The Story of Street Fighter

[Slimybug]

Hello, all! I’m trying to figure out the story of the Street Fighter games and where those story details came from.

I’m a big Mortal Kombat fan, and just now decided to get into Street Fighter. The story of Mortal Kombat, aside from brief synopses at the beginning of the games, comes from the individual character’s bios and endings. The beginning of the next game would consistently show that Liu Kang’s ending was the canonical one. However, even though the other character’s endings weren’t “real,” the details revealed about them in those endings were.

I decided to take this same approach to Street Fighter. But I soon became confused.

Street Fighter II is still the most famous game, with the most famous characters. That story appears to simply be about a tournament, but with some of the characters like Chun-Li and Guile being undercover officials with different agencies investigating the proprietor of the tournament, M. Bison, who runs the Shadaloo/Shadowlaw crime ring.

The next game, Street Fighter Alpha, is a prequel, with basically the exact same plot. Chun-Li appears to have entered a tournament to investigate Bison twice in a row.

Street Fighter III is about a whole new tournament, with mostly new characters, with no information on what the “real” ending of Street Fighter II was. Whatsmore, the next two games in the series, IV & V, take place between II & III, so III appears to be as far ahead as the story gets.

The synopsis for Street Fighter IV is what really confuses me, and I find myself thinking that there are story details about the end of SFII that, that it’s being presumed that I should know, which I've somehow missed.

" Street Fighter IV takes place several months after the events of Street Fighter II After [M. Bison]'s survival following his encounter with [Akuma] the S.I.N. corporation began another fighting tournament in order to draw out the most powerful fighters on Earth to complete the BLECE project. Each character has their own reasons for entering this tournament, but S.I.N.'s real desire is to lure Ryu to them in order to analyze the Satsui no Hadō, believed to be the last piece of data needed to complete BLECE."

Woah, so let’s back up. I take it Akuma is the one who canonically defeated Bison at the end of SFII? All of a suddenly they’re talking about S.I.N., which I’v never heard of before.

So, is there some other resource that I was supposed to have gotten ahold of to know the story?

[king81992]

S.I.N is a relatively new addition to Street Fighter lore, their organization is a rival to M. Bison's Shadoloo group. Shadoloo itself is just a means to an end for Bison, his endgame has always been obtaining a body capable of sustaining his Psycho Power and taking over the world once he's obtained a new body.

Chun Li entered a tournament twice in a row to investigate Bison, but the circumstances were different each time. First time, she went on her own to avenge her father's death. Second time, Rose recruited Chun Li and others to enter the tournament to help put down Bison after his return.

Rose and Bison's relationship is another story entirely and explains the nature of their powers and a lot of other things too.

[Immortal Weapon]

Street Fighter's story is a confusing mess. Here are a few things you need to know.

There is no tournament in Alpha. In the Alpha games all the characters are doing their own thing. Chun-li in Alpha 2 is investigating her father's disappearance and that's what leads her to Bison. Bison tells her he killed him and that's what leads to quest to avenge him in Alpha 3 and SF2. Another important thing to know is that Alpha 2 overrides Alpha 1 so the first game can be ignored.

Street Fighter 3 like Alpha the second game overrides the plot of the first one. Third Strike has a plot that takes place a year after Second Impact and it's not a tournament. It's like Alpha where all the characters are doing their own thing.

Akuma encounter with Bison in SF2 is not canon. Bison nor Akuma don't make reference to it in their win quotes against each other in SF4 and SF5 and there's no longer material to suggest they ever encountered each other. SIN is Shadoloo weapons R&D that went rogue.

If you want to know about Street Fighter's plot and lore this is a good place to start.
https://forums.shoryuken.com/t/the-u...ad/586509/7808

[Slimybug]

The problem is, everybody seems to be explaining story detail without really any reference to where it comes from.

So, just to make sure, there's no real canonical ending of SF2, and what happened to Bison and his organization afterwards?

[king81992]

The problem is, everybody seems to be explaining story detail without really any reference to where it comes from.

So, just to make sure, there's no real canonical ending of SF2, and what happened to Bison and his organization afterwards?

Bison 'died' in Street Fighter 2. He came back by transferring his consciousness/ soul to either Cammy or Rose. Shadoloo scientists created a new body for him(based on his original one) and his consciousness/ soul returned to the backup body. S.I.N(which was originally part of Shadoloo) went rogue while Bison was recovering, but Bison's henchmen kept Shadoloo running and he resumed leadership.

[Slimybug]

So, where is all that stated? I didn't find that in any of the game material I've looked at so far.

[Xero Kaiser]

If you want to know about Street Fighter's plot and lore this is a good place to start.
https://forums.shoryuken.com/t/the-u...ad/586509/7808

Wow. It's been years since I've been to SRK.

That new layout is weird.

So, where is all that stated?

Various Art/Data books and developer statements over the years. Good luck finding it all in one place. Combing through the various SRK threads that Immortal Weapon linked is your best bet if you've got the patience, but Capcom retcons things so frequently that's it's probably not even worth the effort.

[Immortal Weapon]

Wow. It's been years since I've been to SRK.

That new layout is weird.



Various Art/Data books and developer statements over the years. Good luck finding it all in one place. Combing through the various SRK threads that Immortal Weapon linked is your best bet if you've got the patience, but Capcom retcons things so frequently that's it's probably not even worth the effort.

The guys in the thread compiled all the information they gathered and their sources into a one drive document on the OP.

[Xero Kaiser]

The guys in the thread compiled all the information they gathered and their sources into a one drive document on the OP.

Ah okay. For a minute I thought it was that old SF plot guide that used to be on SRK. That's probably been retconned to hell by now though.

[Slimybug]

Al right, I checked out that One Drive document, and yeah, it's a lot to digest. I'll get into it, but I wanted to clear a few things up first. Since everyone's saying canonical story material comes from creator statements, art books, and the like, I was wondering if it would be easy for anyone to just point out some of those on here.

I decided I wanted to go back and re-watch all the endings and re-read the manual bios. The first two games make sense.

There is no tournament in Alpha. In the Alpha games all the characters are doing their own thing. Chun-li in Alpha 2 is investigating her father's disappearance and that's what leads her to Bison. Bison tells her he killed him and that's what leads to quest to avenge him in Alpha 3 and SF2. Another important thing to know is that Alpha 2 overrides Alpha 1 so the first game can be ignored.

So here's just what I can tell from the manuals. Alpha's manual has a plot summary that says there's a tournament going on. Alpha 2 seems to just be an upgrade to Alpha 1, not a sequel. The endings are different, but the endings all exist each in their own little alternate reality, it would seem (like in MK). Chun-Li's ending seems semi-canonical as it's where she learns Bison killed her father, showing she didn't know it was him before.

The ending with Ryu and Akuma makes no sense. First, it seems we should know more about Akuma than what has been given to us in the game. Then, he tells Ryu "When the “Evil Intent” awakens in you, then you will know.” So yeah, there seems to be something going on here we should know about.

So based on your statement about Chun-Li, I take it that Alpha 3 is meant to be a sequel, not an upgrade, to Alpha 2. That's itneresting,b ecause the Alpha 3 manual has no story material listed at all. No plot summary, and no character bios. So I start the Alpha 3 endings, and first thing that happens is that Bison says to Ryu "You will be my new host body." That washes with what another person said on here, about how Bison changes body, but again, it's not talked about in the games and manuals.

Again, I'm fully planning on reading the One Drive document, I just wanted to get some clarification in the meantime if it's not too much trouble. So if anyone knows some specific sources where the players at the time the games came out were getting these story details from, that'd be great!

[Immortal Weapon]

Al right, I checked out that One Drive document, and yeah, it's a lot to digest. I'll get into it, but I wanted to clear a few things up first. Since everyone's saying canonical story material comes from creator statements, art books, and the like, I was wondering if it would be easy for anyone to just point out some of those on here.

I decided I wanted to go back and re-watch all the endings and re-read the manual bios. The first two games make sense.
So here's just what I can tell from the manuals. Alpha's manual has a plot summary that says there's a tournament going on. Alpha 2 seems to just be an upgrade to Alpha 1, not a sequel. The endings are different, but the endings all exist each in their own little alternate reality, it would seem (like in MK). Chun-Li's ending seems semi-canonical as it's where she learns Bison killed her father, showing she didn't know it was him before.

The ending with Ryu and Akuma makes no sense. First, it seems we should know more about Akuma than what has been given to us in the game. Then, he tells Ryu "When the “Evil Intent” awakens in you, then you will know.” So yeah, there seems to be something going on here we should know about.

So based on your statement about Chun-Li, I take it that Alpha 3 is meant to be a sequel, not an upgrade, to Alpha 2. That's itneresting,b ecause the Alpha 3 manual has no story material listed at all. No plot summary, and no character bios. So I start the Alpha 3 endings, and first thing that happens is that Bison says to Ryu "You will be my new host body." That washes with what another person said on here, about how Bison changes body, but again, it's not talked about in the games and manuals.

Again, I'm fully planning on reading the One Drive document, I just wanted to get some clarification in the meantime if it's not too much trouble. So if anyone knows some specific sources where the players at the time the games came out were getting these story details from, that'd be great!

Everything about Alpha 2 being an upgrade and not sequel is correct. Also most of the endings in Alpha 2 are canonical. Chun ending is obvious. Charlie ending in Alpha 2 is his canonical death and it's the one that's recreated in SF5. Charlie story in Alpha 3 has been retconned out of existence. Adon ending in Alpha 2 is canon because his story in Alpha 3 continues from that ending. Same for characters like Sodom, Rolento and Gen. Alpha 3 is pretty good at continuing the character plots from Alpha 2.

The "evil intent" is the Satsui no Hado. It's a dark energy that Ryu can tap into and it's the plot device he been struggling with for most of the series. Tapping into the Satsui no Hado is how he defeated and scarred Sagat in the original game. Akuma wants Ryu to succumb to it's power like he did so he can have the fight to the death he yearns for. Evil Ryu is what he will become if he does.

Yes, Alpha 3 is a sequel. Unlike the other old school SF games the characters bios are within the game. The game tells you what the character story is when you start arcade mode. When it comes to Alpha 3 the prologue and rival battle dialogue tells the bulk of their story in that game.

[Slimybug]

Yes, Alpha 3 is a sequel. Unlike the other old school SF games the characters bios are within the game. The game tells you what the character story is when you start arcade mode. When it comes to Alpha 3 the prologue and rival battle dialogue tells the bulk of their story in that game.

Aw, man, that helps a ton! Just what I was looking for! Now it's on to youtubing all the story & endings from that game before trying to figure out the story of Street Fighter III!