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  1. #1
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    Default The Story of Street Fighter

    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?

  2. #2
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    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.
    Last edited by king81992; 04-12-2020 at 04:16 AM.

  3. #3
    Put a smile on that face Immortal Weapon's Avatar
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    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

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    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?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Slimybug View Post
    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.

  6. #6
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    So, where is all that stated? I didn't find that in any of the game material I've looked at so far.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Immortal Weapon View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Slimybug View Post
    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.

  8. #8
    Put a smile on that face Immortal Weapon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Xero Kaiser View Post
    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.

  9. #9
    Put a smile on that face Immortal Weapon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Slimybug View Post
    So, where is all that stated? I didn't find that in any of the game material I've looked at so far.
    Street Fighter's plot has never been told within the games. All this stuff as Xeno said came from art books, resources books, dev interviews and other supplementary material.

    Here's the plot guide the SRK guys compiled if you want everything in one place
    https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?...MriJxiyplJ-Z_E

  10. #10
    Better than YOU! Alan2099's Avatar
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    Capcom has a bad habbit of retconnign things and then only explaining the retcons in obscure art books and the like.

    I've seen about four different official ways the original Street Fighter tournament ends.

  11. #11
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    I think a preview trailer is the closest we've gotten to seeing the canonical ending of the SF2 tournament. Bison getting wrecked by 5 characters before he made his escape and transfer his mind to a clone body.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Immortal Weapon View Post
    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.

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Xero Kaiser View Post
    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.
    The keeper of the old plot guide had a major blow up with the SRK guys. His credibility sank like a rock when other Japanese speakers within the community noticed how awful his translations of the Japanese sources were when they actually got a hold of it and he put his personal fanon into the guide. There were also other issues with him like his refusal to acknowledge the retcons, not wanting to recognize the SF4 animes and aftermatch trailers even though they were produced by Capcom and tie directly into SF4 plot and turning down all western sources because he believed that Capcom's localization team were still in the early 90s. With his rep shot he threaten to nuke the guide and that's why the plot guide 2 was created. Last I checked, the original guide hasn't been updated since the summer of 2016.

  14. #14
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    Damn. When I was browsing through the more recent posts I was wondering why he wasn't around. I guess that explains it.

  15. #15
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    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.
    Quote Originally Posted by Immortal Weapon View Post
    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!
    Last edited by Slimybug; 04-19-2020 at 06:45 PM.

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