Street Fighter (1992 film)

Street Fighter

VHS cover art
Hangul
Revised Romanization Geori-eui Mubeopja
Directed by Sang Il Sim
Written by Jong Jun Park
Production
company
Daiwon Animation Co. Ltd
Distributed by Daiwon C&A Holdings
Release dates
  • 4 September 1992
Running time
51 minutes
Country South Korea
Language Korean

Street Fighter (Hangul: 거리의 무법자; RR: Geori-eui Mubeopja) is a 1992 Korean animation directed by Sang Il Sim. The film is notable for being based on the popular Capcom fighting game franchise Street Fighter, though made without any involvement or permission from the Japanese video game developer. It has never been released outside of South Korea.

Plot

In the year 2010, after World War III, the world is devastated and most of the world's population does not survive. Soryong and Saeng spend their days playing Street Fighter II and fighting each other at the arcades, until one day Chun Li appears before them in real life and reveals that the two friends are the only ones that can stop Bison from taking over the world.[1]

Production

The film was produced and animated by Daiwon Animation, and directed by Sang Il Sim. Daiwon was a popular animation studio often used by Japanese and Western producers, and have notably worked on series such as Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Armored Fleet Dairugger XV. The film features cameos from other unlicensed franchises, including April O'Neil, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dracula and the Frankenstein monster.

Release

The film was released on September 4 in 1992 straight to home video in South Korea. It received a DVD re-release in 2007 by New Media under the Daiwon Classic Animation label alongside Sang Il Sim's Red Hawk.

Differences from the video game

Many of characters have notable differences in this animation compared to their original video game counterpart. The main protagonists dress up as Ryu and Ken, but are in fact two regular teenagers named Yi Soryong (a Korean translation of Bruce Lee's name) and Saeng Yegal. M. Bison is portrayed with sunglasses, a black cape, long hair, and all his Shadoloo skulls replaced with Swastikas. Blanka is in this film shown to be Dhalsim's personal pet.

Reception

Although the film is largely unheard of due to never having seen release outside of South Korea, the film was featured on Hardcore Gaming 101 in 2010, who felt that "the animation is nothing to brag with, and at least 15 minutes of the film are boring BS, but the ridiculousness of it all makes it a good time watching nonetheless".[2]

The film was largely criticized for low production values, nonsensical plot and uncharacteristic use of the Street Fighter cast, as well as the lack of Ryu and Ken. The film has since also been uploaded to various video sharing websites such as YouTube.

References

External links