Street Fighter - The Movie

Street Fighter The Movie was released in June 1995.

3 years earlier, Midway tried to get Van Damme to do a digitized fighting game based on the movie 'Bloodsport'. When that fell through, the game was adapted into "Mortal Kombat" and its Johnny Cage character was based on Van Damme's character in Bloodsport. Things worked out great for Midway as they ended up with a game that was a huge hit instead of just a slightly prettier version of the terrible "Pit-Fighter". After seeing the success of MK, Van Damme agreed to be digitized for a game based on his Street Fighter movie. Consequently, 'Street Fighter - The Movie' turned out to be little more than a MK rip-off that lacked the charm of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter.

This game tanked in arcades for two reasons. The first being that the Street Fighter live-action movie that this game is based on was universally panned by moviegoers and video game fans alike (read: the movie was TERRIBLE). The second reason was that many diehard Street Fighter fans just didn't find the digitized characters appealing, as they lacked the initial charm of the original drawn sprites. What was overlooked, however, was that this is a decent fighting game in its own right and failed due to poor marketing and public squeamishness.

This arcade game marks Raul Julia's second appearance in coin-ops, the first being the highly popular Addams Family pinball table. This makes him a member of a very exclusive club within arcade games: A man who lent his likeness and talents to a commercial triumph and a turkey within 5 years. Sadly Raul Julia passed away on October 24, 1994 from a stroke aged 54. This game was released eight months after his death and Street Fighter - The Movie was his second to last role.

In the SFTM game, you can have Fei Long's theme as a secret theme, but Fei Long himself has no connections to the movie whatsoever. Why is that? According to documents at the time, the role that Fei Long was going to play was replaced by Captain Sawada, largely because there was not enough character development for Fei Long in SSF2.

* CAST:
Guile: Jean-Claude Van Damme
M. Bison: Raul Julia (1940-1994), Darko Tuscan
Chun-Li: Ming-Na Wen
Cammy: Kylie Minogue
Ryu: Byron Mann
Sagat: Wes Studi
Ken: Damian Chapa
Vega: Jay Tavare
Balrog: Grand L. Bush
Honda: Peter Twiasosopo
Zangief: Andrew Bryniarski
Sawada: Kenya Sawada
Akuma: Ernie Reyes, Sr.
Blade: Alan Noon

After beating the game with Blade it will be revealed that he is Guile's brother. In addition it says that Blade's real name and profession is Gunloc, a wrestler. Gunloc is a wrestler from Capcom's "Saturday Night Slam Masters". Blade's fourth consecutive throw reversal is called a 'Slam Master'.

In Chun-Li's ending it says she goes back to the United States and becomes a medical resident in a Chicago emergency room. The actress that played Chun-Li (Ming Na Wen) played the role of Jing-Mei 'Deb' Chen (1994-1995 and 2000-2004) on NBC's medical drama E.R. (Emergency Room) that takes place on Chicago County General Hospital.