Due to its major success, a series of updated versions were released, containing additional features and characters. By 1994, it had been played by at least 25 million people in the United States alone. Street Fighter II became the best-selling game since the golden age of arcades in the 70's and 80's. Its success spawned countless copycats, from Art of Fighting (developed by Capcom's rival SNK and featuring the Ken lookalike Ryo Sakazaki), to the mostly-forgotten Fighter's History (Capcom tried and failed to sue Data East for infringement) and World Heroes, to bald-faced ripoffs like the creatively-named Super Fighter (not to be confused with the Newgrounds game). It sparked a renaissance for the arcade video game industry and impacted competitive video gaming and wider popular culture such as films and music. Its launch is seen as a revolutionary moment within its genre, credited with popularizing the fighting genre during the 1990s and inspiring other producers to create their own fighting series. Street Fighter II is regarded as one of the greatest video games of all time and the most important and influential fighting game ever made.

Fighting game-style combos later crossed over into other genres of games. It invented the fighting game definition of combos, which quickly became a staple of the genre. While certainly not the first Fighting Game by any stretch, Street Fighter II was the one which codified the genre and its related tropes, more notably the Shotoclone.

a Yinpot dictator with strange Psychic Powers known as M.

The returning (and now-scarred) Sagat from SF1.

I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Mike-Tyson a.k.a.

Defeat the other seven characters, and you're flown out to battle four bosses:

Super street fighter alpha 2 move list