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To expound on some of the names in Street Fighter: English fighters Eagle and Birdie are both named after golfing terms and Eagle was originally going to be called Bogey! Chun-Li means 'Spring Beauty', El-Fuerte is Spanish for 'The Strong One' and a Balrog is a ferocious beast in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (pictured) whose name means 'Cruel Demon' or 'Demon of Might'. On a similar note, Akuma means 'Devil' and Necro is the Greek prefix for 'death'. The 'E' in E. Honda stands for Edmond, the 'T' in T. Hawk stands for 'Thunder', the 'R' in R. Mika stands for 'Rainbow' and the 'C' in C. Viper stands for Crimson. Internationally, the 'M' in M. Bison (dictator) is commonly held to stand for 'Master' (sometimes 'Mister').
If a round is forced to a draw in the Street Fighter III series a panel of judges will adjudicate to determine a winner. The names of the 'judgement gals' are (from left to right): Lilly (Indian), Tonfa (Chinese), Julia (English), Toli (Chinese), Anna (Russian), Rifa (Chinese), Fair Libra (American) and (in 2nd Strike and Third Impact only) Necro's girlfriend Effie (Russian). Which of the judges appears is predetermined by which stage you are competing on. Incidentally, if playing as Ibuki in her Kyoto stage you can tell who has won the round before the judges have cast their votes; if Ibuki has lost, her pet raccoon Don gets scared and cowers!
The 1989 game Human Killing Machine, released for numerous home computers, is sometimes cited as an unofficial sequel to Street Fighter. Although an exaggeration of the truth, there is a scrap of substance to the myth. Human Killing Machine was developed by Tiertex and published by U.S. Gold. These two companies would later collaborate on the Strider II game for home computers (1990) under licence from Capcom. Tiertex had previously been responsible for the European conversion of Street Fighter to the Commodore 64 and Amiga, etc. So, with Human Killing Machine using the same game engine as Tiertex's Street Fighter conversion it was natural for U.S. Gold to position the game as the successor to Street Fighter, when in-fact, it is only tenously (and inconsequentially) connected to the series. The link is retroactively reinforced by the Strider II connection but it's worth pointing out that Capcom would produce their own Strider II game in 1999, supplanting the 1990 diversion.
Un-used objects exist in the code for Chun-Li's Street Fighter II stage. They are a litter bin and a road sign that reads 'Taiping Road'. It's speculative but likely that these objects would have been breakable, as per the crate in Guile's stage, barrel's in Ken's stage, etc. The Cutting Room Floor explains that these objects are in fact present in the final game but layered behind all the other objects in the stage, suggesting that their inclusion remained in debate until the last minute. It appears that the two rocks in the foreground of the finished stage are actually reference points and from these the stage can be reconstructed to include the missing objects. The text on the bin reads: 'Pay attention to sanitation, Beautify the environment.'
Likewise, chains spanning the foreground of Ken's Street Fighter II stage are also present in the game's code, connected to the moorings. Interestingly, these are also shown in early sketches for the background so the intention to include them was clear early on but dropped late in the game's development. It is also worth noting that the palm tree in the foreground of Sagat's stage was removed from all versions of Street Fighter II after the arcade original. Perhaps the interference these objects cause in the display of post-round scoring explains Capcom's aversion to them. The winch in Zangief's stage doesn't pose the same problem due to its position on the far right of the stage.
Alex and Hugo squaring off in Street Fighter III 3rd Strike is a pastiche of Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant's famous stare-down at Wrestlemania III, in front of over 90,000 fans at Michigan's Pontiac Silverdome in 1987. Hugo's design is based more or less on Andre the Giant (even down to his surname, 'Andore') and Alex certainly has something of Hulk Hogan about him, being an American patriot with a red bandana, blonde hair (albeit more of it!) and the shirt-rip intro.
The oil drums bonus stage in arcade versions of Street Fighter II (prior to Super Turbo) was removed from home conversions of the game and replaced with a brick breaking game. In the Super Nintendo version of World Warrior (the first ever port) there are only two bonus games, bricks (after four battles) and car (after eight battles). In ports of Hyper Fighting/Turbo, Super Street Fighter II and in the Genesis/Megadrive exclusive Special Champion Edition there are three bonus stages; car (after three), bricks (after six), barrels (after nine) compared with car (after three), barrels (after six) and oil drums (after nine) in arcade versions. Sadly, Capcom did away with the bonus rounds altogether for the seminal version, Super Turbo.
