The making of Street Fighter II

Its been a while since I’ve made an update though I only really bother when I find something worth sharing. As such, I stumbled across this today, which turned out to be a very interesting read. It turns out that some time back a guy stumbled across an old cellophane wrapped book promoting the making of SF2. Opun opening it to his dismay it turned out to only really feature images and information that everyone has seen or read before – until he turned to the final pages:

I didn’t really know what to expect, since the book was cellophaned shut. Opening it at home, I found that the bulk of the book was full-color plates of the same SFII production art that has appeared in all eight hundred million Street Fighter II art books out there. But the last few pages, a black and white section, turned out to be the most fascinating, especially since I had never seen anything like it before. It was filled with early sketches of SFII designs and characters that were completely different from the final game. And through the magic of digital image scanning technology coupled with the World Wide Internet, now you can share this joy with me.

Check out his site here:

http://www.insertcredit.com/features/makingsf2/

Which gives a bit of a run down plus high resolution scans of his find. Oddly, I recall seeing the Vega design sketch in a ‘Computer and Video Games’ magazine from the early ’90s. I always figured this was a much cooler design for Vega but in the end his final lithe design makes him quite unique and brought a new personality to the game. What I find most interesting are the discarded stage designs – some of which cropped up again in subsequent SF2 and SF3 games.

Enjoy!