10 Longest-Running Video Game Franchises With The MOST Quality
6. Street Fighter
While Super Smash Bros. is certainly a fighting game that has generated a lot of love, we’d be remiss not to include a true classic of the genre and that kicked off with Capcom’s Street Fighter which hit arcades in 1987.
Created by Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto, Street Fighter cast you in the role of Ryu, and your friend–assuming you brought one or rustled one up in the arcade–in the shoes of his blonde rival Ken. Not the Ryan Gosling one.
When Street Fighter II came out in 1991 it was a done deal that Capcom had redefined the genre with unprecedented precision and an impact on the industry that would ripple through every fighting game thereafter.
The dozens of Street Fighter games that arrived in the decades after cemented the quality of the series with its numerous iconic characters all with their own personalities, fighting styles, and quirks, as well as some of the most enviable mechanics in the genre that competing studios have tried to emulate ever since.
Players particularly gravitated to the gameplay elements that demand such a level of mastery the franchise easily sweeps across the competitive scene. Or, you can just be the best one in your friend group and kick all their asses. Either way. The franchise has since extended far outside of the gaming medium, but it's the core series in which it really thrives and the slam dunk of a title that was 2023’s Street Fighter 6 is a perfect example.
Whether you prefer your Street Fighter in an arcade cabinet, a home console, or that weirdly sexy episode of Black Mirror, it’s little mystery why this is Capcom’s best selling franchise. Except for Resident Evil. And Monster Hunter. Capcom really has those blockbuster franchises on lock, don’t they?