Fighting Street

The player competes in one-on-one matches against a series of computer-controlled opponents or in a single match against another player. Each match consists of three rounds in which the player must knock out an opponent in less than 30 seconds. If a match ends before a fighter is knocked out, the fighter with the greater amount of energy left is the round's winner. The player must win two rounds in order to defeat the opponent and proceed to the next battle.

If the third round ends in a tie, then the computer-controlled opponent will win by default or both players will lose. During the single-player mode, the losing player can continue against the same opponent. Likewise, a second player can interrupt a single-player match and challenge the first player to a new match.

Japanese martial artist Ryu enters the World Fighting Tournament to test his skills against the globe’s strongest warriors. Traveling across five countries-Japan, the United States, China, England, and Thailand, he defeats eight regional fighters, including rogue monks, assassins, and underground bouncers. Ryu’s American rival and friend, Ken Masters enters the tournament to have a match with Ryu, who defeats Ken. Despite losing, Ken wishes Ryu good luck and Ryu moves on to the next match.

After clearing out the bracket and defeating Adon, a Muay Thai fighter, Ryu earns the right to challenge Sagat, the undefeated Muay Thai master and the tournament’s host. During their brutal match, Sagat dominates the fight and pushes Ryu to the brink of defeat. Consumed by a desperate desire to win, Ryu unintentionally taps into the Satsui no Hado (“surge of murderous intent”), a dark murderous energy. Embracing this power, Ryu catches the overconfident Sagat off guard with a devastating Shoryuken (Dragon Punch).

Takashi Nishiyama conceived Street Fighter after working on Irem's 1984 beat 'em up game Kung-Fu Master (called Spartan X in Japan), which has a number of boss fights; Nishiyama considered making a game centered around them. In turn, the boss fights were inspired by the Bruce Lee's martial arts film Game of Death (1972). Following the success of Kung-Fu Master, Nishiyama was hired by Capcom. He designed an arcade successor for Capcom, Trojan (1986), a brawler which evolved the basic gameplay concepts of Kung-Fu Master; the NES port has a one-on-one fighting mode, for the first time in a Capcom game.

Nishiyama later designed Street Fighter. The game was also influenced by the earlier fighting games from 1984 – Karate Champ and Yie Ar Kung-Fu. The gameplay of Karate Champ, Kung-Fu Master and Yie Ar Kung Fu provided a basic template for Street Fighter. Nishiyama wanted the game to have a story similar to a film.

The original punching-pad cabinet was not successful as Capcom had planned, with only around 1,000 units sold. However, the alternate six-button version was more successful, selling in the tens of thousands, with estimates ranging from between 10,000 and 50,000 units sold. In Japan, Game Machine listed Street Fighter as the fifth most successful upright arcade unit of September 1987, before reaching number three in October 1987 and then number one in January 1988. It became Japan's fifth highest-grossing large arcade game of 1987, and the country's eighth highest-grossing arcade game of 1988.

In the United Kingdom, the Coinslot charts of Sinclair User magazine listed Street Fighter as the top-grossing dedicated arcade game of August 1988. It was not as successful in the United States, where it peaked at number 10 on the RePlay upright cabinet chart in December 1987.

Street Fighter's niche evolved, partly because many arcade game developers in the 1980s focused more on producing beat 'em up and shoot 'em up games. Part of the appeal was the use of special moves that can only be discovered by experimenting with controls, which created a sense of mystique and invited players to practice the game. Following Street Fighter's lead, the use of command-based hidden moves began to pervade other games in the rising fighting game genre. Street Fighter introduced other staples of the genre, including the blocking technique and the ability for a challenger to spontaneously initiate a match against a player.

The game introduced pressure-sensitive controls that determine the strength of an attack. However, due to this encouraging damage, Capcom soon replaced it with a six-button control scheme offering light, medium, and hard punches and kicks, which became another staple of the genre. Yoshinori Ono considers Street Fighter to be "the first modern-day fighting game".