A couple of weeks ago, Capcom released the trailer for Street Fighter 6. Before the trailer for the sixth iteration of their flagship franchise, Capcom posted a graphic to celebrate 35 years of Street Fighter. From the outside looking in, one might wonder how a game series as popular as Street Fighter has only produced six entries over 35 years. The answer is dual-fold.
- The death of arcades in the early 2000s killed almost every fighting game except Tekken(which could survive a Putin-powered nuclear apocalypse.)
- Street Fighter 2 had entirely too many "expansion packs."
Since the concept of DLC was decades away, whenever Capcom wanted to tweak Street Fighter 2 by adding a new mechanic or character, they released a whole new version of the game.
However, there was one bootleg version of Street Fighter 2 that became infamous: the Rainbow edition. Loaded with some of the cheapest moves and blistering speed of play, Street Fighter 2: Rainbow edition is a strange piece of video games history that oddly changed fighting games for the better.
