How Street Fighter IV SAVED 2D Fighting Games (Ft. Maximilian Dood)
After SF2, fighting games were booming. From Fatal Fury, to King of Fighters, Mortal Kombat, and more. But then, in 1993, came Virtua Fighter – which brought about a new wave of 2D fighting games, including Tekken and Soulcalibur. This revolution, combined with the eventual death of arcades, brought about a slow and eventual demise to 2D fighting games.
SNK would eventually go bankrupt (though not entirely due to their arcade or fighting game business), and while 3D fighters will still popping off, after the versus craze of the early 2000s, 2D fighters became relegated to the annual releases of King of Fighters and ArcSys games like Guilty Gear. While Guilty Gear was certainly popular within its niche, it was failing to hid a broad appeal. It would take Street Fighter IV to revitalize the genre, and show companies that fighting games could sell.
Join Dave Klein and Maximilian Dood as they work together to tell the story of How Street Fighter IV saved 2D Fighting Games.
Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
0:09 – Let’s talk about Fighting games
0:46 – Maximilian Dood Intro
1:03 – Pre Street Fighter II
1:21 – Street Fighter II’s Release
1:45 – The Rise of Fighting Games
2:32 – Virtua Fighter and 3D Fighting Games
3:59 – Street Fighter III
6:36 – The Death of Arcades
7:36 – SNK’s Bankruptcy
8:28 – Early 2000s in Fighting Games
8:57 – Smash Brothers
9:21 – A Clarification
9:56 – Competitive Issues
11:09 – The FGC Dark Age
12:13 – Online Play
13:16 – Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting
14:28 – Production on Street Fighter IV
15:49 – The Release of Street Fighter IV
16:40 – Marketing on Street Fighter IV
17:21 – SFIV Hype
19:50 – Street Fighter IV Online Play
21:52 – Twitch and YouTube’s Impact
23:12 – EVO’s post Street Fighter IV Era
25:06 – What about Mortal Kombat 9?
27:14 – How Street Fighter IV Saved 2D Fighting Games
28:03 – Outro
#StreetFighter #streetfighteriv #sf4
I honestly hated SF3, didn't look or feel like a SF game at all IMO 😔
I absolutely loved SF4 though 💪🏻👍🏻
After this came out even MK9 made the move to 2.5D and I was super excited.
Its kinda funny how 2D fighters was gonna die out cause 3D fighters were everywhere, now its pretty much just Tekken, Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive are 6ft deep, and Viruta Fighter did everything they wanted with VF5FS so it peaked. Bloody Roar is gone, no Rival School, heck as weird as KoF Maximum Impact series was, that was the highest selling KoF in the USA until KoF 14.
Theres not even alot of attempts on the indie side to make 3D fighters, which is really weird.
Shout outs to the shockingly excellent 3DS port of Super Street Fighter 4. I was there in the hype for SF4’s original launch, but to me it will live forever as a game for 3DS, a system I will never put away.
Love the vid, to be honest. I always played fighters, oMASTERo from rn koei tecmo made me take fighter more serious. Like doa5U was special. Especially DOA5LR. N max online warrior, jwong, smug made me really want to play n get better at third strike. (Love online edition but wasnt an online or local player, n i did love 15 ann i think it was due to its content. Never had online cause i still had dial up on xbox) but oMASTERo due to how amazing he was made me love fighters beyond any other genre. N im the person who was playing re4 and mg3 100+ times. God the fgc has amazing people, like max, oMASTERo, jwong, diago etc. So many want u to get better. Some more than others
Nice video
STREET FIGHTER FOUR STREETFIGHTER FOUR SAY IT- STREET FIGHTER FOOOOOOOUUUUR AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
I want Power Stone 🥹
4:10 – 6:30 I loved 3/3rd strike and I feel one day people will flip and it will get the respect it deserved. Growing up I loved the game, the characters, the music, everything about it. And My order was 2, turbo, alpha series, then 3rd. 3rd is still my all time favorite Something was just special about it. Maybe its the memories with my friends or the time in my life it was a part of. It's sad to hear it was a new fighting game and had ken and ryu tacked on. All these years I thought they were just trying to be creative/inventive and I liked that
The netcode was indeed bitchin
Is this dude wearing eye make up or what?
SF4 AE 2012 4 life! played a ton of SF6…..its a broken travesty 😂 i want my money back
And guiltygear?
For me, Evo Moment 37 saved fighting games for me and got me into competitive fighting games. SFIV came out and Daigo was still beasting.
Tbh I thank max cuz he got me into fighting games. Fgc made me the best friends I ever made. And max was part responsible. Thanks to that guy
I was more of a console player than a arcade guy. Don't get me wrong I was playing these games when I went out but mostly i was playing on console because I didn't want to pay a quarter for a game or until I lost. Is there anyone else that favored consoles. But guys it's not the be all and end all for arcades. Yeah it's nostalgic for people but guys like me were trying to figure things out about the game than cough up quarters.
I think street fighter 3rd strike and alpha 3 are among the best street fighter games of all time. I’m in the minority but I think sf4 was not better than 5
love this
gamespot is dead..too slow to evolve..please make a video how you guys fk up..
After sf 4 it al got downwards
To me, fighting games have always been fascinating, and I believe the massive player base of Street Fighter 4 is the primary reason for the revival of the genre.
2023 is the year of the FGC! SF6, MK1 and Tekken 8! What a year to be a Fighting Game Fan
"Fighting game expert…Maximilian Dood." Excuse Me while I go to the doctor to have My sides stitched up from laughing too much.
There's multiple games that also launched around that time that helped revitalize the 2D genre, not just SFIV (as amazing as it was). We also had the launch of Blazblue (which launched a few months before SFIV and actually was probably the only rival to SF4 at the time), MVC3, and MK9. These were all incredible games. We truly had it all.
The movie might have been terrible but Raul Julia is great in it. And it was only a Tuesday for him.
Street Fighter 3 would have benefited from the social media era of video sharing. That basically didn't exist at all in 1997, there were some examples in the early 2000s, but nothing like today's streaming or instant upload convenience
The 3rd Strike 2002 B5 exhibition, where Urien's Aegis setups were revealed to the West, is a perfect example, even the pros in America played 3S like Street Fighter 2, but Japanese players showed everyone what 3S was capable of. But that was 5 years after its arcade debut, so it was already branded a failure at the time. SF3 is like the opposite of SF4, the wrong place at the wrong time vs the right place at the perfect time
My brother and I had thousands of hours for 4 and all the other versions of it
That opening trailer wit Ryu and Ken has lived rent free in my mind since 2010
Anybody here have playlist with this type of videos on gamespot ?
I was completely blind to the fighting game decline. The people I hung around kept on playing fighting games throughout the 2000s. Guilty Gear, Samsho V, Tekken, the Vs. series, those kept us playing. It wasn't until years later that I heard the term 09ers, then I found out it was a term for the new influx of players that revived fighting games. "Revived? Hell, I didn't know it was dead".
Played all of SFIV from vanilla to Ultra and it brought my main juri in the AE 2012 update god bless! and still SFIV's art style, focus attack and roster base and DLC is unmatched i pre ordered SFIV at what was my near by game stop got it after school on release so wish i kept it!!!
Now shame many introduced in SFIV just vanished after – C.viper, abel (playable) rufus and so many whom just made it in the base roster and as DLC. El Fuerte for sure omg he was so fun and SFIV let you have fun, get silly and express you're self. we need more silly characters in fighting games!
I played some fighters but SFIV changed me, to sadly i got too silly on SFIV and had a little LTG phase wait for context i quit a few matches but it was short lived, i endured the padded room of the training mode and learned did trials for various characters.
And soon, i found max the dood in like 2014? then that blasted salami & Core A gaming channels later i mention them ofte n to have to randoms on PC T7 actually some knew them already which was dope!
And then capcom went nuts spending on SF x Tekken, but please do more of these to maybe ones on other 2D fighters that are around mostly the never ending long lasting party that is SKULLGIRLS! and slide in melty blood.
DSP punching the air rn 🤣🤣🤣
Street fighter 3 is the best game of the franchise. 👌👌
SF 1 3, and 5 was dirt..
The ORIGINAL XBOX's Xbox Live supported Street Fighter III 3rd Strike in the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection of that era. I fought ppl online, as a matter of fact I crushed my 1st online opponent with the Raging Demon combo.
More FGC content please!!!
Smash isn't a fighter though … 🤷♂️
The goat! The goaaaaaat!
A very North American take
Max shilling for MK games!
Honor, to whom Honor deserves . STREET FIGHTER 4
I know lots of people hated it because of the exploitive greedy tactics of the gem system and DLC characters fiasco
BUT…..
I liked and enjoyed SFxT way more than SFIV…… the tag team aspect of it just made combos more lively & exciting
Great video! Hey, did anyone notice that the host sounds like the real life version of Dudesy?
i hate video titles like this. fighting games were still going. they never stopped…
i like how even max is aware of this lol. but the gamespot guy is just trying to ignore his statements about fighting games being fine. The fgc that only pertains to capcom and mvc are the only ones that were really affected. And even then, the time gap between capcom fighting games really wasnt that long. 3-5 years. you know, the length of time it takes to create games that arent 2D sprites.
Fighting games didnt need saving…
why is no one here talk about Tekken?
one of the top fighting game that took alot of SF player away during the Playstation Era in 90s.
Bro barely mentions the MVC and CVS games. It's where all the action was in the competitive community back then (with Third Strike of course)
I'm super glad Street Fighter IV is finally getting the attention it deserves. It was a really big part of my childhood and I'm just so happy to find out people care about the game as much as I do. ❤
Was anyone else curious to know what the dog in the background was doing? Lol
Heart warming story. Super interesting to watch! Keep up the good work.