How far we’ve come and how good we have it that in modern times developers and players stand on the lessons learned from over three decades of fighting game play, but zip back to the mid 1990’s when Capcom took one of its earliest shots at a comeback mechanic, and didn’t tell anyone they had.
In his latest video “Street Fighter’s 25 Year Old Secret” Theory Fighter unveils and examines this hidden buff for losing players, and suffice it to say people would not be happy if it were implemented in modern titles like Street Fighter 6.
Especially back in the day, the fighting game genre had a reputation for being relatively difficult to break into as it required someone go through tons of losses (and quarters) as they repeatedly fell to learned players before finally getting good enough to start eeking out wins.
How do you get newcomers to stick around long enough to figure out how to throw a proper hadoken or land a full combo? One means is to give them (sometimes not so) little bonuses and enhancements that might give them a fighting chance.
Comeback mechanics have been tricky beasts since their earliest iterations (arguably Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo’s Super attacks) as they’re meant to keep the action interesting but can so easily remove the semblance of justice from the experience since they’re, at their core, rewards for losing.
While this surely does make things more accessible for newbies, more seasoned players tend to have bones to pick with such mechanics, as has been evidenced by the widely negative reactions to things like Street Fighter 4’s Ultras or Street Fighter 5’s V-Triggers.
Over time developers like Capcom have really dialed things in for a best of both worlds experience, but that wasn’t the case in 1996.
It took some time for people to realize it (remember, no training mode and no internet) but Street Fighter Alpha 2 actually gave a damage boost to the character that lost the first round. We’ll let Theory Fighter explain all the ins and outs, so give his video a watch and let us know what you think about this crazy mechanic in the comments after.