I remember the first time seeing it.
it was the first game in the arcade that consistently had a long line.
I was a kid, and all the guys in line were teenagers, so I couldn't see over them.
I decided to stand in line and eventually tried it out (although there were lines of quarters on there too, which I didn't understand yet.
I got my arse kicked quickly..but I never experienced such a game like it.
Sure there were other head to head martial arts games and I remember SF1 with its big mashing buttons..but they sucked. SF2 was so awesome.
It was the only arcade game where I spent so much money, and kept whining to my dad to take me to any place that had the unit. I didn't care if it was normal or CE, I just wanted to play. Hell I even played it in shady areas against gangster guys, who'd always beat me and tell me to stop wasting my quarters and learn the moves. Eventually I learned the hadouken but could never do the Shoryuken.
There were no gamefaqs back then so when I asked people, they'd give some weird explanation like (do 1/8th of a circle).
one day, I got my Nintendo Power in the mail..I think it was a March or April issue..and I saw the previews for SF2 for the SNES. I was so excited..but that wait to summer was too agonizing. I'd look at that preview picture for days. Since I lived in an area with a lot of Japanese-Americans, we had import stores and they had the SFC version. A lot of my friends were buying it along side with an adapter. But those stores knew how popular it was and demanded $100 for it! my parents refused to pay that much and told me to wait.
Eventually I got it and played the hell out of it. I accidentally did shoryuken by doing two haduokens..but finally figured out it was f,d,f punch. However I had a taste for the arcade and wanted to play the bosses so badly. Ended up buying a game genie which the store said I could play as the bosses. it sucked so bad.
