. Lack of imagination?

True Grave

01-24-2007, 04:47 PM

OMFG, were you the actor for the character Blade???

Yes i believe he said earlier that, among other things, he was also credited as an actor in the game.

I too would also like to know what character he did if thats true:looney:

felineki

01-24-2007, 05:14 PM

Also, the guy who played Sawada was really named Sawada. Lack of imagination?Off-topic, but Makoto's voice actor in 3rd Strike is named Makoto. Seriously. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makoto_(Street_Fighter))

anoon

01-24-2007, 05:34 PM

Ok, I'm going to post up parts of my doc in digestable pieces. The first part may be a bit dull, but it quickly explains explains how I got into games and leads into the some of the circumstances that came about which led to Incredible Technologies/Strata devloping SFTM.

(Oh, and Yes, I played the Bison Trooper characters Blade, Arkane, Khyber, and F7)

anoon

01-24-2007, 05:37 PM

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.

A lot of time has passed. I have forgotten much of the experience. Many more parts are probably buried subconsciously; a protection by my inner psyche, for surely I would go mad if I confronted with the horror of what happened.

Ok, ok… melodrama aside, what I’m trying to say is that I can’t remember everything that went down, and certainly not in chronological order. I’ll just relate the bits and pieces I do remember that might be interesting to fighting game fans. I’ll also be happy to field questions, if I have a halfway decent explanation.

BACKGROUND
How did I end up working on what was supposed to be “the next big thing?” I have always been a video game fanatic. I remember the first video game I ever saw and where I saw it. It was Pong. It was at a local restaurant. I was 5 years old, and I was mesmerized. Since that day, I have been obsessed with video gaming.

A STEP CLOSER
Flash forward and I am in college and I am still gaming. The school had a Street Fighter in the lounge, and I was completely hooked. (SF:CE, if you must know.) Soon after the Hyper Fighting showed up, I was ditching most of my classes to play. I should mention that Mortal Kombat arrived in the lounge around that same time, and I started playing a lot of that too. Truth be told though, in my mind Street Fighter was the king of the fighting games.

I had always been into art, had always been into videos games, and had always been interested in computers. I had known since I was seven years old when I made Pitfall Harry grab his first bar of gold that I wanted to make games. Now I saw the first step I had to take to make it happen. That semester I enrolled in the school’s first computer art class offering. Towards the end of the course, the instructor informed us that a local video game company was looking for help. I was doing really well in the class, so I took the number and called them. Long story short, I got the job of my dreams. I quit school immediately. I was going to be making video games.

anoon

01-24-2007, 05:41 PM

THE FOOT IN THE DOOR
The company that hired me was Incredible Technologies, manufacturers of a number of successful coin op arcade games. (They were also known by another name too, Strata. I don’t recall the specifics of the division between I.T. and Strata were. Maybe I never knew.) I worked on a few other projects before Street Fighter the Movie came around. Being a fighting game nut, I was originally hired to work on “New Fighter,” which was the follow up product to a rather successful hit I.T. had in a coin op game known as Time Killers. (This is worth mentioning as Time Killers apparently played something of a role in the SFTM saga. More on that later.) What ended up happening to me however was that it was decided that “New Fighter” was going to run with a skeleton crew for while as I was put on to the football game which needed extra hands. My first day on the job, and I was cleaning up (poorly,) digitized football players for Hard Yardage, I.T.’s NBA Jam style football game. I loved every minute of it.

THE NEXT TITLE
After a while, Hard Yardage eventually shipped, though perhaps not in the quantities we had hoped. One factor may have been that I.T. insisted on selling Hard Yardage as a dedicated machine only; no conversion kits. Coin Op distributors were not wild about that idea as there was “a lot of wood in the market” at the time, as I’ve heard it said. (Meaning: there were tons of arcade cabinets out there in circulation already. Arcade Operators would much rather just buy a conversion kit to retrofit an old, lesser earning game instead of buying a whole new, expensive cabinet.) A large number of Hard Yardages either came back, or never left. We ourselves now had “a lot of wood” on our hands.

Time Killers, while perhaps not too fondly remembered by gamers, actually did exceptionally well for I.T. Fighting games were super hot, with no signs of slowing down. Operators and the Distributors wanted more fighting game product to sell. Full attention was put back on “New Fighter.”

“New Fighter” was pretty darn cool for a prototype. It featured eight or so bald headed, spandex wearing place holder characters that all looked exactly the same, save for palette swaps and special move sets to differentiate them. They all had a nature or element based theme, so we had the fire guy, the ice guy, the rock guy, and so on, as well as my personal favorite: the plant guy. Plant Guy had a sweet, Scorpion-esque move in which a vine grew from his arm and snared the enemy and pulled him in close for a free shot. Sadly, Plant Guy never made it to the final product, which you may or may not now know as Bloodstorm. (Fun fact: We needed to get rid of those dedicated Hard Yardages that were costing us rent. I am proud to say that it was my idea to create giant vinyl BloodStorm cabinet graphics we could stick over the sides of the Hard Yardages. We converted the boards, stuck on the stickers, and off they went. Problem solved!)

True Grave

01-24-2007, 05:51 PM

Interesting...please go on, anoon.

Shinto

01-24-2007, 06:19 PM

yes please do.

Kyokuji

01-24-2007, 06:21 PM

You must've gotten a kick out of the Simpson's "Bonestorm" parody.

Strider2k2

01-24-2007, 07:03 PM

Great post...i look forward to hearing more about your experience at I.T.

Boleslaw

01-24-2007, 07:38 PM

I <3 this game. Tons. Directional fireballs are hardcore, TRY JUMPING THAT SHIT. And directoinal Shinkuu iS FIREWALL

JackTenrac!

01-24-2007, 07:48 PM

... I don't. Bastards like you and Michael Jackson ruined my childhood.

*runs off in a floating pirate ship*

...that went well.

anoon

01-24-2007, 08:14 PM

You must've gotten a kick out of the Simpson's "Bonestorm" parody.
Yes, Absolutely! That was too funny.

Ok, more stuff on the way. I take a quick detour into Bloodstorm and then describe some of the circumstances in the industry at the time.

anoon

01-24-2007, 08:16 PM

AN ASIDE: A WORD ON BLOODSTORM
Like Hard Yardage, Bloodstorm was pretty darn fun and exciting to work on too, though I was pretty unhappy with the final result. You can probably guess why. Bad art and bad game play. At the time Bloodstorm released, it really didn’t stand a chance against the latest Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, which were up to versions “Super” and “II” respectively. I distinctly remember the coin op show at which Bloodstorm made its debut. It was in Chicago, and our booth was right next to Capcom’s. Though I was not part of the sales force, I routinely went to the coin op shows to not only demo our games to the distributors, but to see and test the latest from the competition. I “tested” a whole lot of free Super Street Fighter II that weekend. Anyway, perhaps I can talk about Bloodstorm in the future.

THE CHICAGO GAME DEV SCENE
The interesting thing about Chicago game dev in the early nineties is that the major players in the industry had offices around town. Atari, Midway, Sega, Konami, and Data East all had development and/or sales arms in the area. There were a number of smaller video game related companies around as well. One of them was known as originally known as either “Gamestar” or “Romstar.” Maybe both at varying points in time. My facts are suspect here, but I seem to recall that while they didn’t develop coin op games themselves, Romstar had something to do with the selling various coin op products, particularly to the South American region. At any rate, Romstar was purchased by Capcom and became their Midwest office. This is semi-important to know for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

STREET FIGHTER VS. MORTAL KOMBAT
I previously mentioned that Super Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II were out on the market around the same time. The fact of the matter was, Mortal Kombat II appeared to be eclipsing Street Fighter in popularity. It was dominating the arcade. MKII machines were earning a thousand bucks a week or more in quarters, which was crazy amounts of dough. It appeared that gamers might be tiring of the same hand drawn sprites and 8 bit backgrounds of Street Fighter. I do not know whether or not the idea originated from Capcom Japan or one of the U.S. offices, but it seemed to make sense that Capcom should make a Street Fighter to appeal to the changing tastes of the American gamer.

THE MOVIE
Oh, and it just so happened that Capcom had signed on a bunch of pretty well known actors to bring their franchise to the big screen. It seemed like a home run! A brand new Street Fighter done in flashy new digitized graphics featuring the bona fide likenesses of major celebrities such as Raul Julia, Jean Claude Van Damme, Kylie Minogue, Wes Studi, and master thespian Gregg Rainwater! (*cough*)

anoon

01-24-2007, 08:20 PM

THE CAPCOM/I.T. CONNECTION.
So how does a smaller, American game developer like Incredible Technologies get handed one of the most important franchises in video gaming history? It might be cliché, but it’s all about who you know. Oh, and I figure location had something to do with it too.

Street Fighter the Movie, The Game, (as we ended up calling it,) seemed like a no brainer. Trouble was, Capcom apparently did not know how to do digitized graphics. (Or so I seem to recall hearing second hand.) Not only that, but probably more importantly, their hardware couldn’t support the amount of colors required to do those fancy graphics justice. But apparently one of the members of upper management in Capcom’s Midwest office knew of a company that had some really great hardware. This company was Incredible Technologies, and we had some custom built, proprietary hardware that kicked butt. This hardware was virtually unsurpassed when it came to the sheer numbers of colors it could display on screen at once. (I need to check my facts on this, but if memory serves, we eventually heard that MKII was doing 64 colors per character. The I.T. hardware could do 256. Sounds great, right? We thought so too. We eventually came to wonder if perhaps there was wisdom in using 64 colors. More on that later, if anyone cares.) it just so happened that I.T.’s offices were a short ten minute drive down route 53 from Capcom’s new Midwest offices, which I’m sure didn’t hurt our chances of landing the deal!

AN ASIDE: SPECIAL PROPS TO TIME KILLERS
I previously mentioned that Time Killers may have had a role in securing the SFTM deal for I.T. This is just word of mouth, but apparently when Time Killers made its debut at one of the coin op shows, the guys from Capcom were reported to be impressed with the technical execution and crowded around it, taking notes and trying to figure out how it was built. I’ll personally pass no judgements on the game play of Time Killers here, but I must admit, it did feature a number of extremely impressive features for the time: the aforementioned dazzling array of on screen colors, multi level parallax scrolling backgrounds, dismemeberments, scanned in fine art used as in game assets, and without a doubt, the most amazing example of color cycling I’ve ever seen: The time vortex.)

So those are the factors, as I am aware, that led to how Incredible Technologies was trusted with what was supposed to be the next great iteration of the Street Fighter franchise.

anoon

01-24-2007, 08:21 PM

All right. I'll take a break from posting and start up writing again so I can get ahead a bit. That should give opportunity for some questions to roll in, if anybody has any.

supermin

01-24-2007, 08:33 PM

you were part of bloodstorm youre my hero

so many secrets in that game

Worthless

01-24-2007, 08:38 PM

Sagat is too good.

EYEBEAMS

TrueSephiroth

01-24-2007, 08:45 PM

Got a question, why does Sawada have a lightsaber? Crazy to know that you Anoon helped in making SFTM.

altergenesis

01-24-2007, 09:05 PM

Because! Every good Street Fighter needs a lightsaber!

Very interesting information, here.

Sano

01-24-2007, 09:46 PM

WHOA Anoon... You played as Blade? That makes my question a little easier.

Blade's ending taken from All About Capcom, they used all caps so I'll do the same -

"FOR YEARS BLADE HAS INFILTRATED BISON'S CORRUPT ORGANIZATION, REPORTING IN SECRET TO HIS BROTHER GUILE. NOW WITH BISON DESTROYED, BLADE AT LAST IS FREE OF HIS DEEP COVER ASSIGNMENT AND IS ABLE TO RESUME HIS PROFESSIONAL CAREER AS GUNLOC."

:rofl:

Sorry, I can't help but laugh whenever I read that.

As far as I know, in the American version of Slammasters it was stated that Gunloc is "rumoured to be related to a famous street fighter" and he does have a Sonic Attack. However, this is just in his profile in the American version and not the Japanese one, something that Capcom USA made up (not official).

So really, who's idea was it to not only make Blade Gunloc, but make him Guile's brother as a reference to a made up Capcom USA Profile for Gunloc in Slammasters? That's just really one of the strangest endings in the game, if you happen to know anything about this please shed some light. If not, that's cool. Thanks!

anoon

01-24-2007, 10:31 PM

So really, who's idea was it to not only make Blade Gunloc...
LOL, does it really say that!?! that does seem pretty ridiculous. I need to play SFTM again. Anyway, to be honest I am really not sure who specifically came up with that one. It could have been me or one of the other guys at I.T. For the most part, Capcom USA didn't get involved when it came to specifics like that, so I doubt the SFTM tie in to Slammasters came from them.
One of the things that is cool about the SF universe is the character to character interpersonal relationships. It's no surprise that we tried to tie Blade in with the rest of the crew. You have to admit, when you're looking at the select screen of SFTM, he looks pretty out of place against the traditional SF gang!

why does Sawada have a lightsaber?
Wow, lots of Sawada questions, that's great! So, Sawada doesn't actually have a lightsaber. In the days before motion blur, refraction effects, and emissive textures, we did what we could. :) It's just supposed to be a visual manifestation of the power behind the attack.

Maj

01-24-2007, 10:41 PM

Haha, i'm enjoying storytime so far. Keep it rollin'.

So i take it there's no way to turn off BGM?

Zinac

01-24-2007, 10:58 PM

I kinda ignored this thread because of the title, but clicked on it as a fluke. Quite a read, I'll sure keep up with it. Since I'm independently working on my own fighting game this thread interests me. Keep it up.

anoon

01-24-2007, 11:14 PM

So i take it there's no way to turn off BGM?
Not that I know of, via secret code or anything. I assume you are playing the coin op version through MAME perhaps? You might want to look in the diagnostic menu. We might have put in a dip switch setting or volume control specifically for music. Not sure how much control there might be over the specific voices though.

Ok, so I have a couple more sections done: The next one up is a brief word on some of the initial internal confusion regarding the project that might begin to shed light on why certain discrepancies exist in the game versus the film. This quickly dove tails into some character specific info as an example, the likes of which may rock the Shoryuken forums to their very core! Ok, maybe not. But I wouldn't be surprised if it generates a few "WTF!?!" type responses.

Following that, I describe our capture technology, which should help explain why the characters look and move the way they do.

These are the last two sections I have completed at this point, so I was going to hold off on posting them until I could get ahead on new sections a bit more, but I had so much fun writing the character one up, I don't think I can wait.

Maybe just a teaser then...

VEGA_OMEGA

01-24-2007, 11:15 PM

haha This is one of the coolest threads i've ever seen on this site. For real.

a little of topic, but what do you have to major in in order to get a job working with arcade hardware? Just a basic computer science degree?

I'll confess that I have an unnatural obsession with home arcade collecting/ arcade hardware in general :sweat: , and I would love to make arcade games for a living. I guess I want to know what do I need to take in order to do that.

anoon

01-24-2007, 11:18 PM

Xanoz

01-24-2007, 11:28 PM

Wow, lots of Sawada questions

Lol just because nobody truly understands wtf he is or where the eff he came from, even though it is explained. Funny thing is, I thought in the game he kinda owned x x;. Blood as an attack?

Shinto

01-24-2007, 11:37 PM

Quick question.

Was this game and the movie released in Japan? what was there response?

Vic Viper

01-25-2007, 12:05 AM

Bloodstorm question:

Can you explain the whole Daniel Pesina (Johnny Cage) in the game ad of Bloodstorm incident? I know Midway fired him for doing that.

Genosis

01-25-2007, 12:36 AM

Do u still work for the same company now and what futre games do u plan on making :lovin:

anoon

01-25-2007, 12:59 AM

what do you have to major in in order to get a job working with arcade hardware?
It depends what you mean exactly I guess. When you say "working with arcade hardware, what do you mean? Do you want to be designing it? Assembling it, writing for it? if you are talking about the former, then I imagine Electrical engineering would be good. If it's more the latter, Computer Science would probably be a good move. If it's assembling or fixing arcade hardware, I'm not really sure. You might not need any degree, depending.

nobody truly understands wtf he[Sawada] is or where the eff he came from
Ha. I totally understand where that comes from. I just finished up two new sections on our daily routine and the movie studio where we worked, and I'm afraid it might be getting a little boring and/or veering away from directly SFTM game related info, so I'll do a little piece on Sawada/Fei Long next. He was a pretty bad assed character, and for good reason, which I'll explain.

Was this game and the movie released in Japan? what was there response?
Maybe? I honestly don't know. perhaps not. It was largely supposed to appeal to American audiences. Memories are coming back to me now... I think the Capcom Japan guys told us that it didn't test well over there, so it probably didn't go into wide release.

Can you explain the whole Daniel Pesina (Johnny Cage) in the game ad of Bloodstorm incident?
So, ALLEGEDLY what happened was that there was a rift developing between some subset of Mortal Kombat actors and Midway over money. So any severing of ties between any of the MK talent and Midway was likely due to that fact. It was also probably prior to the ad, rather than the result of it. I wasn't part of the arrangement for that spread, so take this info with a grain of salt. Sorry, I wish I had more details. I do remember that it was considered a pretty big coup around the office at the time. Ultimately, it didn't seem to matter.

Do u still work for the same company now and what futre games do u plan on making
No, I left Incredible Technologies a while after SFTM and went to Midway, where I worked on their sports titles such as Redcard Soccer, NFL Blitz, and MLB Slugfest. After that I went to Day1 Studios, where I am currently employed as the Senior Technical Artist. The titles I am on now are unnannounced, so I can't say anything about them. 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.

Stuckey

01-25-2007, 01:06 AM

*subscribes* This is a very good read, anoon. Looking forward to the rest.

Xenozip.

01-25-2007, 01:08 AM

Not that I know of, via secret code or anything. I assume you are playing the coin op version through MAME perhaps? You might want to look in the diagnostic menu. We might have put in a dip switch setting or volume control specifically for music. Not sure how much control there might be over the specific voices though. Building off that, it's also possible to hack the emulator so that it reads the rom in a specific way as to disable BGM.

Oh, and this thread is a real winner. Gaming fans desperately need this kind of direct interaction with gaming developers. Benefits both parties.

Spider-Dan

01-25-2007, 01:11 AM

I eagerly await the next installment.

That being said, you can only eat enough breadsticks and salad before you start to ask, "Where's The Beef?"

Not that I'm telling you how to run your thread!

Buttermaker

01-25-2007, 03:01 AM

LOL, does it really say that!?!
Sure does. (http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/3852/00002hv.png)

umthrfkr

01-25-2007, 06:04 AM

good thread. prolly the best read ive ever seen on srk in... ever. lookin forward to the rest.:wgrin:

anoon

01-25-2007, 06:12 AM

SHENG LONG
All this was going down sometime during ‘93/’94 and we thought we were initially going to be making Street Fighter 3, (or at least, I seemed to think so, for whatever reason.) Now at this time, if the whole Gouken,Gouki/Akuma, Gotetsu story line existed within Capcom somewhere, we were never privy to that info. The whole Sheng Long controversy was still fresh in everyone’s mind; was Sheng Long a character? Was it a mistranslation? We didn’t know either, but what better way to get people really excited about Street Fighter again than to include the most hyped up character ever? Capcom Japan wasn’t too hot on that idea initially, saying something to the effect that “When Sheng Long does appear, it will be like God making an appearance.” What is curious at this point is that they never corrected us on the character’s name. We always referred to him as Sheng Long. Perhaps much like the way Gouki is known as Akuma in the states, Gouken, (or Gotetsu? It was never clear which one Sheng Long was a true parallel of,) would be known as Sheng Long in the US? At any rate, Sheng Long was shelved, for the time being…

…But he almost made it in after all. I’m skipping ahead quite a bit here, but I might as well put the Sheng Long business to bed. Towards the end of the project we had already digitized the majority of the actors from the film while on location of the movie set in Australia. That art was largely done, processed, and in game. There were still a couple more characters we had to do though. Chun Li, (The beautiful Ming Na Wen,) was never captured in Australia, due to contractual issues. (More on that later.) What ended up happening was that we set up a new, temporary digitizing studio in our Chicago warehouse and flew her in for the session. While we had the studio set up, we also captured two more characters. One was an alternate Ken, which I’ll mention briefly later. The other was in fact Sheng Long.

For whatever reason, the idea of adding Sheng Long came up again, and suddenly the Capcom guys were all for it. Maybe it was them, maybe it was us, but somebody apparently realized at that point that the game was going to need something a little extra other than the new fangled game play to propel it to stratospheric levels of success. Itook it upon myself to designing the look of and move set of Sheng Long. What an opportunity!!! Again, I was in heaven.

Sheng Long was going to be awesome. He wore black Gi pants and a long, green, padded/quilted, sleeveless Gi style top which was tied off with a black belt. His hair was very long and white, being done up in a single big braid running down his back. He also had a very long kung fu movie style Fu Manchu moustache. Now this is where things get a bit wilder… He also wore a thick black ribbon over his eyes. The reason for this I explained, was that Akuma had attacked Sheng Long in an attempt to kill him, and while he failed in slaying Sheng, he did succeed in taking his eyes out and blinding him. Sheng Long was so badassed though, he didn’t even really need his eyes to fight. Ok, so now the design really gets crazy… the final component of Sheng Long’s design was his arm. So as I understand it, originally Ken and Ryu’s hadoken specials were supposed to representations of their Chi, focused into a single high powered attack. “Hadoken” supposedly translates roughly into something like “force wave,” and in the original art, you can see phantom representations of their hands in the projectile. I believe that what the happened was that for the most part, your typical westerner arcade customer wasn’t familiar with the concept of Chi in that day and age, so these attacks were generally referred to as fireballs. At some point during the series, Ryu actually started throwing fireballs, and Ken developed the flaming dragon punch. As part of Sheng Long’s design, I tried to explain these phenomena. So my idea was that at higher levels of enlightenment, these karate master guys would start to take on aspects of “the dragon” as it suited their fighting style. Sheng Long was to be so advanced, he actually started to physically manifest dragon like attributes. Seeing as the words “Sheng Long” were actually a translation of “Dragon Punch” it seemed to make sense that his dragon manifestation would appear in his punching arm. The arm was green and scaly, with several horns protruding from it’s length. His fingers had fused together into 2 larger claws. Capcom signed off, and we were all set to create my Sheng Long!

The practical execution of Sheng Long went fairly well too. One of our artists served as the actor on the digitizing set as he was into body building and martial arts. The outfit was pretty simple: Black Gi pants, and a custom tailored top. The sash across his eyes was actually a mesh so that he could see while acting, but still appeared blindfolded. We hired a professional make up artist to do the hair, moustache, and arm effects. The arm looked pretty good, for the most of the shoot. Digitizing sessions typically lasted for 6 hours on average and after all of that time under the hot lights, the make up of the arm started to melt. By the end, green make up was running everywhere, and the horns were barely clinging to the actor’s arm. But it held up pretty well, all considered. (Fun fact: The artist that played Sheng Long went on to work at Midway games, where he has been creating characters for Mortal Kombat!0

Naturally, he was supposed to play like your typical Ken/Ryu character with some super Akuma style extras, as far as I recall. One major difference however was that he wouldn’t have typical block animations. Instead, the idea was that Sheng Long was so advanced, that you could never hit him unless you scored an unguarded attack. Sure, you would play him like a regular character with “back” on the stick putting your character on the defensive, but when blocking, the animation would look like a dodge instead of a traditional Street Fighter block. All of the game play would be the same, with block slide kicking in and all that, but Sheng would appear to have stepped out of the way of the attack. Would it have worked? I like to think so, but I was afraid that it broke SF convention too much, so we digitized two full sets of blocking animations so we had a back up plan: traditional and dodge style blocking anims. Looking back, we broke just about every other SF convention, so would it have really mattered? I guess we’ll never know.

In the end, Sheng Long never made it into the game, and my grand designs for what was to be a near divine fighting game experience never saw the screen. Due to time constraints, we never were able to process the artwork. All of this stuff was burnt off to CD. I hope it still survives somewhere in the vaults of Incredible Technologies. I’d love to see that footage again.

Bacardi

01-25-2007, 07:05 AM

I love this thread, and anoon sftm is my guilty pleasure. i even made a combo vid for it, gotta dig it up. Bless my vid! :rofl:

altergenesis

01-25-2007, 07:19 AM

I love this thread, and anoon sftm is my guilty pleasure. i even made a combo vid for it, gotta dig it up. Bless my vid! :rofl:

I would like to see that.

Bacardi

01-25-2007, 07:46 AM

well I am at work right now, I made the vid in 2k2 but it was filled with a bunch of glitches and good fun. I always wanted to make another one, I would just blaze and play sftm for hours in mame, best single player fighting game ever with KI in a close second

Sano

01-25-2007, 07:54 AM

Anoon - Wow, your response to the whole Blade / Gunloc ordeal was much more than I expected. What you said about Sheng Long is great too. THANK YOU! :tup:

ChairHome

01-25-2007, 08:29 AM

I thought, when this movie was first coming out, that CoJ's president was supposed to have a part in the movie. I assumed that Sawada was him for some reason.

MiLky

01-25-2007, 08:44 AM

- In while epic thread still thrives.

Any way to steal/post/borrow some artwork/pics of the Sheng Long character. Would be fun to see just for the hell of it.

Just played through the game for the first time in years.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMEE OOOOOOOVEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRR.

Sano

01-25-2007, 09:21 AM

It's funny how SRK poster Aerialgroove reminded me of this today in a totally different conversation. This is how Gouken - Ryu and Ken's master looked like in the SF2V manga. The SF2V manga was very different from the SF2V anime that it was based on, they shared some of the SF2V character designs but the story was very different/unrelated. Anyway check this out - here he has a slash going through one eye, not missing both eyes like Anoon's Sheng Long design. Kind of a funny coincidence eh?

http://fightingstreet.com/pics/temp/various/mangascan.gif

Genosis

01-25-2007, 09:51 AM

i wanna be a game designer like u any advice on what 2 study

Spectre7

01-25-2007, 10:21 AM

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/Gouken5.jpg

This is usually how I've seen Gouken. Here's another:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7b/Vegagouken.png
He's on the right hand side.

Shinto

01-25-2007, 10:30 AM

That was a damn good Shen long story, It made me want more.

Bacardi I wanna see the vid.

Sabin

01-25-2007, 10:39 AM

This legendary thread should be renamed so other people can get in on this
and stickied also on the forum, assuming its not fake (which i dont think it is of course, reading ppls reactions and reading the detailed info on this thread)

I don't know why heads havent done this already.

I still have the GamePro issues breaking down SFTM back when they broke down the combo system in detail (when they used to be very good.) Good times, good times...ah I miss my childhood.

anoon, im sure the answer is no because you are probably really busy, but do you still keep up with fighting games and the fighting game scene, and have you ever played competively (been to evo) or anything like that? Did you ever have a personal interest in that kind of thing? The reason why I'm curious about is because that you could have entered events like this a a relative unknown since noone knows who the fuck you are, hehe

9999

01-25-2007, 10:54 AM

That Sheng Long bit was great! Do you have any artwork or pics or anything of him?

Love the aspect of him dodging attacks instead of blocking too :tup:

kurdt_the_goat

01-25-2007, 11:05 AM

Since you mention the confusion of gouken/goutetsu/sheng long in the early days, i thought i'd mention this.. the other day i was watching the latest DVD release of SF2 Movie (animated one with Chun-Li shower scene). There's a bit where they have bio's of Ken and Ryu on screen and you can clearly see that it says that their master was Goutetsu. However in all the other material on the disc (added by Udon i believe), they always refer to Gouken as Ryu/Ken's master. I haven't read the comics so i assume this to be the canon these days!?

anoon

01-25-2007, 12:03 PM

...CoJ's president was supposed to have a part in the movie. I assumed that Sawada was him for some reason.
No, Kenzo Tsujimoto and Kenya Sawada are two different people. Tsujimoto is in the movie however. There is a scene towards the beginning in which Guile gives a rally speech to his troops after the operation is supposedly shut down. There are a few shots of random A.N. Troopers listening as Jean Claude is talking. One of these Troopers is Tsujimoto. I'll go home and check the DVD for the exact time tonight.

i wanna be a game designer like u any advice on what 2 study
Send me a PM and I'll try to get around to lending some advice. It's too big a topic to cover here.

This is usually how I've seen Gouken. Here's another:
Yes, I believe that is the official design of Gouken. I should say: It was shortly before, or just after SFTM released that I personally saw the name Gouken being bandied about. It could have very well been that Capcom already had the storyline and name "Gotetsu" within their organization when we proposed putting Sheng Long in. These days I'm not sure if Capcom Japan saw our Sheng Long as a different character entirely, or the same character with the Americanized name.

My impression is that towards the end of the project, things got a little weird. I don't know if they really wanted an American, MK-esque style Street Fighter for the US and trusted us with whatever we wanted to do, or if at some point they realized the quality just wasn't going to be there and they just didn't care what we happened to SFTM. I never see it mentioned in any of the books they put out, I tend to think perhaps it was the latter.

...but do you still keep up with fighting games and the fighting game scene...
Umm, yes and no. I still claim to love fighting games, though I find myself playing less and less of them. I still love Street Fighter 2, (Alpha 3 is my favorite,) and Mortal Kombat 2. I really want to like Street Fighter 3, but the characters didn't appeal to me enough to really get into it. I love 3D graphics, but I never felt the 3D fighters offered the same type of game play I was looking for. I check them all out, but I never play them for long. Virtual Fighter never appealed to me. Tekken was OK, as was the first Soul Calibur. I actually kind of liked that 3D King of Fighters on Xbox, until I quickly found out how shallow it was. Surprisingly enough, I enjoyed the second Def Jam game even though I'm totally over hip hop in general.
I'm still waiting for that gorgeous 3D fighter with the old school game play and feel to lure me back in!

have you ever played competively (been to evo) or anything like that? Did you ever have a personal interest in that kind of thing?
I'll be honest: I considered myself pretty good back in the Hyper Fighting/Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo/MK2 days, but I never really played competitively. I felt I never had the time or money to devote to going down to the arcade and reaching that next level. Once the arcades died, I'm afriad my skills dropped off big time. Now I read the Shoryuken forums and I don't understand half of the terminology you guys use. I'm a scrub again.

That Sheng Long bit was great! Do you have any artwork or pics or anything of him?
Thanks! I thought you guys might like that. Unfortunately, I do not have any images of him that I know of. It's possible I have some old sketches tucked away somewhere, but I wouldn't even know where to begin.

R | C

01-25-2007, 01:18 PM

fluxcore

01-25-2007, 01:53 PM

Stories about game development are usually good reads, but this is great! I must admit to never really having played the game much, but I may well give it a go simply because there's a connection now :D

Thanks for coming forward (however much you thought it might be a bad idea) :D
--flux

Leebee Link

01-25-2007, 04:37 PM

This thread is monumental. Thank you so much anoon!

On that note, (this is going to be depressing but whatever) if you worked with the actors during/after the movie was made, did you get to work with raul julia before he died? D:

omni

01-25-2007, 04:48 PM

anoon: this is great thread; a very fun read! Thanks for sharing

Questions:

1. From a gaming production company's perspective, how is the "success" of a game measured? I've never worked in the gaming industries, but I hear all the time that it comes from "the sales." Does that mean the direct sales of consumers, or the wholesales? I'd be interested in learn more about this process.

I'll try to tackle this one if no one minds.

Basically games are a business and there is a lot of money involved - especially with the next gen games that are being made these days. Success is like 90% measured in sales. Sales meaning to the consumer. Most companies are smart these days and print enough to meet a low demand then print more if the demand is higher. Obviously every game is handled different - such as Gears of War demand versus Viva Pinanata or whatever. Rarely do you have the situation anymore of stacks and stacks of games sitting on store shelves and no one buying them. Although it happens aka Backyard Wrestling 2.

The other 10% is how well the game was received from critics/consumers. If a game is received well such as Ico but sells poorly then it might still be perceived as a hit. Ico is a great example because it allowed Ueda to make Shadow of the Colosssus. But at the end of the day if SotC didn't sell well either then I doubt even he would be getting a third game.

Keep in mind that selling well isn't measured by games like Halo. Its only measured against the budget of the game. So if a game costs only $300k to make then it doesn't need to sell as many units for everyone to make their money back on. However if a game's budget is like $30 million, then it needs to sell a lot more.

The videogame industry is just that, an industry. And it's all measured in money.

Derek Daniels
http://lowfierce.blogspot.com

ytwojay

01-25-2007, 05:00 PM

Posting in a legendary thread!

I hope you can find the Sheng Long artwork~

Kyo T Robot ESQ

01-25-2007, 05:19 PM

This is a very cool read. Although I hated that game it still is interesting to hear the stories behind it. Anoon if you don't mind answering this question I'd like to know whose idea it was to have all those secret characters that were color swaps of Blade.

4Play

01-25-2007, 06:05 PM

i wanna be a game designer like u any advice on what 2 study

Me too! I hope to get a helping start if possible. Thx.

vasili10

01-25-2007, 06:07 PM

STREET FIGHTER 3, OR STREET FIGHTER THE MOVIE???
Perhaps this is all my perception, but looking back, I remember that there was some amount of confusion as to what it was we were making exactly. It could have been the international game of “Telephone,” but somewhere along the communication chain from the Capcom Japan guys to the Capcom USA guys, to our management, down to the team, there seemed to be mixed signals. I distinctly recall that originally during the pitch process the game was billed as Street Fighter 3. We were to pull out all of the stops and make the greatest Street Fighter ever. More characters! Digitized graphics! New combo system! The works! We set about writing up all kinds of great stuff to include in the final product. One of those things was even Sheng Long.

That doesn't surprise me; ever since SSF2 Capcom Japan was contemplating about SF3, trying out several kinds of technologies and ideas. They finally decided on CPS3 for it, 4 years later. Interesting though.

About Sheng Long, his name translates to "rising dragon" rather than "dragon punch."

The first Gouken pic is a rough sketch from the Zero OVA/Alpha Movie. The second is from the manga SF2 Ryu, the work which led to Capcom's decision of making him officially Ryu and Ken's master once Super X/Super Turbo came out. In the SF2V manga the eye-scarred master is named Gouun, and the SF2 Animated Movie gives evidence that between SSF2 and Super X Capcom played with the idea of naming the master Goutetsu before taking the manga's idea, but finally Goutetsu became the master's master.

Just my opinion, but when Capcom Japan told your team, anoon, about Sheng Long appearing, they meant it would be nothing short of a miracle. They knew about the hoaxes and the confusion overseas. There wasn't anything to correct you on. Sheng Long was an American creation through and through.

Optimus Prime

01-25-2007, 06:34 PM

Thread Winner!! :smile:

STREET FIGHTER Vs. MORTAL KOMBAT
I previously mentioned that Super Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II were out on the market around the same time. The fact of the matter was, Mortal Kombat II appeared to be eclipsing Street Fighter in popularity. It was dominating the arcade. MK II machines were earning a thousand bucks a week or more in quarters, which was crazy amounts of dough. It appeared that gamers might be tiring of the same hand drawn sprites and 8 bit backgrounds of Street Fighter. I do not know whether or not the idea originated from Capcom Japan or one of the U.S. offices, but it seemed to make sense that Capcom should make a Street Fighter to appeal to the changing tastes of the American gamer.

THE MOVIE
Oh, and it just so happened that Capcom had signed on a bunch of pretty well known actors to bring their franchise to the big screen. It seemed like a home run! A brand new Street Fighter done in flashy new digitized graphics featuring the bona fide likenesses of major celebrities such as Raul Julia, Jean Claude Van Damme, Kylie Minogue, Wes Studi, and master thespian Gregg Rainwater! (*cough*)
Wow, I didn't realize that Capcom did, in fact, start to feel sorta threatened by ‘digitized fighter’ games (back then) that they would go as far as considering making a game of such using Street Fighter characters. Yeah, it did seem more people were playing MK back in the day, but I just chalked it up to gamers playing that game for the Fatalities and finishing moves rather than being solely impressed with the digitized characters. I don't think combo display counters were implemented in games back then, so what all guys did was basically show each other off by just doing those finishing moves (Well, it seemed like that, so I could be wrong). I think most people that crowded around that arcade game (while people were playing it) were mostly there to just view that kind of special F/X & stuff.

Very interesting stuff, my man. This thread has been a very, very fascinating & informative read for me. If you don't mind, I have some other questions for you but will PM them to you instead.

And thanks again, anoon, for sharing this. :tup:

anoon

01-25-2007, 09:41 PM

Stickied!?! Whoa, I'm honored. Thanks for all of the responses.
A few more answers, then I'll post another couple of sections

2. How "successful" was this game and did how did it compare to the team's expectations?
I don't recall how many we sold, but I believe the initial run did move. So maybe there were few thousand machines sold? I really don't know how much the game cost to develop. I guess it largely depends how Capcom did the accounting. For example, if the price of the actors was billed purely to the film production, that would make the game cheaper. I really don't know how much I.T. got paid to do the project. Thinking back to coin op budgets, SFTM may have broken even, if that was the sole line item. Again, I'm purely speculating.

As far as expectations... I'll only speak for myself, rather than the rest of the team here. At the start of the project, I fully expected that we were going to make the greatest fighting game ever. I really thought we could. I felt that we had the right people, with the right knowledge, with the right resources and backing to do it. It was truly a golden opportunity. Not many people get a chance like that in their careers.

As time wore on, it became apparent to me that this would not come to pass. I am trying to write my account of that time in an entertaining tone to keep the text interesting, but the truth is that the end result of the SFTM project was a grave personal tragedy for me. Nobody loved Street Fighter more than me, and there I was: partly responsible for one of the most reviled games in history. I'm not proud of the game by any means, and the wasted opportunity truly does haunt me to this day.

3. Is today's method of measuring "success" the same as it was when you worked on SFTM?
Yep. $$$. Derek (Omni) answered much as I would have.

whose idea it was to have all those secret characters that were color swaps of Blade.
I really couldn't say specifically. It was probably one of those groupthink things as palette swapping just seemed like the thing to do at the time. More characters for relatively little extra effort.

I didn't realize that Capcom did, in fact, start to feel sorta threatened by ‘digitized fighter’ games
Maybe I should edit that section of text you quoted a little. I come off as a know it all.
So, I don't know if "threatened" is the right word... please keep in mind: I really don't know Capcom's true motivations or the mechinations at that time. I'm just relating the experience as I percieved it.

In any business, when new technology arrives, companies are best served to evaluate and potentially adopt it, lest they be left behind. Digitizing was the hot video game technology of the day. Capcom already had the movie in production, so with this new technology came the opportunity to really bring their product a step closer to believability. So, was the fact that MKII was earning buckets of cash the sole motivation for Capcom to do the SFTM? I doubt it. Did they take notice and was it a factor? I'd wager Yes.

I suppose my perception that MK was a motivating factor stems from the fact that Capcom hired us americans to do it, and they largely let us implement the game play the way "we" wanted. I plan on getting more into the whole fighting engine and game play of SFTM after I get all of this up front stuff posted.

...gamers playing that game for the Fatalities and finishing moves... ...so what all guys did was basically show each other off by just doing those finishing moves
Well, I'll have to politely disagree with you there. I really feel that Mortal Kombat II did have a great deal of depth. It was different than SF2, but it had it's own unique systems and game play that largely worked. I still love MK2 to this day. The fatalities may have drawn people in, but I believe that once there, they stayed for the game play.

if you worked with the actors during/after the movie was made, did you get to work with raul julia before he died?
We did briefly meet Mr. Julia, but sadly, he was very ill at the time, so we did not get an opportunity to digitize him. The actor you see in the game is actually his stand in/stunt double.

anoon

01-25-2007, 09:53 PM

DIGITIZING: THE SET AND EQUIPMENT
Incredible Technologies had done some digitizing for the previously mentioned Hard Yardage, but the digitizing for SFTM would be an undertaking on a whole new scale. Characters were to be huge by comparison, full color, (256 palette registers per sprite,) and they had to animate incredibly smoothly. We needed to capture a lot of frames of data. Clearly the Hard Yardage setup from 2 years prior was not going to work.

We ended up with some huge, broadcast quality Sony camera and some supposedly high end capture card which was installed in a PC with one of those (at the time,) fancy new CD ROM burners. The camera connected directly to the card/PC. I really wish I could remember the specifics of the makes and models, but they escape me now. What I do remember is that the card was not capturing data fast enough. Ever wonder why some of those SFTM animation look stiff? Get this: It’s because the actors basically had to perform each motion IN SLOW MOTION! If they moved too fast, the image would get split across fields, resulting in tearing of the image which was a real bear to deal with for the artists as they would have to somehow extract the background color from character image while somehow rebuilding the field interpolated data. We experimented with all kinds of camera settings, capture settings, lighting schemes, you name it. We minimized the effect as best we could, but in the end, we were capturing animations in slow motion. The slower the better. (Supposedly we had purchased the same capture card as the Mortal Kombat guys had, but I really don’t know where that info came from, as it couldn’t possibly be true. When we did a project with Midway later, I got to see just how advanced their capture setup was. It was no surprise they had such beautiful artwork!)

Capture was done in front of a blue screen as we had expected that we were going to use a professional grade chromakeyer to strip the data. That didn’t pan out, but we used blue anyway. We probably would have been better off with a flat grey background. We had a guy manning the camera and PC, and then 2 directors, each with his own monitor, to coach the actor through each move as necessary. Our two lead producers were on hand to do anything else that needed doing. We also generally had a lot of spectators lurking off screen, watching the whole process.

As far as props went, we had a turn table, a wooden box roughly 2’x2’x3’, and a small wooden staircase maybe 4 feet long and 3 feet high, with four to six steps up it, all painted blue to match the background. The turn table was for moves in which the character had to spin. The box and staircase came in handy for faking “in air” moves or posing an actor’s legs on to simulate high kicks. Remember, we couldn’t capture at full speed, so many of the kick type moves had to be posed out, frame by frame for a clean shot. Besides, the majority of the actors weren’t martial artists, so they were not going to be performing good looking kicks anyway. BTW, special mention goes to Peter Tuiasosopo, who played E. Honda. Peter is a big man, and not a martial artist, yet he got his legs up way higher for the kicks just about all of the other actors. Half naked. Wearing a skirt. And a Wig. All greased up in baby oil under those hot lights. That guy was a real class act. Super good natured and fun. A true professional.

We had some number of stage lights positioned around the actor to best create the right highlights and edge definition, probably somewhere on the order of 10 big lights. Some of these were on stands, some on the floor. Some had diffusers on them, some had their barn doors open or closed to varying degrees. The thing they all had in common was that these lights were HOT. We had a couple of fans we’d turn on to cool the actors down as much as possible.

Also on set was a Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, which we’d use to demo some of the moves that were more difficult for the actors to visualize. Many months before arriving on set to shoot, we mapped out every characters animations/move set. These were all storyboarded and assigned a four letter code. This naming convention was something to the effect of SCFP, for Standing Close Fierce Punch. These codes were all printed onto standard 8.5”x11” paper in big bold letters, and then arranged into a big binder. This binder would be held up in front of the camera before each take so that we knew which move was which by looking at the first frame of the capture. It also helped to make sure we got every single scheduled move. Sounds dumb, but it was an important little piece of the process.

I think that was the majority of the mission critical digitizing equipment we had on set. We did a number of dry runs in the warehouse of the Chicago office to make sure we had our bases covered, and then we provided a list of our equipment needs to Capcom. We planned on taking our PC and capture card, the camera, and the binder with us, while Capcom would recreate everything else on set as per our specifications. Off to Australia!!!

True Grave

01-25-2007, 11:12 PM

I'm almost sad to say because of this thread, i went back and decided to play StreetFighter: the movie arcade, until i beat it for the first time.

I forced myself to beat it once with bison, then for some reason i felt compelled to beat it again with blade. Thankfully afterwards it was "GAME OVERRRRR!!!"

Also i sat through the end credits and a certain Alan Noon was credited for the actor of blade :looney:

Got a question, why does Sawada have a lightsaber? Crazy to know that you Anoon helped in making SFTM.

Yeah and Sawada can use the lightsaber to defect fireballs back at you in the game!

SNkNuT

01-25-2007, 11:58 PM

the game doesn't look too bad from the vids. looks like it can be fun.

Lord BBH

01-26-2007, 01:51 AM

Also i sat through the end credits and a certain Alan Noon was credited for the actor of blade :looney:

The initials "AVN" show up in 4th place on the game's default high score list too :looney:

This is such a fantastic thread, please keep those stories coming.

Still my favorite thing about SFTM is Guile's dizzy animation. Watch it sometime if you haven't, it looks so wrong. OOOOOOH MY TUMMY HURTS

Unreallystic

01-26-2007, 07:13 AM

ChairHome

01-26-2007, 07:19 AM

I like guile's win pose, where he 'whipes his hair back' - classic damme.

Question for ya - during the movie is when Rual Julia unfortunatly passed - did ya'll get any fottage with him, or did ya'll just start by using another person?
- :bluu:

He answered this in the last page:

We did briefly meet Mr. Julia, but sadly, he was very ill at the time, so we did not get an opportunity to digitize him. The actor you see in the game is actually his stand in/stunt double.

anoon

01-26-2007, 07:36 AM

Also i sat through the end credits and a certain Alan Noon was credited for the actor of blade

The initials "AVN" show up in 4th place on the game's default high score list too

Yep, that's me in the credits, and those are my initials on the high score screen.

anoon

01-26-2007, 07:40 AM

OUR ON LOCATION CREW
The film of Street Fighter the Movie was filmed in two locations: first in Thailand, second portion in Australia. We hooked up with the film production during their second leg, on the lot of Universal Studios outside of the Gold Coast area on Australia’s East Coast. Our crew consisted of five people; Myself as a director, the other director, the capture technician, as well as two more people who were what we would today know as the lead producers. We directors would coach the actors and evaluate each shot performance. The capture guy would man the PC and camera and evaluate each capture in terms of quality. The producers did everything else: running interference with other big wigs, getting the people we needed when we needed them, helping out during the shoots, securing equipment, organizing and making arrangements for travel, food, etc.

A TYPICAL DAY DOWN UNDER
It was a pretty sweet setup. We were lodged in the superb ANA Gold Coast Hotel, located in Surfer’s Paradise. Over the course of two weeks, we were to wake up early each morning and drive over to the movie studio lot. We’d head up to our capture studio in order to prepare for the day’s shoot by prepping the set and readying the equipment. Once we were set, we’d go get our actor and we begin shooting. We were to have each actor, one day each, for up to roughly 8 hours of digitizing. Some shoots were shorter, some ran longer, but at the end of the session, we released the actors and we’d verify our data. I’m pretty sure this was back before hard drives bigger than a gigabyte were cost effective, so at the end of a every day, we’d burn our data to CD. I could be wrong, but a full day’s worth of data may have required at least one disc, maybe two. It took FOREVER to burn these things. Like an hour and a half. I have no idea what speed that drive was, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it was a 2x, maximum. After 10-12 hours working, that extra hour or two made for a long day. Then it was dinner, maybe some sight seeing or night life, then off to bed. Fifteen days of that later, and we’d be on the plane back to Chicago to make the game. Or so we thought. Our time in Australia actually ended up running much longer.

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, SURFER’S PARADISE
At this point, I must have been 21 years old and had not done a whole lot of traveling. I also had not been on a movie set before, so the whole experience was pretty amazing. Our capture facility was situated up on a hill, next to the resident prop makers, who turned out to be really cool dudes. Half way down the hill there was some sort of long garage type building where Colonel Guile’s Boat was kept. (That thing was pretty sweet close up!) At the foot of the hill were two giant hangar-like buildings that housed many of the sets for the film. If memory serves, the hangar on the right contained Bison’s Command Center and accompanying Refugee Prison, the Bisonopolis Map Room, and some of the Refugee Prison Hallway areas underneath. The hangar on the left contained Bison’s Personal Quarters, Dhalsim’s Lab, and I forget what else. The Craft Services were set up on the right of the right hangar. (It was pretty cool to go down and grab lunch with the cast and crew each day.) The cast’s trailers were situated to the left of the left hangar. Make Up was some where off around to the left of the left hangar as well, in a smaller building. It could have been attached to Wardrobe, which was a long building furthest away from our studio and ran behind the two hangars.

Capcom was footing the whole bill for all this, so we had full run of the entire studio in order to get what we needed to make the game. When the film crew was in the left hangar filming stuff in Dhalsim’s Lab, we were in the right hangar, snapping photos of everything imaginable so that we could get all of the photographic reference we needed. If we needed a costume for a character (like a Bison Trooper outfit for Blade,) we walked down to Wardrobe and borrowed it. If we needed a custom costume made, (Like a dulled down version of Ryu’s gi that would read better under our digitizing specific lighting,) we asked Wardrobe one day, and they had it made to our specs for shooting the next. When we had opportunity to capture Ernie Reyes as Akuma, the prop guys built him custom bracelets and a choker, while Make Up created his crazy hairstyle and coloring. All and all, it was a pretty astounding situation to be a part of.

Vic Viper

01-26-2007, 08:00 AM

One question, were all the normal move graphics in the arcade version the same as the home version? I know the home version was close to SSF2: Turbo.

Also, any stories about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvOSAko859k&eurl=

I know it seems to slightly be based on the movie.

aerialgroove

01-26-2007, 08:23 AM

First of all thank you VERY much for all the info! It's very interesting.

Second, there seems to be a basic problem with original arwork (comics, games, cartoons) being followed by "real life" movies. Let me tell you this, no matter how good the game would have been, you had no chance.
Even more important than the story, that many players don't know, is that the characters actually look like in the original. The movie failed to get even close to both the look and the story and in addition to that, didn't add any new interesting story either.

Third: There are big problems with communication between Capcom of Japan and America. There are almost unlimited examples for this. I can imagine how difficult it is to not know what's going on while working on a big project.

I played the game on Saturn up and down (was my first Saturn game) and I want to know everything about Sawada. Did you know he also appeared in the lame US cartoon series?

Reading about Sheng Long being so skilled that he can fight with his eyes covered (or blinded) it reminds me a lot of Oro of SFIII. Oro only fights with one arm because otherwise the opponent wouldn't have a chance. Maybe Capcom adopted that.

Would love to see the Sheng Long art.

aerialgroove

01-26-2007, 08:40 AM

Anoon, can you confirm this or add anything?

In Ken's background of Street Fighter Zero/Alpha 2, you can see a servant (far right).
http://fightingstreet.com/folders/variousinfofolder/eastereggs/eastereggspics/kensfz2stage.gif

Quoting a post by SRK user Golden Hell:

"Kenzo Tsujimoto was also a producer in Van Damme's Street Fighter flick and executive producer in the American versions of the SF and Mega-Man cartoons.
IMDB also lists that he played an A.N. Commander in the Van Damme movie. I always heard that he was the cook that was left behind in the deserted A.N. base after the troops left to fight Bison."

Thanks!

Xenozip.

01-26-2007, 08:59 AM

^
Wow you're full of trivia. Aerialgroove, happen to know if the guy with the Teddy bear in that background is Strider or is it another Capcom character?

[sorry for the thread jack]

caliagent#3

01-26-2007, 09:35 AM

cool thread, i've been passing over it for sometime, but decided to read it now that it's stickied. But i'd just like everyone to think what would've happened if SFTM was actually labled SF3. Really think about the impact that would've had.

Genosis

01-26-2007, 09:40 AM

Check this out and guess who played F7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_The_Movie_%28video_game%29
You should add some info on yourself on wikipedia cuz i clicked on your name and no info appeared

Sano

01-26-2007, 10:07 AM

^
Wow you're full of trivia. Aerialgroove, happen to know if the guy with the Teddy bear in that background is Strider or is it another Capcom character?

[sorry for the thread jack]

That's Strider Hiryu. All About Capcom confirms that it's him. But most of those background appearances are considered people dressing up like those characters in a costume party because some of those appearances are impossible unless time travel is involved. (Linn Kurosawa of Aliens vs. Predator is in the pool too and she also appears in the Tokyo Stage of the first 2 SF3 games bathing with Chun-Li and Felicia). Well, take it as you will. I suppose if you subscribe to the theory that most Capcom games take place in the same universe you can make a case for some of the appearances, in the end it's one of those things that's up to the gamer to decide I feel. But that's just my outlook on it. At least according to Strider 2 it seems that Hiryu is possibly immortal and can live for thousands of years without aging (unless he's murdered of course, like dying in the game) so his appearance in that background is one of the probable ones, kind of. But again, it's up to the viewer to decide.

BKB

01-26-2007, 10:08 AM

^ "Due to all of these factors, fans of the Street Fighter series have panned Blade himself, labeling him the absolute worst character in Street Fighter history."

ouch! :sweat:

Xenozip.

01-26-2007, 10:19 AM

-snip- Thanks!

aerialgroove

01-26-2007, 12:21 PM

Xenozip., what sano meant was "yes".

Here's more:
http://fightingstreet.com/folders/variousinfofolder/eastereggs/eastereggspage.html

Sano

01-26-2007, 12:37 PM

Xenozip., what sano meant was "yes".

I don't think I've ever answered a question as just "yes" in my entire time on SRK. And given your post with "Here's more:" I don't think you have either. J/K :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Genosis

01-26-2007, 01:08 PM

Xenozip., what sano meant was "yes".

Here's more:
http://fightingstreet.com/folders/variousinfofolder/eastereggs/eastereggspage.html

i checked out ur website preety cool, the rip-offs is hilarious to me keep it up:lovin:
i got one Ryo from king of fighters and Dan

aerialgroove

01-26-2007, 01:30 PM

Glad you like the site, Ryo's already on page 3. Lot's of rip offs to come. Let's focus back on SFTM game or this thread will get too big. Anoon is the star.

Genosis

01-26-2007, 01:43 PM

Glad you like the site, Ryo's already on page 3. Lot's of rip offs to come. Let's focus back on SFTM game or this thread will get too big. Anoon is the star.

i sent u an email of 2 rip off characters aerialgroove:lovin:

felineki

01-26-2007, 01:51 PM

Ken's background of Street Fighter Zero/Alpha 2.
http://fightingstreet.com/folders/variousinfofolder/eastereggs/eastereggspics/kensfz2stage.gif
You know, it always puzzled me why they had Felicia hanging out in the pool in that background... don't cats hate swimming? :confused:

anoon

01-26-2007, 02:07 PM

Glad you guys are enjoying the info as much as I am writing it. I should have gotten all of this down years ago.

were all the normal move graphics in the arcade version the same as the home version?
Yes and no. I say "Yes" because we delivered our raw digitized capture to the Capcom USA guys that were doing the console versions out in California. I also say "No" because each team processed and animated that data completely seperately.

For animation, it appears that they reworked and edited the captured frames to more closely match the frames of the SSFT2 character anims, where we cleaned up and used the frames in a more straight forward manner. I prefer their animation to ours since they had more dynamic poses, though I think it could have maybe used a few more frames of animation.

In terms of image quality, I favor our character art as it was more vibrant and colorful than the console version. We did a lot of processing on the art by adjusting contrast levels, color balance, and so forth. I have no info as to what the console team's clean up processs was.

Also, any stories about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvOSAko859k&eurl=
I'm afraid not! I had only seen that for the first time very recently. I don't know who was involved with that or where it is from.

I want to know everything about Sawada. Did you know he also appeared in the lame US cartoon series?
I did not know that, though it does not surprise me. The whole Sawada thing was pretty interesting, and almost peculiar in some ways. The next section coming up was going to be Sawada, but I segued into Akuma instead. There's so much interest in Sawada, I'll do his section next.

Reading about Sheng Long being so skilled that he can fight with his eyes covered (or blinded) it reminds me a lot of Oro of SFIII
Well, I was certainly not the first to ever come up with that idea either. I seem to think it's a staple of those old Kung Fu thater shows that were on Saturday mornings when I was a kid, so that proably influenced me quite a bit.

I plan to do a section on some of the ideas that we came up with, but never got around to implementing. Some of these would have appeared to have made it into later SF games, particularly the Zero/Alpha series. DISCLAIMER: I'm not taking credit for these features at all. In the world of videogames, everything has already been thought of already. I would not be surprised to find that Capcom had these concepts down on paper before we proposed them ourselves. I thought it might make for a good read though.

fans of the Street Fighter series have panned Blade himself, labeling him the absolute worst character in Street Fighter history."
OUCH! LOL.

anoon

01-26-2007, 02:12 PM

AKUMA
Speaking of Akuma/Gouki, many people have asked why he is in SFTM at all, since he wasn’t in the film. Good question. The short answer was: because Akuma kicked ass! Remember, we approached SFTM as if it was to be the biggest, baddest, Street Fighter ever. We wanted to put in as much great stuff as possible. We had already pitched Sheng Long and had that shot down, so once we learned of Akuma, we wanted him in.

I say “once we learned of Akuma,” because when we started the project, I don’t think he was public knowledge. In fact, if I have my time line correct, I personally did not know Akuma existed until we had been in Australia for a few days. We were on location in our digitizing studio which contained the Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo as previously mentioned. Before shoots, during lunch, on breaks, and during data backup to CD I would play SSF2T. Often times, I would play against the Capcom Japan guys who were there too. I can’t recall if it was Mr. Minami, Mr. Meshi, or Mr. Okamoto specifically, but they showed us the code to unlock Akuma as a playable character, which had only just been released or something.

Obviously, Akuma was totally cool. The arcade scene seemed to be afire with the news that he was playable. Even later that week, when I went to an arcade one night in Surfer’s Paradise, people had learned of him and were using him like mad. We wanted him in SFTM, bad.

As it turned out, we had an opportunity to create and capture Akuma for the game. The specifics of our digitizing schedule and working with Hollywood actors is a topic for another time, but suffice it to say, we found ourselves with some open days on our shooting schedule. In addition to the big name Hollywood guys, there were a number of real life martial artist types, serving as fight and stunt coordinators, and/or appearing in the film as various villains and background characters. One of these was Ernie Reyes Sr.

Mr. Reyes was a really cool guy. Super friendly, very professional, and he genuinely seemed to be very interested in the whole video game thing we were doing. We approached him with the idea that perhaps he could play a role in the game, to which he responded very positively to. We were overjoyed to be working with a real martial artist who had the kind of physical control over his body that we needed. We worked out the scheduling and we set about preparing for the shoot.

The first thing we needed to do was get costuming and make up squared away. Although we had just been introduced to Akuma by way of SSF2T, that was not exactly a lot of reference material to work with. All we had to go on was the completely blacked out character portrait on the select screen, and his actual in game character sprites. We knew he was evil. We knew he wore a gi with ripped up sleeves and pant legs. We knew he had crazy red hair. We knew he had some sort of bracelets on, which appeared to be studded. He also appeared to have a necklace or choker of some kind. We figured it was studded too, to match the bracelets. Based on this, we hit up Wardrobe, Make Up, and the Props Department.

The crew in the Wardrobe department kicked butt every time we asked them for something. We described what we wanted for the gi, and they had it ready to spec by the next morning, if not sooner. For the shoot, we had them dye the gi a mid value, neutral grayish brown. By then we had figured out which colors gave us the best range of values in the final art. If we went too light, the lighting on set blew out the details. Too dark and everything came out flat.

Considering the reference material, (20 odd pixels of hand drawn character art on screen,) the Make Up department did a bang up job as well. Sure, Akuma’s hair style in SFTM might not look to be canon now, but all things considered, it looked pretty good, and it held up for 6 hours of athletic activity under some blazing hot lights. I expect Mr. Reyes was washing orange dye out of his hair for weeks. That stuff was on his lid THICK.

The Props guys came through too. We showed them the game and we discussed what we could do. We ended up deciding that Akuma’s little SSF2T character sprite was wearing some badassed spikes, so they ended up devising a leather choker and matching bracelets studded with 3 inch chrome spikes. If I recall, the spikes were actually wooden cones with some sort of foil type material wrapped around them. These were then screwed into the choker and bracelets which I believe were anchored to some sort of stiffer supporting material within the leather.

The digitizing session was a dream. Mr. Reyes was able to take our direction and really execute upon it. If we needed something slower, he did it slower. If we needed him to perform an action that wasn’t true to real martial arts form, he didn’t question it, he just nailed. We relied on the box and staircase very little that day. The shoot was one of the shortest we had, while still capturing the full move set. He was awesome.

Skipping ahead in time and back in Chicago we were cleaning up our images at a furious pace. We knew we wanted Akuma in the game, so his art and implementation was under way. In a perfect world, Akuma probably would have been a hidden character, and I believe this was our original intent, as he did not appear in the film. Ultimately I think a combination of events led us to put him up there. Unfortunately, we were not able to digitize all of the “regular” Street Fighter characters for the movie, so we had open slots in the select screen. We wanted a lot of characters in the game and we wanted to add to the hype as much as possible. Since Akuma was one of the characters featuring better digitizing quality, (due to Mr. Reyes’ superb performance,) and also one of most popular characters, we figured he should be right up front. Was it a good idea to do so? Did it make sense, considering the game was based off of the film “Street Fighter the Movie?” Probably not, though it seemed like a good idea at the time. It annoys me now when I see that select screen, but there are probably bigger issues that need fixing in SFTM first. My opinions on that particular subject are destined for another section.

Dangief

01-26-2007, 02:45 PM

subscribed. This is the mopst important thread on SRK

Dios <-X->

01-26-2007, 03:02 PM

im in <3

vasili10

01-26-2007, 04:18 PM

You know, it always puzzled me why they had Felicia hanging out in the pool in that background... don't cats hate swimming? :confused:

Yes, most do. But cat caring tips say that if kittens are given a bath once a month, they'll get used to being around water when they grow older and won't mind it. Maybe that's Felicia's case too.:rofl:

anoon

01-26-2007, 04:34 PM

I found a picture of Tsujimoto from the movie:

http://chapel.vivian.jp/mt/archives/sftm02.jpg

Vic Viper

01-26-2007, 05:21 PM

OK, another topic on SF: Movie game and its probably perverted. Did Chun Li's skirt get stapled or something, or was Ming-La just doing splits and spinning on something during the Spinning Bird Kick?

Genosis

01-26-2007, 06:10 PM

Thank god u only help make the game, if u were one of the ppl who helped make the movie i would have 2 be force 2 google ur location and hunt u down :lol:

Etcetera

01-26-2007, 07:16 PM

This thread has inspired me to give it a shot... and damn am I glad that I never played it before.
Reflecting fireballs, come on!! And that is just the beginning

True Grave

01-26-2007, 07:22 PM

the game doesn't look too bad from the vids. looks like it can be fun.

Yes it kinda looks neat, and on some level i wanted to like it, but once you get to playing it yourself, ya realize its kinda lousy and thats putting it nicely.

Reflecting fireballs, come on!! And that is just the beginning

Sawada must be strong with the force to deflect fireballs with his lightsaber that way.

It seems other characters can deflect as well just by blocking a certain way. Also shoto characters can dragon punch right through a fireball, sometimes thats all a cpu-controlled shoto character would do in order to avoid them.

SmoothCat

01-26-2007, 07:57 PM

i still have the game and it sucks. but nice read =)

Gasp

01-26-2007, 08:28 PM

who was the genius behind Sawadas special?

i played the console version and sawada's special which seems to be him raising his arms and walking kind fast towards his opponent had me in hesterics

edit:

racism aside....is balrog secretly danny glover?

VEGA_OMEGA

01-26-2007, 08:38 PM

So anoon, you got a rare proto board lying around some where?

True Grave

01-26-2007, 09:05 PM

I played the game on Saturn up and down (was my first Saturn game) and I want to know everything about Sawada.

It was mine too. I bought it the same time as my Sega Saturn.

Well technically it was my 'first game', since Virtua Fighter Remix came packed with the system.

So anoon, you got a rare proto board lying around some where?

Like an arcade board? How would you even play it, didn't those I.T arcades use some kind hard to find, proprietary hardware?

SweetJohnnyV

01-27-2007, 02:41 AM

OMG Alan, I never knew that you worked on SFTMTG! I'm with everyone else. This thread is a lot of fun to read. I can't wait to hear the rest.

PS: This is John V....from the 3D Studio forums, Siggraph, etc. Good to see you around. It's a small world :looney:

anoon

01-27-2007, 08:40 AM

Did Chun Li's skirt get stapled or something, or was Ming-La just doing splits and spinning on something during the Spinning Bird Kick?
For spinning moves, we had a device on hand that was basically a big turn table that the actors stood on. We'd have them pose up there, then slowly rotate it. Afterwards, we pick out the best frames for the move. In the case of the spinning bird kick, I believe we posed her with one leg out and span her around. the artist in charge of cleaning her up then cut and pasted the other leg so it looks like the move we're familiar with. At the end of every shoot we'd also do several takes of the actors moving through a range of motions so we had an extra cache of body parts to use in the event that some of the regular shots weren't of quality, so we may have had her do the splits as well. My recollection is hazy, and my photos from that session are MIA.

Thank god u only help make the game...
Yes, only the game, but I was almost in the movie! In the film, the control panel for Bison's weapons of mass destruction was a replica of an actual Street Fighter coin op. Bison was to launch the missiles using the secret codes. There was supposed to be a little bit of fan service there as the secret codes were our favorite street fighter specials like the Dragon Punch, hadoken, SPD, etc. There was talk of having me don the Bison gloves and perform the joystick and button motions. Unfortunately, that bit of filming was scheduled after we finally left Australia, so my big hollywood debut is still pending.

Reflecting fireballs, come on!!
Speaking of fireballs, the fireball art in SFTM was actually a tennis ball, soaked in gasoline, suspended on a wire. We lit the thing in the parking lot of the I.T. office in the middle of the night and digitized it.

i played the console version and sawada's special which seems to be him raising his arms and walking kind fast towards his opponent had me in hesterics
I really don't know the specifics of the console version. We only ever had one meeting with those guys.

is balrog secretly danny glover?
No, but he was a real actor. His name was Grand L. Bush. He was a really cool dude. We went out to dinner with he and his family and the owners of I.T. developed a friendship with him. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005598/

you got a rare proto board lying around some where?
No, unfortunately not.

didn't those I.T arcades use some kind hard to find, proprietary hardware?
Proprietary hardware, yes, but the overwhelming majority of coin op games back then conformed to the JAMMA standard, which would allow arcade operators to quickly swap games in and out of cabinets. In effect, each game was like a giant cartridge. So one week you could have Mortal Kombat in a cab, then the next week, you could upgrade to Mortal Kombat 2 just by plugging in the board and slapping some new cabinet graphics on.