Street Fighter 2 Almost Ruined The Video Game Industry

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Capcom's Street Fighterpaved the way to effectively revolutionize the fighting game genre as fans know it today, but the series may have been viewed less positively had a legal battle gone down differently. The impact of Street Fighter 2's success is still felt to this day with many fighting games taking some inspiration from the title, and Street Fighter penetrating pop culture as a whole. Capcom's take on fighting games was seen as an innovation for the genre, but with the release of a rival fighting game, Street Fighter 2 could've ruined the game industry and game development for future generations.

In 1993, developer Data East released Fighter's History, a 2D fighting game that was released for Arcades and the SNES. Released two years after Street Fighter 2 had made its way into the mainstream and changed fighting games forever, Fighter's History notably shared many similarities with Capcom's flagship fighter. These similarities eventually became too large to ignore, leading to Capcom filing a lawsuit against Data East for copyright infringement. The lawsuit threatened to stop any further release of the title, potentially changing the course of gaming history as a result.

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Street Fighter 2 found ways to continuously reinvent the wheel of the fighting game genre, as well as the gaming industry more generally. Whether it was through the revisional releases that have now become more commonplace in gaming or the unintentional factors such as a bug leading to the birth of combos in fighting games, SF2's influence is felt in many facets of game design. Taking Data East to court over Fighter's History was done in an effort to protect Capcom's own innovations at the