In 1987, Capcom released a game calledStreet Fighter, a game that, at the time, wasn’t very popular. Four years later, however, Capcom released a sequel to the originalStreet Fighterknown asStreet Fighter 2: The World Warrior, and in a twist no one saw coming, the game’s popularity exploded. It went on to become the most influential fighting game of all time, allowing it to generate seven different iterations of itself over the years and to sell over 15.5 million copies to become the best-selling fighting game of all time. Then September 30th, 2019 rolled around.
On this day, Nintendo’s half-year report claimed thatStreet Fighterhad been surpassed by a beloved fighting game of the company’s own design.Super Smash Bros. Ultimatehas now sold over 15.7 million copies, surpassingStreet Fighter2 across all of its iterations to become the newest best-selling fighter every released.Ultimatehas also helped theSmashseries as a whole become one of the highest-grossing video game series of all time, which was expectedconsidering the game only took 11 days to sell over 3 million copies.
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From the very beginning,Super Smash Bros. Ultimateplaced itself as a cut above the rest of theSmash Bros.titles because it opted to use every fighter ever released in aSmashgame. The game presented itself as the magnum opus of theSmash Bros.collection and has been profiting wondrously because of it. One of the biggest appeals of theSmashseries is its conglomerate of characters, which plays on a number of different fandoms to bring in a greater variety of players than any single property could do on its own. Despite all of this, it’s still surprising to hear that it took less than a year forUltimateto surpassStreet Fighter 2in sales.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimateis the newest king of fighting games and deservingly so, but while it may hold the title monetary-wise, it doesn’t erase whatStreet Fighter 2has done for the genre. There is a reason the game is still considered the most influential fighting game of all time. The very concept of combos wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the game’s conception. It’s also interesting to point out thatStreet Fighterhelped shapedUltimate, lending the game both Ryu and Ken, the franchise’s protagonist and deuteragonist, respectively. In the end, both games offer their own special brand fun to players all around the world.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimateis out now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.
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