Twenty former Capcom employees and business partners look back on the creation and massive success of the game that ‘helped revolutionize the industry’: Street Fighter 2.
So I remember being down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and we’re launching the game down there. And I didn’t even have the earnings back yet. I mean, they were coming in — we had one unit in Sunnyvale Golfland; the other one was in Milpitas. So I had my testers go out there and I said, “Hey man, I’ve gotta have some kind of idea what’s in there.” So they said, “Well we opened the cash box up. We haven’t even hit the weekend yet, just been cruising through the week.” And … I think it was like $650 that was in there. I go, “That’s not bad. That’s not bad.” So I said, “Well, let me just do a little surmising. Eh, it’ll probably end up doing about 800. That’s a really good report.” So I’m down in Florida basically telling my distribution network, “I think it’s gonna be about an $800 a week game, based on testing in Milpitas.” And then seven days came up after my distributor meeting, and the thing made $1,300.
So one of the things that we quickly found was, Golfland says, “We’re having problems with the players, because everybody’s backed up on the unit. Can we get another one?” “Yes, you can get another one.” We bring another one out. Now I’m afraid if I put a second one in there I’m gonna cannibalize it. I’m gonna have two doing $600. Not the case at all. They both do 14. So now we know we’ve got a juggernaut on our hands. Sunnyvale Golfland and Milpitas, I believe at the peak, were probably operating up to 15 units inside there. And you know, the game went through the ceiling.
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