Street Fighter II wasn’t the first fighting game — it wasn’t even the first Street Fighter — but its colorful characters and precise controls catapulted the genre into the mainstream.
The game had a knack for drawing in players of all skill levels, from button-mashing newbies to Hadouken-spamming intermediates to the pros who effortlessly pull off every combo. Perhaps that’s why pop culture still remembers characters like Blanka and Chun Li, even as it ignores world champion fighting game players who still face off in Street Fighter II tournaments every year.