Polygon's exhaustive investigation into the origins of Capcom's classic Street Fighter 2 is an essential look into the commission-fueled rise of American arcades, the accidental inventions of genre-defining mechanics, and the genesis of competitive gaming.
Akira Nishitani:
I would say yes to almost everything people would bring me. … Back then, there were several teams creating games at Capcom, so the teams were competing with each other. But the Street Fighter 2 team was also competing amongst itself — the programmers and artists were each working on their own characters, which led to a lot of rivalries. You know, "My character's going to be better than yours."
Because of that, they'd each come up with crazy ideas and bring them to me. And I didn't want to tell them, "Ah, that won't fit with our game system, so you should do something else." Or "that idea's too crazy — you should come up with something less over the top." I didn't want to discourage their creativity, so I said, "OK cool, I'll make that happen, and come up with more crazy ideas and I'll make those happen too."
I think that's part of the reason why the game turned out well. These days, as the president of a company, I can't be as irresponsible as I was back then. So sometimes what I'll tell people today is different from what I'd tell them then. Back when I was making Street Fighter 2 though, that was my attitude.
Street Fighter 2: An Oral History [Polygon]
