When it comes to Street Fighter, or perhaps fighting games in general, which character holds the title of strongest overall is always a hot topic of discussion. Given that the Street Fighter franchise is over 35 years old now, there are more than a few top dogs to remember from over the last few decades.
Enter JM Crofts and his latest video wherein he goes over some 19 different iterations of Street Fighter to help us relive nightmares and recall the characters that gave us the hardest times.
No, there aren’t 19 Street Fighters exactly, but for our purposes the multiple major updates most entries went through stand alone as examples. Crofts kicks things off with Street Fighter 1 (don’t worry, he doesn’t spend too much time explaining the game’s single playable character) before launching into the five different iterations we got for Street Fighter 2.
He then covers all three Alpha entries as well as all three Street Fighter 3 entries before detailing the tippy top tiers of all five notable versions of Street Fighter 4. Both Street Fighters 5 and 6 appear on the list, but they get just one character a piece.
There will surely be some characters you expect to see as the likes of the infamous Arcade Edition Yun, Third Strike Chun, and Vanilla Sagat all make expected appearances. Even so, being reminded of exactly why these characters were so incredibly overpowered compared to their respective roster mates is always interesting, as we look back with 20/20 hindsight and judge the decisions made by developers back in the day.
We all know that Vega (Claw) was the great bane of Super Turbo, but do you know off top of head the top tier from the original Street Fighter 2? This was before boss characters like Vega, Sagat, Balrog, and M. Bison were added, as well as before the New Challengers increased the roster count.
How about in the original version of Street Fighter 3, or Super Street Fighter 4? Some of these characters didn’t shine as brightly as the ones that’ve been forever etched into our memories, but hearing the reasons why they stood atop as the absolute best might make you double take a few times.
Give the full video below a watch and let us know in the comments if you disagree with any of Croft’s picks (I always thought E. Honda was the best in Super Street Fighter 4) and feel free to share any personal experiences with these crazy good characters.