Ryan Swano
Even if you didn’t grow up in the era of Arcades or Game Shops, as many of us called the smaller local arcades in the suburbs and townships, or just the Corner Cafe having an Arcade Game Machine, the classic Street Fighter remains a well-known phenomenon that in the modern era continues to influence today’s popular culture.
Nearly 40 years later it continues to be reimagined in movies, used as sound bites in skit videos on social media and makes for popular memes.To this day new versions of the Street Fighter game and its spinoffs continue to be developed.
Almost everybody has either played or seen the classic arcade games Street Fighter or at least its market rival Mortal Combat. At the very least many people have seen modern pop culture references to this phenomenon even if they did not really know what it is about.
What is it They Really Said?
The first Street Fighter Arcade Game was released in 1987 and did not take too long to reach South African arcade machines but it was the exponentially more popular Street Fighter II that sparked the worldwide debate about: What The Heck Did They Really Say?
The Worldwide Debate Rages on To This Day!
The measly but great-at-the-time 8-bit processing power of gaming consoles in the 1980’s and 90’s meant that there was no real room for ensuring that sound quality was anything close to the clarity that could be achieved in later years as technlogy evolved.
This was how a term like Hadōken or Hadouken ended up sounded like anything from “All You Can” to “How To Get” to “A Tool Kit”.
Soramimi – What You Thought You Heard
Soramimi is a Japanese that means ‘Thought to Have Heard‘.
Interestingly, because of the poor sound quality, at the time Japanese people also could not make out what was being said so the home consol versions of the Street Fighter had a booklet that explained, in Japanese of course, what was being said and what it meant in terms of the attack moves of the main characters.
Soramimi as a Japanese pop culture term especially refers to when they hear other languages wrong and you can be certain that this phenomenon exists across the world and across languages.
You can bet that everywhere in the world, from the French to the Russians to the Arabic-speaking countries, and not just English-speaking countries, everyone had their own form of Soramimi when it comes to Street Fighter.
I went looking for the real meanings and found this video by Japanese content creator Mrs Eats who in her own fun way explains terms like Hadōken, Shōryūken, and Tatsumaki Senpūkyaku, and of course adding some other interestind tidbits about Street Fighter 2 and its characters.
New Version of Street Fighter
New versions of the game continued to be developed over the decades and the current version, Street Fighter 6 was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series XS on June 2, 2023.
I haven’t yet played any of the newest versions available on modern console so I have no clue if nowadays one can actually make out what Ryu, Ken Masters and the others are saying.
It’s just that now it feels weird that knowing could make one lose out on the fun of arguing…
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