Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight
A sci-fi action-platform spin-off of the Street Fighter series.
Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight is a 1990 action-platform game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, developed and published by Capcom. It was promoted as a science-fiction spin-off of the 1987 arcade game Street Fighter. The English version altered the main character's name and backstory to suggest he is Ken from the original series, while the Japanese original features a different protagonist named Kevin. Unlike the one-on-one fighting games in the main Street Fighter series, this title belongs to the action-platform genre.
The player controls Ken, a former martial arts champion now equipped with cybernetic implants. Each stage requires destroying a designated enemy target to collect energy needed to open a transdimensional portal to the next stage. Some stages demand defeating multiple enemies to gather enough energy. Once the portal appears, Ken has a limited time to enter; failing to do so costs a life and forces a restart.
Gameplay uses one button for attacking and another for jumping. Ken can climb walls, poles, and similar structures, and can hang from or drop off certain ledges. He can also perform a backward flip jump by jumping upward and pressing the opposite direction on the d-pad. His main weapon is an energy projectile fired from his fists. He can shoot horizontally in either direction, upward by holding up, and curved power shots by holding left or right and pressing B, which have greater range and power. Holding down and pressing B fires projectiles from his kicks, traveling diagonally upward. To shoot downward, Ken must perform a flip jump and press B while airborne.
Projectiles start with short range, but power-up capsules found in destroyed item containers increase their range and strength.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Capcom
- Designer
- Hisashi Yamamoto
- Producer
- Tokuro Fujiwara
- Programmer
- Nobuyuki Matsushima; Koji Yoshida
- Composer
- Junko Tamiya
- Series
- Street Fighter
- Platforms
- Nintendo Entertainment System
- Released
- August 8, 1990 (JP); September 1990 (NA)
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
The player controls Ken, a former martial arts champion who has been given cybernetic implants. The objective of each stage is to destroy the designated enemy target shown before the stage begins and obtain the energy required to open a transdimensional portal to the next stage. Some stages require the player to destroy more than one enemy to accumulate the energy needed to open the portal. After the portal is open, Ken only has a limited amount of time to enter it; failure to do so will cause the player to lose a life, forcing them to restart the level.
Like most side-scrolling action games, the player uses one button to attack and the other to jump. Ken can also climb walls and poles or pole-like structures, as well as hang onto and climb (or drop down from) certain kinds of ledges. In addition to his regular jump, Ken can do a backward flip jump by doing a neutral upward jump and then pressing the directional pad on the opposite direction he's facing. Ken's main weapon is an energy projectile which he launches with his fists. He can shoot straight at either direction horizontally, and upward vertically by holding the d-pad upwards, and launch curved power shots by holding the d-pad left or right and pressing the B button, which have further reach and are more powerful than the regular shots. Ken can also launch his projectiles with his kicks by holding the d-pad downward and pressing B, which will travel upward diagonally. To shoot downwards, Ken must do a flip jump first and then B while still in mid-air.
Ken's projectiles have a short range at the start of the game, but the player can uncover and pick up power-up capsules by destroying item containers scattered throughout each stage. Picking two power-up capsules increase Ken's shooting level by one, increasing the range of his projectiles and their strength; however, if Ken sustains damage, his power level will decrease by one and if he loses a life, he will revert to his starting power. Ken can increase his power by up to five levels. Other power-ups includes a back-up option for added firepower and a 'flip shield capsule' that allow the player to damage enemies during flip jumps.
Reader's Guide
The English localization of Street Fighter 2010 differs from the original Japanese release. The localization changed the main character's identity and backstory in order to imply that he is the same Ken from the original Street Fighter, having retired from his martial arts career after winning the tournament. In the Japanese version, the main character is named Kevin, a cyborg policeman employed by the Galaxy Police to neutralize a breed of interplanetary super-criminals known as 'Parasites', whose abilities are drastically improved over regular humans and aliens due to an armored parasitic insect that has been implanted into their bodies. The character of Troy was originally called Dr. Jose, the scientist responsible for creating the parasitic organisms used to turn people into 'Parasites'. Before the final battle, Dr. Jose reveals that Kevin is actually a 'Parasite' created by him, having implanted one of his insects into Kevin's head before having him infiltrate the Galaxy Police, and that the cybernetic armor on Kevin's body was actually created by the parasite implanted within him. Other than the changes to the main character's identity and the story, the game itself is otherwise identical between the two versions.
There is a common misconception that the game was only given the Street Fighter title for the US release, with the Japanese release having no references to the franchise. However, this is false, as the Japanese title roughly translates to 2010 Street Fighter, and the character of Kevin has been referenced in official Japanese Street Fighter tie-in material.
GameSpot retrospectively criticized the translated plotline of introducing Ken as a cyborg 25 years in the future of the original Street Fighter, comparing it to the alterations to Dhalsim for the movie Street Fighter. 1UP.com retrospectively described the game as a 'bastard offshoot' of the franchise and a 'nightmare of terrible localization'. ScrewAttack retrospectively stated that the game was incredibly difficult but not bad, and that if it had not been marketed as a Street Fighter game, it most likely would have been ignored.
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