Takashi Nishiyama

If the original Street Fighter represented Ryu’s quest to climb the metaphorical mountain of martial arts mastery through willpower and multi-disciplined training, then Seth, Street Fighter IV’s boss, is the antithesis, an engineered creation that technologically combined the moves of the greatest fighters to leap straight to the top. By SFIII, the series’ core evolved into a deep combat model with flowing hip-hop style, but its complexity made the climb nearly insurmountable for new players at a time when gaming was going through dramatic changes. What was needed was a break until new tech could re-evaluate the series’ design and still capture its artistry. Street Fighter IV returned to the canvas nine years later, able to balance traditional gameplay elements from throughout the series to help fighters at any skill level reach the martial arts’ stunning, stylish summit.

Martial arts is the science of battling external and internal threats, the meeting of anatomy and physics, philosophy and psychology, where any vulnerability in a fighter’s physical or mental defenses can be fatal. Since a fighter’s physical attributes can be measured and defined, they can be translated to videogames’ as animations and number values into a character with a central theme. Every fighting game flows from Street Fighter’s Ryu, the young shotokan warrior who battled through Capcom’s titular international tournament and became the starting point for every subsequent martial arts archetype in the genre. But as Ryu had dedicated himself to the way of the fist, Street Fighter required the player to develop the technical skill, opponent knowledge, strategic mindset, and ring positioning to beat the “Emperor of Muay Thai” Sagat and become the Street Fighter champion.