Street Fighter EX

About Street Fighter EX

Street Fighter EX (1996) is Arika and Capcom's spin-off that brought Street Fighter into 3D polygons for the first time, keeping 2D-plane fighting and adding guard breaks and super cancels.

Street Fighter EX in Depth

Released on Sony's ZN arcade hardware, it was the first Street Fighter with 3D polygon graphics, though play still largely follows a 2D plane, with the line of fighting shifting around a 3D arena. Its fighting system draws on Street Fighter II and Street Fighter Alpha with some original ideas. Special moves and super combos will be familiar, but the super meter is split into three separate sections rather than levels, unique to the EX series. Spending one section on a Guard Break smashes through an opponent's block and leaves them dizzy, more like a stun than Alpha's opening. Special moves can cancel out of regular moves or other specials, and Super Canceling chains one super combo into another for huge damage.

The original has 17 characters, two of them computer-controlled bosses, rising to 23 in the home version. Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Zangief and Guile appear alongside M. Bison as an unplayable boss and Akuma as a secret character, while new fighters include Allen Snider, a karate champion beaten by a young Ken who sets out to prove himself the world's best, and Blair Dame, daughter of a wealthy European family who trained in combat sports to defend her loved ones. Across the three EX games, 19 new characters made it the largest original roster introduced in any Street Fighter series, and several reappeared in Arika's later Fighting Layer and Fighting EX Layer.

Making Street Fighter EX

Arika co-produced it with Capcom under Akira Nishitani. Arika vice president Ichiro Mihara stressed that it was "a different development line" from Star Gladiator, that Arika was not a Capcom subsidiary, and that "the concept is new and the know-how is new". Next Generation praised Capcom for taking the series into 3D but judged the arcade original a failed attempt that "plays more like a distant cousin to the Street Fighter series". An updated Plus arcade version and the PlayStation-only Street Fighter EX Plus α followed in 1997, and the latter, with new characters, modes and improved feel, was far better received: Next Generation called it "an outstanding title even non-SF devotees will enjoy". Street Fighter EX2 followed in 1998.