One of the things that has established Street Fighter as being on the Mount Rushmore of fighting games, along with impeccable mechanics that have withstood the test of time, is the eclectic variety in its roster. Ki-garbed human martial artists like Ryu and Ken can fight alongside a masked Spanish ninja like Vega, or a monstrous nigh-demon like Akuma. Alongside probably Mortal Kombat, the Street Fighter franchise has the most recognizable cast of characters in fighting games and one of the most iconic ensembles in gaming period, and it’s easy to see why when each addition is filled with personality.
The personality of those individual characters, like any fighting game, translates to the movesets of each character as well. Although the Hadouken fireball special attack was introduced in the original Street Fighter, the input to complete the move was notoriously difficult to the point of redundancy; however, the introduction of frame buffering in the acclaimed Street Fighter 2 made the move a lot easier to perform and in the process helped make it a mainstay of pop culture. Despite being B-movie hokey, the iconic fireball doesn’t appear in the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, but the first officially released clip from this year’s live-action Street Fighter reboot lets us know to expect not only the Hadouken, but a whole buffet of superpowered martial arts combat as well.
