Street Fighter II

Street Fighter II
Japanese arcade brochure featuring the original eight main characters. Clockwise from top: Zangief, Ken, Blanka, Dhalsim, Ryu, Guile, and Honda. Center: Chun-Li.
Developer(s)Capcom
Publisher(s)Capcom
Producer(s)Yoshiki Okamoto
Designer(s)
Programmer(s)
  • Shinichi Ueyama
  • Seiji Okada
  • Yoshihiro Matsui
  • Motohide Eshiro
Artist(s)
  • Eri Nakamura
  • Satoru Yamashita
Composer(s)
SeriesStreet Fighter
Platform(s)
Release
March 7, 1991
  • Arcade
    • JP: March 7, 1991
    • WW: March 1991
    SNES
    • JP: June 10, 1992
    • NA: July 15, 1992
    • AU: October 23, 1992
    • UK: October 1992
    • EU: December 17, 1992
    MS-DOS
    • EU: July 10, 1992
    • NA: April 26, 1993
    Amiga
    • EU: November 15, 1992
    • UK: December 15, 1992
    Atari ST
    • EU: December 20, 1992
    Amstrad CPC
    • EU: December 31, 1992
    Commodore 64
    • EU: August 20, 1992
    ZX Spectrum
    • EU: September 14, 1992
    CPS Changer
    • JP: July 14, 1994
    Game Boy
    • JP: August 11, 1995
    • NA: September 1995
    • EU: 1995
Genre(s)Fighting
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer
Arcade systemCP System

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is a 1991 fighting game developed and published by Capcom for arcades. It is the second installment in the Street Fighter series and the sequel to 1987's Street Fighter. Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto and Akira Yasuda, who had previously worked on the game Final Fight, it is the fourteenth game to use Capcom's CP System arcade system board. Street Fighter II vastly improved many of the concepts introduced in the first game, including the use of special command-based moves, a combo system, a six-button configuration, and a wider selection of playable characters, each with a unique fighting style.

Street Fighter II became the best-selling game since the golden age of arcade video games. By 1994, it had been played by an estimated 25 million people in the United States alone. More than 200,000 arcade cabinets and 15 million software units of every version of Street Fighter II have been sold worldwide, earning an estimated $10 billion in total revenue, making it one of the top three highest-grossing video games of all time as of 2017 and the best-selling fighting game until 2019. More than 6.3 million SNES cartridges of Street Fighter II were sold, making it Capcom's best-selling single software game for the next two decades, its best-selling game on a single platform, and the highest-selling third-party game on the SNES.

Street Fighter II is regarded as a pop culture phenomenon, one of the greatest video games of all time and the most important and influential fighting game ever made. Its launch is seen as a revolutionary moment within its genre, credited with popularizing the fighting genre during the 1990s and inspiring other producers to create their own fighting series. Additionally, it prolonged the survival of the declining video game arcade business market by stimulating business and driving the fighting game genre. It prominently features a popular two-player mode that obligates direct, human-to-human competitive play, inspiring grassroots tournament events, culminating in Evolution Championship Series (EVO). Street Fighter II shifted the arcade competitive dynamic from achieving personal-best high scores to head-to-head competition, including large groups. Due to its major success, a series of updated versions were released with additional features and characters, starting with 1992's Street Fighter II: Champion Edition; its major successor was Street Fighter III in 1997.