25 Best Video Games Of The 90s

9. Street Fighter II

There's a good reason people rarely talk about the original Street Fighter, as aside from laying the groundwork for the fighting genre, its animation and feel of combat would later be bested by this sequel; the absolutely phenomenal, legendary and endlessly replayable second instalment. As testament to just how ready we were to embrace a game that let us slap the tar out of our fellow man (something Mortal Kombat would follow up on by letting you tear a spine out or two along the way), that SF II's sales would eventually surpass the billion mark, resulting in five variations on the original across the following six years. Needless to say, anyone who visited an arcade across the 90s has played a game of this against their friend, before then purchasing the home console version to keep going. It's SF II that got us all familiar with Hadoukens, quarter-circle fireball attacks and cheap button-mashing electric-surge defence moves, and as a pillar of gaming's history it'll always be one of the most resilient.
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Tekken 3
 
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Gaming Editor
Gaming Editor

WhatCulture's Head of Gaming.