Diving deep into the Capcom Archives to find 16-bit Street Fighter beauty buried by time

As some of you already know, there’s a regular SNES fighter extravaganza going on in the Wii U eShop right now, with Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II Turbo, and Super Street Fighter II launching on Virtual Console this week (with a helluva SALE : Buy one Street Fighter, game get the other two for 50% off in US , buy two and get one free in Europe!)

To celebrate, we’ve once again plunged into the Capcom archives to dig out some rarely-seen, high-res retro wonder that have potentially gone years without coming in contact with eyeballs. Okay, so perhaps “lost” may not be the right word, but I’ll certainly bet a lot of people haven’t seen these before. For instance, how about that pic at the top of the page ?! Don’t know about you, but I’ve  never seen the original Street Fighter II Super Nintendo art completely unadorned by logos, borders or K-mart stickers. Same could be said for this T-T-TURBO pic of a pink-sportin’ Sagat and Honda:

Ever notice Dhalsim’s appearance or  how sad Sagat looks ?!

Maybe you’ve come across these images elsewhere, but I certainly don’t recall ever seeing them, at least not this big and beautiful. It’s tough to say without doing a ton of research, even more so with box art we never received here in the states, like SFII’s Super Famicom Art.

I was also taken aback to find ancient pieces of cabinet art, occasionally featuring slightly off-model character art. Sure, these images may have undoubtedly found their way to the web and/or an art book before, but these visual relics still give me the same giddy excitement I got from those first three SF2 SNES games with every screen-filling click.

You can access the whole gallery here and be sure to click “View Full-Sized.” 

C lick here to see more Lost Art of Street Fighter II

WHATEVER! I thought you guys would get a kick out of seeing these, especially when you take into account how remarkably well preserved they are in spite of predating Photoshop, digital storage, and the whole dang internet. And hey, the make pretty ideal smartphone/tablet/desktop wallpapers , so save away – Don’t cost nothin’! Also, I got bored and decided to see what it wouldlike if the original Street Fighter II launched on the PSX. In Europe. 

Deep, esoteric lol

Oh yeah, if you’re into saving money, be sure to pick up all three SFII game on Virtual Console this weekend. Each goes for $7.99 in the Wii U eShop, BUT REMEMBER , US/EU gamers can basically get one Street Fighter game FREE when they buy two.