Back in 1993, Capcom released a hilariously cheesy and awesome tutorial and strategy video for Street Fighter 2 called “Street Fighter 2: Mastering Great Combinations & Strategies.” Looking back at it from the lens of today, the video is VERY 90’s, and it kind of lives in infamy within the fighting game community as many of us have encountered it at some point in passing.
Despite this old school VHS tape being a legitimate tutorial video with actual combos and tech, it is best known in the community for its cringey early 90’s lingo, music, transitions, and jokes. Whether it can actually teach you anything is a separate question, but fighting game legend Justin Wong aimed to answer said question with one of his latest videos in which he watches the tape to see just how legit it actually is.
This special tutorial video follows the host — a young, “hip” 90’s dude — who goes on a trek to get behind the scenes and find a professional player to learn new Street Fighter 2 tactics from. The player Capcom employed here as the pro is an actual SF2 legend, Tomo Ohira, who is still to this day regarded as one of the greatest to ever compete in the game.
The dude host heads to the Capcom headquarters in Northern California to get all of the juicy details on Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Street Fighter 2 Special Champion Edition. Unfortunately for Justin Wong, the fighting game veteran has to endure all kinds of extreme guitar riffs and bad jokes to try and find the nuggets of truth in this interesting tutorial.
At the top of the video, Wong shares a clip of an example combo from the video that can clearly be seen is a combo drop. We see E. Honda jump in with a heavy punch, hit close standing heavy punch, and completely fail to cancel into his Hundred Hand Slap special move.
While that does set a pretty obvious tone for the whole video here, you might be surprised to find that JWong does actually come across some useful tech here.
During the Ryu portion of the video, we (and seemingly Justin Wong) learn that the franchise’s poster boy can actually anti-air Dhalsim’s drills with a Hurricane Kick. JWong remarks when seeing this tip in action by saying that this tech is actually godlike and compliments the tutorial for teaching specific match up strategies.
There is so much going on this tutorial, so be sure to check out Justin Wong’s full video below to see him suffer through bad voice overs, crazy hairdos, and some useful tips buried under a lot of goofy stuff. We have also included the full tutorial video here, if you’re curious to see it yourself.