Street Fighter – 1987 Developer Interview

Takashi Nishiyama - Director
Hiroshi Matsumoto - Designer

—To begin, tell us how the Street Fighter development got underway.

Nishiyama: I was at a meeting one day, and I was just zoning out, thinking about random game ideas. Back in the day, there was an electro-mechanical arcade machine where you did karate chops to break bricks. I was wondering if you could make that into a video game. That was the genesis of the idea for Street Fighter.

I don't think there's been a video game yet that really captures the feeling of sports and athletics. Game centers often had this dark atmosphere where you're playing by yourself, but I was thinking it would be nice to have a game that's much brighter, something you could cathartically release your strength and power on. Also, I believe at that time Capcom had been thinking about making large-cabinet arcade games…

—We interviewed Capcom previously and they told us about their experience getting into the large-cabinet arcade game market. Was the Street Fighter development already underway then?

Nishiyama: That was the Spring of 1986. Yeah, the development had already started then. Actually, I had been wanting to try making a large-size "taikan" cabinet for more than a year before that. I also felt that with our current technological capabilities and know-how we might not be able to compete with the major manufacturers in terms of ordinary arcade cabinet games, but a game like Street Fighter, I thought, might be a perfect candidate for a Capcom large-cabinet arcade game.

—I don't think there's been a game like Street Fighter yet. I can only imagine how much of a challenge it must have been to develop...?

Nishiyama: Yeah, we didn't have any experience making a game and cabinet like this. The buttons are pneumatic and measure how hard you hit them, but this design caused the mechanical engineer no end of trouble. The pipes inside the cabinet kept getting disconnected... there were a lot of issues. The original idea was my own, but the hammering out of all the annoying little details is really owed to Matsumoto's efforts, and I think he had the lion's share of the troubles.

Matsumoto: Well, it was stressful at times, but I am grateful to Nishiyama for giving me the chance to work on something like this.

—What kind of challenges did you face, Matsumoto?

Matsumoto: During the development, the pneumatic buttons didn't yet have their rubber covers. All that pounding made my hands swell up.

Nishiyama: I remember one time he stayed up for two nights straight working non-stop, and at the end he was in a complete daze. I called to him from across the office "Matsumoto-kun!"… normally he'd come running right over, but there was no response. When I found him there staring into oblivion I fed him two energy drinks right away. (laughs)

Matsumoto: I also had a hard time communicating with the character designers and the programmers. This development was a big learning experience for me in that regard.

Nishiyama: When you're the planner for a game, you can't get angry. You've got to always stay level-headed. It's fine to rage at the program and the hardware. When you get stuck on a development, of course it's not just anger you feel, but fatigue, too. Basically everyone starts to go a little koo-koo. The planners job in that situation is to sort of cushion the blow by listening to everyone's concerns.

—But doesn't that lead to you getting more stressed out...?

Nishiyama: It can get frustrating, yeah. And that's partly why we made this game, so you could take out your anger on it. We sometimes jokingly refer to it as "Stress Fighter". (laughs) It's one of those games for sure. Please play this game to relieve your stress.

—Next I wanted to ask some questions about the content of Street Fighter. It looks like you researched various martial arts and fighting styles when you created the characters.

Matsumoto: Martial arts have been an interest of mine since I was a student, and I'd collected a lot of good materials over the years. Those came in handy.

—Those moves the enemies use... do they really exist?

Matsumoto: It's more like they're in the spirit of real moves. We based them on these research materials I have, and though they don't exist in reality, they're based on actual moves that we studied closely and then altered to look more visually impressive.

—The final match takes place in Thailand.

Matsumoto: Yeah, it was our way of saying Muay Thai is the strongest.

Nishiyama: Everyone came up with their own stories about that character.

—I think you mentioned something like that in our earlier interview...

Nishiyama: Yeah, people imagined all kind of backstory for the characters. Like, "Mike is actually a good person, but his sister got sick so he became a Street Fighter to save money for her medical treatment." 1

—Speaking of the characters, weren't the English fighters named after golf words?

Matsumoto: Birdy and Eagle, yeah.

—Where did the idea for that hadouken come from?

Nishiyama: The basic idea was mine, but Matsumoto took it and fleshed it out further.

—Nishiyama, as you were the person who came up with the idea for this game, how does it feel seeing the completed version now?

Nishiyama: To be honest with you, it came out different from my initial image, but it's close. If we say 65 is a passing mark, I would give Matsumoto a 75.

—...that's a harsh grade!

Nishiyama: Is it though? No developments ever turn out exactly as you think, after all. I think he did a very good job. I'm very close to satisfied.

—How are the actual enemy movements done?

Matsumoto: Their movements are random, more or less. Several patterns are selected at random. It takes into account the spacing between the player too, when choosing the most appropriate series of moves to execute. Those are also selected randomly from several possibilities.

—How many different moves are there?

Matsumoto: On the player side… there's a lot. Let me see… about 16, I think. There are slightly fewer enemy attacks, maybe 6 or 7 different types. I think the Shaolin fighter has the most. Some of the moves look different depending on the spacing between the fighters, too.

—The fighters all seem to have different moves.

Matsumoto: Yeah. If they had the same moves, you'd be able to win by just doing the same pattern every time. We didn't think that would be fun. Those kind of games get boring rather quickly.

—I feel that the Thai fighter Adon is a prime example of that. I've had a lot of people ask me for reliable strategies on how to defeat him, but I think it's precisely because there isn't one definite winning strategy that makes it interesting. I think the fight with Adon is the most interesting of them all.

Matsumoto: Really? Nice. We hear a lot of people say, "Why is he stronger than his master?!"

—Speaking of which, did you know that Sagat can be defeated just by ducking and punching?

Matsumoto: Yeah, we kind of did, but we also felt like, if you make it all the way to Sagat and then just duck and hit punch over and over, that approach is pretty physically exhausting in its own way, so we just left it in. We tried it and our arms felt like they were about to cramp up, so it wasn't exactly easy. It's not foolproof either; you can still lose with that approach. So our feeling was, hey, if you want to work up a sweat with that strategy, give it a shot.

—Changing the subject a little here, but that huge cabinet really does stand out in an arcade.

Nishiyama: We asked Atari of America to design it. They did a great job, befitting their name. For some reason you don't see a lot of cabinets like that from Japanese designers.

As for what we asked Atari to do, first and foremost we wanted it to be sturdy enough to handle the beating it was sure to take. Then we wanted it to be visually showy, impressive enough that players would flock to it on sight alone. What Atari came back with was the design you see today.

—It does attract a ton of people. The design lets people standing around see what's happening clearly, so it's fun just to watch. If the players stand just slightly to the side, the onlookers can see everything straight away.

Nishiyama: From the reports we've heard from arcades where it's installed, it draws big, excited crowds. And that was exactly what we were aiming for with the design. Not to be too pretentious about it, but I had hoped it would help revitalize the game centers.

—Not only the cabinet, but the big monitor makes an impression too.

Nishiyama: Having a big monitor like that was something I wanted to do from the very beginning, for that exact purpose. Unfortunately a big monitor reveals a lot of the flaws in the graphics too… but even so, I think the 26" screen size could become the new standard for arcade games.

—I imagine it will depend on the type of game.

Nishiyama: Yeah. Street Fighter is a game with big graphics, so it works. For cocktail cabinets a bigger screen might actually make things more difficult to see.

—Speaking of which, I understand there was a cocktail cabinet version of Street Fighter at the recent AM Show. I wonder how hard the hadoukens were to execute on that...

Nishiyama: The inputs are the same. But you do have to do them a little faster. It's a difficulty offset given the buttons are easier to press.

Matsumoto: We made the smaller cocktail version because there are a limited number of game centers that accomodate full upright cabinets.

—I noticed there were six buttons in the cocktail cabinet.

Nishiyama: Unlike the analog pneumatic buttons which register how strong you hit them, these are digital, so we needed to six to represent the variety of punches and kicks. Six buttons… it makes a nice impact, right? I hope people try out the cocktail cabinet version too.

—Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. Would you like to make any final comments about Street Fighter?

Nishiyama: Being a game planner means you have to start thinking about your next game as soon as you finish your current one—there's not much time to catch your breath. For us, the biggest stress relief we get is seeing players recognize our efforts by enjoying the game.

Matsumoto: It's been a long, hard road, but perhaps the biggest hardship has been having no free time and being unable to go on any dates. (laughs) On the rare occasions I have time off, I don't play games at all and just relax.

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