Street Fighter

1988. I was sitting at my buddy's place who had a PC XT, watching two pixelated dudes beat each other so slowly on screen that I had time to grab a tea and come back without missing anything. That was Street Fighter by Capcom — and I didn't realize back then that this mediocrity would one day give birth to one of the greatest fighting game series in history.

You play as Ryu, a Japanese fighter traveling the world and testing his skills against local opponents. The game gradually takes you through several countries — Japan, USA, China, and England are among the stops — with a pair of opponents waiting for you in each, culminating in a tougher boss. The goal is simple: beat them all. The story essentially ends there.

And that's where the problems start. The controls on the PC version are clunky in a way that goes beyond normal standards for the time. Special moves like Hadouken or Shoryuken theoretically exist, but pulling them off reliably on a keyboard is about as easy as tying your shoelaces while wearing boxing gloves. Hit detection feels erratic — sometimes you land, sometimes you don't, and the game has its own opinion about it. The AI opponents swing wildly from stupidity to brutally blocking everything. There's no consistency.

Why do we remember this at all? Because Street Fighter II (1991) became a phenomenon and retroactively drew interest to this first installment — which itself made little impression in 1988, even in its arcade form, let alone in the PC port. The MS-DOS version happens to be one of the less successful ports. The Sound Blaster audio was painful, the graphics skimpier than the arcade original. International Karate or the then-popular Yie Ar Kung-Fu played significantly better and smoother. Street Fighter 1 just lacked that spark of engaging combat that its sequel perfected.

Today it's primarily a historical artifact. If you're curious about where the whole series began and why the second installment was so revolutionary — playing the first one is actually the best way to understand it. The contrast speaks for itself. You can run it in your browser today without installation and without hassle, which is probably the only comfort this version ever offered. Expect hiccups, expect frustration, and prepare yourself for special moves landing about one out of four times. Historically interesting, gameplay-wise modest — that's Street Fighter from 1988 in a nutshell.