Street Fighter II Rainbow Edition: The Hack that changed everything!

RetroRalph·video·9m 47s·analyzed·Jun 25, 2022

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.021

TL;DR

Taiwanese Street Fighter II hack influenced Capcom to create Turbo Hyper Fighting

Summary

Retro Ralph documents the history and gameplay of Street Fighter II Rainbow Edition, a Taiwanese arcade hack that ran 30% faster than the official Champion Edition and featured broken mechanics like airborne special moves and mid-game character switching. The video explains how Capcom discovered Rainbow Edition through employee James Goddard, who was impressed enough by its speed to influence the development of Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting, making an obscure unauthorized hack a pivotal moment in fighting game history.

Key Claims

Street Fighter II Rainbow Edition was created by a Taiwanese hacking group and sold to arcades at a cheaper cost
high confidence · Retro Ralph cites this as the reported origin of the hack, noting it was manufactured and distributed by the group
Rainbow Edition ran approximately 30% faster than Street Fighter II Champion Edition
high confidence · Ralph states this speed differential multiple times and demonstrates it in gameplay
Capcom employee James Goddard discovered Rainbow Edition after receiving a report about Ryu throwing fireballs while airborne
high confidence · Ralph explains Goddard's investigation led him to Galaxy Arcade in San Jose, California where he confirmed the hack's existence
Goddard was initially unimpressed with Rainbow Edition but changed his mind after playing Street Fighter II Champion Edition later that day, which felt slow by comparison
medium confidence · Ralph attributes this moment as the catalyst for Goddard's campaign within Capcom to create a faster official version
The positive elements of Rainbow Edition influenced the development of Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting, specifically the increased game speed
high confidence · Ralph states: 'This caused him to go on a campaign within Capcom to take the positive elements of Rainbow and make a faster version of Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition, and that ended up being Street Fighter 2 Turbo Hyper Fighting'

Notable Quotes

“It's crazy to think that some Taiwanese hacking group was able to shape the future of what would be at that time the most successful fighting game in the arcade and influence what it would ultimately become.”
Retro Ralph@ 2:45 — Encapsulates the main thesis: an unauthorized hack had direct influence on official Capcom development
“So Goddard decided to investigate and paid a visit to Galaxy Arcade in San Jose, California. And sure enough, Rainbow Edition was real and it was fast. 30% faster than Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition.”
Retro Ralph@ 1:35 — Key factual claim about how Capcom discovered the hack and its defining characteristic
“He said it felt like he was playing underwater. This caused him to go on a campaign within Capcom to take the positive elements of Rainbow and make a faster version of Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition.”
Retro Ralph@ 2:32 — Explains Goddard's motivation to influence official development, the turning point in the story
“It's completely broken. The reality of it is it's so, so broken. It's so imbalanced, but it's so fun.”
Retro Ralph@ 8:26 — Summary of Rainbow Edition's appeal despite technical imbalance

Entities

Street Fighter II Rainbow EditionproductCapcomcompanyJames GoddardpersonStreet Fighter II Champion EditionproductStreet Fighter II Turbo Hyper FightingproductGalaxy ArcadeorganizationThe Dream MachineorganizationRetro RalphpersonMAMEproductFightcadeproduct

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.029

0:00

Street Fighter 2. What comes to mind when I say that? The sound of Ryu's Hadouken? Or maybe Guile's Sonic Boom? Whatever it is that you remember, it's memorable. It's iconic. And for me, it was 1992. And all of a sudden, at my local arcade, The Dream Machine in Lincoln, Rhode Island, it was all anyone wanted to play. The arcade went from being moderately busy to an almost arcade renaissance overnight. And it was all because of Capcom's Street Fighter II. It had captivated an entire generation of arcade fanatics that would line up to challenge their friends and play them for hours on end. The revolution was real. Arcades were back, and they were back because of fighting games. It continued with other heavy hitters like Mortal Kombat, and then the rest was history. And we're now all 40-somethings, and the memories of arcades in the 90s is something truly special to us. Stepping back for a minute, as Street Fighter hit the scene, an interesting and often forgotten hack version of Street Fighter single-handedly changed the trajectory of the entire series. This version was called Street Fighter II Rainbow Edition. And guess what? Capcom didn't make it. For a while, they didn't even know this version existed. It wasn't until a Capcom employee, James Goddard, received a report about Ryu throwing fireballs while airborne, which was not even a move possible on either version of Street Fighter that existed at that time. So Goddard decided to investigate and paid a visit to Galaxy Arcade in San Jose, California. And sure enough, Rainbow Edition was real and it was fast. 30% faster than Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition. You could perform moves in the air and spam special moves with no cooldown period. You could even change your character while playing by pressing the player 1 or player 2 start buttons. But Goddard wasn't impressed and basically thought the game was trash. Little did he know this wasn't a single instance of the game. It was being manufactured and offered to arcades at a cheaper cost by a Taiwanese hacking group. So what Goddard thought as a nuisance really was quite a big problem. The reports claim he didn think anything of it really and he was going to blow it off until he played Street Fighter 2 CE I think it was later that day and he said it felt like he was playing underwater This caused him to go on a campaign within Capcom to take the positive elements of Rainbow and make a faster version of Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition and that ended up being Street Fighter 2 Turbo Hyper Fighting. It's crazy to think that some Taiwanese hacking group was able to shape the future of what would be at that time the most successful fighting game in the arcade and influence what it would ultimately become. So that leads us to now, 2022. Why should we even care about this now? Because this piece of history shaped what I would consider the best fighting game of all time. So what are we going to do? We're going to take my Street Fighter cabinet and we're going to make it a rainbow edition, even for just a little while, to see what this is all about. Alright, here we are, Street Fighter 2 Rainbow Edition. So I'm going to get started, but I'm going to have two players at a time because I want to show you some of the unique features of the game before I show you a game against the CPU. Now anything I show you, the CPU can do too. So the first thing I'm going to show you, I talked about being able to change characters mid-game, so I'm going to use the player 2 button. So if this was my opponent or the computer, they can cycle through players in the middle of the game. So in the middle of the game, you can switch to whoever you want. That's part of the roster on the game. So that's pretty cool. Now I'm going to show you just basic moves and just how you can stack moves and stuff like that. So I'm just going to do a basic fireball using jab. So it's kind of a basic fireball, nothing crazy. It's actually kind of slow, but if I jump and do it, you'll notice it's a heat-seeking fireball. So it always finds its target, which is interesting. So now I'm going to do strong and show you the same thing. Little faster, still heat seeking. Fierce, a lot faster heat seeking. So, and you can stack them on top of each other. So if I do a bunch in a row, I can stack them. It's really as many I can get out. And then you can kind of build this wall of fireballs and eventually, you know, knock out your opponent, which is really cool. I'll show you hurricane kicks. The hurricane kick is super fast. The dragon punch is super fast. you fly across the whole screen, it's just wild, and you can keep jumping up, you can jump up so much, it's really broken in that sense, because you can keep going up and up and up and eventually go off the screen I don know if I can do it right now I didn make it do it fast enough but yeah you can basically go off the screen Now if I do a dragon punch you'll see it flies all the way across the screen, so that can be pretty effective. The hurricane kick is really fast. Like I said, the game is about 30% faster than CE, so you can see really the only elements, or one of the only elements I really took in, put into Hyper Fighting was the speed, because the speed makes it super fun. The game itself actually is pretty fun as well. The character movement, you'll see, is a lot faster too. Which, why am I moving with it?

6:29

So the thing I would encourage you to do is check this out on MAME if you can. It's also on Fightcade, so if you know or use Fightcade, you can go in there and do tournaments on this game and stuff, so it's pretty cool. but I really like it, it's funny because it's very broken, but it's actually super fun, shoot, no, oh no, oh shit, where is he, ah, damn it, see, he was like, completely off the screen, like, completely out of the view, but anyway, it's, I'm telling you, you gotta check it out, But I will say, it's really fast, which makes it fun, but it is, people state that it's completely broken, and it is all the character balance is off you can do crazy things all the moves can be stacked you can do them in the air I not gonna do a complete playthrough but it is definitely a game that you should just check out if you a Street Fighter fan just because of the history of it It ended up being incorporated into Hyper Fighting, at least the speed elements of it, and I think it's a lot of fun. Alright guys, I'm not gonna lie, this video was a complete pain in the ass to put together, but I had so much fun doing it, because the history of Street Fighter runs so deep, and the fact that this Taiwanese group was going into arcades, or whoever, and selling this kit to upgrade to this new version of Street Fighter, and then having Capcom find out about it, and then going, oh, they might be onto something here, and that helped shape what Street Fighter became. I just think it's totally cool, and there's a lot of holes in my version of the story, because it takes a long time to actually tell this. I'll use links in the description to provide other videos that I pulled content for. There's also other videos on this exact topic that go way deeper and they're much longer videos. So if this kind of excited you like it did me, then you might want to check those out as well. But I do encourage you, you've got to play this. If you're a Street Fighter fan, you can't not go through life without trying it out. It's completely broken. The reality of it is it's so, so broken. It's so imbalanced, but it's so fun. And there's actually a link in the description to a tournament that someone ran on Rainbow, and it's wild. There's like crazy stuff. It's weird. The more you play it, the more you're like, wait, did it do that last time? So I also think there's slight tweaks and revisions of the same version floating around, so who knows? But I would encourage you to go play it and try it out. You can do so on, I think Pandora's Box DX has it. I'm pretty sure a lot of the Pandora's Boxes have it, but they might call it something slightly different than Rainbow, but you should be able to find it. You can find it in archive.org. You just type in MAME Rainbow ROMs or something. You should find it, or MAME Street Fighter 2 Rainbow ROMs, and then I'm trying to think of where else you could find it. Oh, Fightcade. Fightcade has it, so you could play it there too, play it with friends, whatever, but you gotta check it out. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the video. There's too many people to thank. I have all of the links in the description of this video of where I found content here and there. Tons and tons of content, and if I made any mistakes, definitely correct me. This isn't typically the kind of video I make, but like I said, kind of a pain in the ass to put together, but so much fun. If you enjoyed the video, give me a thumbs up, consider subscribing to the channel, put your comments below. I want to hear from you. And that's it for now. We will see you on the next one.