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Narrative structure

The story continues after the first World Fighting Championship, which Ryu won after defeating Sagat. That much is clear. However, the timeline is convoluted and non-canon: at the release of the game, it was supposed to be a second edition of the World Fighting Championship, but as years passed, later games adapted chronologically earlier events. In any case, most of the narrative of "Street Fighter II: The World Warrior" is centred around the different unique own stories of each character, which you can discover after beating the last boss, Dictator. 11. ,13

Ryu's ending explains that he only came at the tournament to get stronger and put himself to test, and so, he leaves the award ceremony, for it means nothing to him, in search of a bigger obstacle to overcome. As for Ken, a woman comes at him when the tournament ends, supposedly her partner, and as they are both free to do as they please, they get married. Chun-Li entered the tournament seeking vengance against Dictator (Bison, as known in the non-japanese release) for killig his father, although it is not specified it he murdered him directly or it was the drugs that Bison sold / used on him that did the job. A similar story is shown for Guile, who tries claiming Bison's live for his dead comrade Charlie, but is stopped by his lover and daughter, who convince him to leave such a tough life to go back home. Dhalsim is shown going back to his family and living a happy, quiet, humble life with, at least, on of his children. Similarly, Honda goes back to his dojo to get stronger and keep disciplining his students. With Blanka, his motives are not shown, but at the end, his mother recognizes him after being lost in the Brazil jungles for years, and they have a happy reunion. Finally, Zangief... Well, he just dances. The President of Russia comes, congratulates him and propose to have a party while dancing in the most russian fashion possible. 11, 13

Analysis of each level

Before begining the analysis of each level, we think worthy pointing out the fact that there are no power-ups nor items to be used in any stage, since they are fully centred on 1 vs 1 skill based matches 21 (although there are bonus stages, they do not influence nor affect the development of each match) 11, 13. On another note, is also worth mentioning that the difficulty of each level varies obviously depending on the skill of the player, but also depending on the character they are using (a grappler, shoto, charger...), how the AI is programmed to react to it and the fact that by inserting more coins you got the chance to retry from where you got stuck 12, so technically the game is beatable in the first run if you have enough cash on you.

However, its interesting the fact that the AI is oversimplified, consisting of basic instructions (walk, attack or respond to an attack) with subdivisions in each case, and because of that, there are times in which the machine shouldn't be able to do specific things, but because the code says that it has to do it, the order is executed. Long story short, sometimes the machine cheats 12.

The first seven levels consist on battle against the playable characters, excluding the one the player is using. The order in which those happen is completely irrelevant, since at the end of the day, they must all be fought. When defeating all playable characters consecutively, the game throws at the player the four NPC bosses in consecutive, separate battles, as the other ones were. Interestingly enough, the AI has scripted how to react to each type of move independently to the enemy they are fighting against, and every enemy you fight against has the same AI, so the difficulty (apart from the approach the player takes to each fighter, depending on the kind of fighter they chose) doesn't change from the first to the last opponent 11, 12.

Frame Tables and Collision boxes:

How to read these Frame Tables? Here it is what each section means:
Damage: Base damage this move does
Stun: Base stun damage this move does
Stun Timer: Hit stun that inflicts on opponent upon sucessful connection
Chain Cancel: Is it part of a chain combo?
Special Cancel: Is a move which recovery can be avoided by performing special cancel?
Frame Advantage: how many frames of difference there are between the moment you recover control of your character vs your opponent does
Frame Count: how many frames is a sprite shown in screen
Simplified: how many frames in each of the 3 parts of the move: charge, hit, recovery
Range (from axis)(just on throws): range on a throw, starting to count from middle of character
Range advantage(just on throws):range on a throw, starting to count from furthest pixel of the character's hitbox
Different versions (lp,mp,hp,lk,mk,hk): if a special move can be performed using different buttons, the different properties of each version

Note: Damage / Stun does not reflect the exact damage or stun inflicted, these are just variables appearing on a formula used to determine those factors. Such formulae are:
Non-throw damage - (base + rnd) * char_scaling * life-scaling. Base: the number displayed on the frame tables. Rnd: A random modifier. Char_scaling: each character has a damage mitigation modifier, taking X out of each Y amount: 27/32 for Ryu, Guile, Ken, Chun Li and Dhalsim; 25/32 for E.Honda and Blanka; 22/32 for Zangief, topping the list. Life-scaling: how much life the opponent has is a factor in the damage calculation: less hp adds damage reduction.
Throw damage: the same as non-throw, without character damage reduction. However, if the player is behind on rounds, damage is increased.
Dizzy damage: The amount stated in the frame table +/-3 (depending on RNG). A character gets dizzy once they reach 32 stun points.
The exact way RNG messes up with the calculations can be found on the tables at 21.

Gameplay

Controls

Street fighter 2: The World Warrior first appeared back in 1991, serving as one of the cornerstones of the “fighting game” revolution than took arcades by storm in the late 80s, early 90s era. As a clear consequence of that, the device players used to play the game was an arcade stick, which was inserted itself on a arcade cabinet 13. Later on 1992, an adaptation was released for Super Nintendo 11,14, slightly changing how the player interacted with the game. Further away from that period, the game has been re-mastered multiple times, hitting the latest instalment in 2017, with a Nintendo Switch adaptation 11. In this explanation, we'll delve specifically into the arcade stick variant of the controls, since it's both the original and the intended way to experience the game.

General Layout

6 buttons arcade stick layout 16

First, we'll start with the basics of how an arcade stick is structured. Then, we'll discuss how that layout affects directly the playability of the game.

We will use a street fighter 2 arcade stick for the sake of consistency, but the same holds true for any other 6-buttons arcade stick.

Directional Stick
Light punch, lp or Jab
Medium punch, mp or strong
Hard punch, hp or fierce
Light kick, lk or short
Medium kick, mk or forward
Hard kick, hk or roundhouse

With the directional stick, players control their characters movement, while the 6 buttons on the right are used to input an array of different attacks 21. As we're going to see in the next chapter, special moves might require a combination of both directional moves and button inputs to be executed.

User interaction

In a classic arcade stick, we see a classic motif shared between multiple gaming devices: one hand controls general directional movement while the other handles different actions.

So, how can the different aspects of the arcade stick impact gameplay? We'll go in order one by one:

Starting with the directional stick, there are 2 main properties that affect gameplay: the gate and the grip 15, 19. The gate is the piece of plastic of metal that is located beneath the stick itself, serving a double purpose: lock it into motion, preventing it from moving freely without the player's action and limiting the are in which the stick can be moved.

Average Arcade Gate 17

Back in 1991, there were 2 types of gate: square gates (the originals, made in Japan) and the octagonal gates (found later in the USA/EU adaptation of the arcade game, following the typical occidental manufacture of arcades). 15

The main two types of gates

Octagonal gate: an octagonal gate provides the user with a more sensitive response to diagonal direction. By limiting the area of the diagonal direction, the player seldom miss inputs a diagonal jump while trying to move forward or backwards (something extremely relevant if trying to input a special move, as we'll discuss later). As an added bonus, the hand position to input a crouching defence is quite different to a standing defence, since both positions don't share a vertex.

However, octagonal gates come with two problems: first of all, the central part of the stick (known as “neutral”) is quite big. This is a liability to the user, since the stick needs to traverse the region to register any kind of input. Therefore, a bigger neutral area means that the player will need to move the stick for quite a while until the stick registers the motion. This might prove especially harmful while trying to input certain special moves, as Chun Li's Spinning bird kick or Guile's Flash kick (explained in the “Super Inputs” section). The other added inconvenience is that the distance from the neutral position to the furthest point of the main 4 cardinal points is quite large. As a consequence, a player trying to input a dash (tapping forward 2 times in a sequence) needs to move the stick all the way up to the right corner of the gate, back to neutral, and all the way right one more time. As speed is crucial in street fighter, this added distance creates quite the inconvenience to the player.

Square gate: the original Japanese type of gate presents the user with a perfectly balanced distribution all across. This has quite some great attributes attached: the neutral region is significantly smaller than the octagonal one, which means that less distance has to be travelled before the stick registers the input. The second benefit is that the distance from neutral to the furthest cardinal points is remarkably smaller than the octagonal gate. This allows the player to perform faster movements, thus giving more time to the player to react (since the input that needs to be done is faster, the player has a wider time window to react).

The square gate presents only one main disadvantage: it's equal distribution of area makes it quite easy to “slip” into an undesired region if the input is not accurate. Although an experienced player would not find that a problem, the average player does not have an extremely precise control of his hand motions, thus easily making input mistakes. This is terrible from a user experience point of view: the player thought to do something, did input something “close enough” (in their eyes, good enough) and the character did not perform the desired action. If we add that already frustrating experience to the fact that fighting games are designed so players can punish their opponents mistakes, we see how terrible of a problem this becomes. Not only the player is angry since he thinks “the stick did not respond correctly to my inputs”, but he has to see how his opponent further punishes him by having a “free” round of attack.

Side note: Most professional players use a square gate, since the main disadvantage of that one is negated once the player has sharpened his skills enough. In fact, there is quite a famous anecdote regarding gates and 2 professional players: Daigo Umehara and Alex Valle. The first time Daigo leaved Japan to compete in America, he was quite afraid to face Valle, since he heard from fellow players all around the world speak highly of him. However, once the match started, he noticed Valle was going to use a octagonal American gate. From that moment, he says he was certain he could defeat him, since he regarded those type of gates (never seen in Japanese arcades) to be quite impractical and a sign of lack of finesse. 18

Side note: On modern times, some Korean arcade sticks manufacturers have started designing round gates, also known as “gateless”, since for a lack of a better name, no gate is used in the structure of the stick, allowing complete free movement. 18

The second attribute of the directional stick is the grip. Here, we see again 2 distinct model, one present in Japan and another one for EU/USA. The Japanese grip is quite a bit shorter than it's counterpart, topped with a sphere. The American stick is a bit bigger, topped with a rubber bat that descends all the way down to the middle of the stick itself.15, 19

The two main types of sticks

Bluntly put, the Japanese grip is commonly regarded as flat out better. It's smaller, thus needing less movement to input the same commands than it's American counterpart. In addition, the grip of the hand itself around the stick is noticeably smoother in the Japanese version. This is direct consequence of it's spherical form, that allows the player to grab it in quite a different plethora of ways. Here, I'll present the most common ways of grabbing the stick, and whether or not such grip is possible using each type of stick. 19

Most usual grip positions 19

However, if already used at one grip doable on an American stick, the difference is small enough so a player might prefer to stick to a familiar American stick rather than start getting used all the way up from zero with a Japanese stick. However, other than for “legacy purposes” or particular feel-driven opinion, there is no reason why anyone should use a American grip over a Japanese one.

Moving from the direction stick to the buttons, we find one major factor that defines them.

Addressing first the elephant in the room, the main characteristic that defines a button is its resistance. As a repeating trend, we find again two versions: the Japanese one, which presents buttons with almost zero resistance and the American one, which pack quite a punch. 15

Soft resistance buttons offer one major and obvious benefit: it's faster to press them. As an added bonus, they return faster to a neutral position, making them faster to press multiple times (something extremely beneficial in performing certain special moves, as Chun Li's Lightning legs). However, this advantage comes at a cost: their weak resistance makes it so they can be easily unintentionally pushed. As a consequence, when playing with this kind of buttons, the fingers can't be resting directly on the buttons, begin thus forced to be held ever so slightly above them. Keeping this “hovering finger” stance for a long period of time puts quite a strain on the hand, thus handicapping the player's action. In larger sessions of gaming (or in a tournament setting, where it is normal to face multiples best of threes in a row, topping at best of 5s or best of 7s finals) this can prove to be fatal.

On the other end of the spectrum, hard resistance buttons have one major downside and quite a few perks. Obviously, the more resistance they have, the harder they are to press, making the whole motion slower. So, what do they offer in return? Two main things: first, the whole hand can easily rest on the layout without miss-pressing any buttons. In that state, no restrain is put on the hand and the position is easily maintained for hours. As a secondary benefit, the buttons offer a characteristic distinct feel when they are pressed and when they are released. This distinction is crucial if the player tries to pull off some advanced moves using Negative Edge (further explained in gameplay, this technique allows players to input commands both at button press and button release).

Side note: The fact that the American buttons make sound once pressed is known to have caused some curious situations in tournament play. There, some players are known to react to the sound of the enemy buttons before the in game animation starts, thus giving them a slight edge (although almost negligible, it is known that humans react faster to sound than to images). As a countermeasure, some players were known to purposely press buttons at random times just to throw off their opponents. Such practice can be seen in the legendary Evo moment 37. While Daigo Umehara is trying to concentrate on the game, his adversary, Justin Wong, furiously presses the buttons on his arcade stick so the sound throws off Daigo's timing. The video can be found at [Evo Moment 37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzS96auqau0) and, focusing on Justin Wong at 0:30, one can see such practice begin used. 20

Super Motions / Special Moves

While special moves will be addressed from a gameplay perspective it's important to understand why their use and attributes are directly in relation with how they are executed. To show such relations, we will address a few moves previously mentioned in this section, plus a few more, and explain the relation between the type of stick at use and the hand motion needed to execute them. Beware, the examples shown below are just a representation, as similar instances happen multiple times in each character. 21

Input motion: Down, Up, Kick
Problem associated: If the motion from down to up is slow enough, the game will not register the input as a special move, thus making Chun Li crouch, followed by a jump and a jumping kick. This problem is aggravated on a octagonal gate, since the distance in neutral going from down to up is greater than in a square gate. As direct consequence, a faster motion is required so the game correctly interprets the motion as Spinning Bird Kick.
Similar moves: Guile's Flash Kick

Input motion: Press a Kick button multiple times rapidly
Problem associated: Pressing the buttons slow enough will make Chun Li do 1-2 regular kicks before performing Lightning Legs. If pressed quickly enough, 3 inputs can be read before the charging animation of the first kick is done, causing a cancel. When that happens, Chun Li performs Lightning Legs without the need to throw a single kick before. Using hard resistance buttons make this move significantly harder, demanding from the player more speed and strength to be put in each press.
Similar moves: Honda's Hundred times Slap, Blanka's Electricity

Input motion: Back, Forward, Punch
Problem associated: First, it's the whole Spinning Bird Kick situation all over again. In addition, there's a problem which cannot be solved, but it's a direct consequence of the infrastructure of the arcade stick. Since the motion starts with a Back input, Sonic Boom can't be performed while advancing to your opponent. Thus, it's a strictly defensive fireball, making it objectively worse than the hadouken which can be used both in offence and defence. If playing Street Fighter with a regular keyboard, one can click simultaneously back and forward (which is physically impossible on an arcade stick for obvious reasons), allowing oneself to move forward while pressing back and then releasing back and pressing punch, performing the Sonic Boom. For this reason alone, it's universally forbidden to enter any kind of Street Fighter tournament using a keyboard.
Similar moves: Honda's Sumo Headbutt, Blanka's Rolling Attack

Input motion: Back, Back-Down, Down, Down-Forward, Forward, Punch
Problem associated: Doing what it's essentially a half-circle motion can be quite difficult on a square gate in comparison to an octagonal one (trivial on a modern no-gate stick). The reason behind this is that the stick gives no distinct feeling when moving from a diagonal position to a cardinal one. For that reason alone, it can prove difficult to notice if we started the motion at Back or at Up/Down-Back AND it can be equally difficult to know when to stop (since Forward / Down-Forward / Up-Forward can be easily mistaken).
Similar moves: Zangief's Spinning Piledriver

So, as shown with this few examples, the nuances of each type of arcade stick can prove to be important to the user experience of each player, regardless of skill level or character choice.

General gameplay

Street Fighter II: the World Warrior has quite a simple game overall structure, as almost every fighting game does (specially classic 2D fighting games) 11, 21. In a 1v1 match in Street Fighter II, there are only 3 game elements interacting: the 2 characters controlled by the players and the scenario's boundaries. Even when playing solo on the arcade version, the game behaves the exact same way, only one of the characters is controlled via IA 12.

The principles of Street Fighter II

With all the information we have now, we're ready to begin to talk about how the player is supposed to play. In other words, how can the player reach Intentionality.

First thing is understanding which are the player's options at any given time: 21

Attack

Buttons
Throws
Specials

Move

Forward
Backwards
Jump
Crouch

Do nothing

React
Predict

Now that we understand what the player can do, we are now ready to talk about what should the player do (intentionality). In order to understand how a game of SFII is meant to be played we need only consider three things at any given time: character's at play, relative positions and player's status.

Character's at play: the 6 characters of SF2: The World Warrior all have distinct play styles, strengths and weaknesses. Understanding what our character does better than our opponents helps us define a game plan. Doing the same exercise from our opponents perspesctive tells us what we should avoid. For example, if playing Chun Li facing Zangief, we know our character is more nimble and has more aerial proficiency than our opponents. Since Zangief has powerful throws to break our defense, the player using Chun Li should be trying to react to Zangrief's attacks jumping over them and punishing them with an airborne normal. Reacting to them by blocking would be a risky decision, since we know Zangief does have powerful tools to respond to that.
Relative positions: It's important to take into consideration at every time where our character is, where our opponent's character is and how far are each one from a corner. To better understand this, we will discuss why in different instances.

Relative position to our opponent: the distance that separates both players is one of the most important things to have in mind at all times. Some characters are extremely dangerous at certain distances (for example Zangrief at point blank or Dhalsim at max range) while being almost useless at the opposite situation. Some characters prefer maintaining certain distance and trying to react to their opponent (Ryu), etc. Knowing where does each character shine should tell the player when to attack and where to defend, while trying at every time to position themselves in a way his character is more "dangerous" than it's opponent.
Relative position to the corner (or wall): As we have discussed in the previous point, it's extremely important to position ourselves favorably. This is accomplished by walking either forward or backwards. Due to the nature of such interaction, it is never correct for both players to pursue the same objective (that means both players should never want to approach each other or create space between them at the same time). One player should always try to approach the enemy while the other should always try to flee them. So, what happens when one of those characters hits a wall? If the character wants to create space, it's now unable to do so: being impossible to move further backwards, its only option is to either endlessly block (facing the risk of getting thrown) or move forward (which benefits the opponent). Under normal circumstances, a character that wants to close distances would be trying to get in the range of the other one. At some point, either on reaction or prediction, they would momentarily walk backwards, thus making the ranged option attacks of the opponent miss. Using their recovery time, they would be able to approach them risk-free. However, with the back on the wall, that option is gone. Therefore, they are now in a "duck in a barrel" situation, where the superior ranged options of their opponent keep them pinned to the wall, unable to respond to them. For that reason, knowing where the wall is becomes vital: one should be trying to avoid it at all times while trying to put their opponent in them..

Player status: This includes quite the collection of variables: character status flag (standing, crouching, airborne, dizzy, stunned, recovering, grounded), HP remaining of both characters, approximate dizzy % of each character (In SF2, such information is hidden to the player. If we add to that that attacks do a random amount of dizzy damage within a range, we understand how each player can only make a wild guess about how close they are to dizzyness), rounds won by each player and time remaining in the round. This is probably the more non-objective thing to keep in mind and how the player takes all of that information in consideration depends heavily on personality and gameplay preferences. However, taking all of those variables into account does help to make the correct decision. For example, if we have more HP then our opponent with 4 seconds left of round, probably is correct to just flee our opponent and try to win by default once that timer hits zero.

So, we now know how a match of SF2 is supposed to look like: two players trying to position themselves in a way they have tactical advantage, with the intent to use that advantage to reduce their opponent's HP to zero before their own HP does.

To close up the design analysis, we'll delve a bit on each playable character's gameplay 11, 21.

Dhalsim: the first instance of a keep-away character to ever appear in a fighting game. Extremely good projectiles in Yoga Fire and Yoga Flame, topping with far-reaching normals such as crouching mp or standing hk. Dhalsim always wants their opponents as far as possible. Dhalsim game plan should always be harrassing with projectiles and punishing his opponents attempts to jump over them. If the opponent is overly defensive due to his superior range, Dhalsim can be a bit more aggresive and attempt to close the gap in order to throw.

Guile: the first instance of a charge character. His more distinct move, the Sonic Boom, requires to hold back for a while in order to "charge" the move (hence the name). He's quite versatile, beign able to pressure the opponent from afar and keep his pressure at melee range (due to his hard hitting normals). Guile players should be specially aware of opponent's jump-ins, since Guile's options to punish a jump while hard-hitting and multiple, are all quite slow.

Chun Li: the most agile playable character by far. While not specially hard-hitting or enduring, his walk speed has no equal (as well as jump speed). This allows Chun Li to excel at footsies and punishing opponent mistakes. Chun Li tries to maximaze this situation and force airborne interactions, since she has multiple fast hitting attacks as well as an aerial throw.

Blanka: Rushdown character. Always wants to be up close and personal, where his good normals can shine. In order to punish opponents trying to flee, he can perform a special move (rolling attack) to launch himself forward). To punish enemy jump-ins, he can do his most recognizable move: Electricity, a hard hitting attack with a hit box on top of his body.

E. Honda: Slow moving, hard-hitting behemoth. Large health pool but slow move and jump speed. General game plan should be to slowly approach the opponent in order to try to put them in the corner. Can launch himself forward using sumo headbutt, in case the opponent whiffs an attack at far range.

Ryu: Archetypical fighter. While not shinning in any specific department, doesn't feel luckluster in any aspect. General Ryu gameplay revolves around controlling spacte using the hadouken and punishing the opponent whith shoryuken, should they try to jump over the projectile. With that said, Ryu's playstyle is highly adaptable.

Ken: Slightly more aggressive version of Ryu. Does not have the unparalleled versatily of the former, but makes up for it with a faster and stronger version of the shoryuken, as well as slightly faster normals. In terms of gameplay, it plays as a flashier version of Ryu: taking slight risks here and there, trying to predict the opponent's movement.

Zangief: First instance of a grappeler to ever appear in a fighting game. Largest health pool of the cast, slowest moves. Packing 3 different throws (crouch, standing and a special move far-reaching throw), each one extremely damaging, Zangief playstile is clear and simple: pressure the opponent and make them guess if your next move is a throw or an attack. That puts them in a 50/50 situation, where guessing wrong means taking huge chunks off their health pool and guessing right only takes a bit of Zangief's.

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