Picture credit: Arstechnica

Street Fighter is well known to have popularized the fighting game genre. It was the first fighting game to have a light, medium and heavy kick or punch instead of just a single punch and kick. It was a revolutionary idea at that time.

Most pro gamers of Street Fighter will have one of these; a six or eight button arcade stick.

Not many people know about the two button Street Fighter I arcade machine. When Street Fighter was first launched, there were two variants, the first one has a six buttons control while the other only have two buttons.

Both buttons of the two buttons variant were pressure sensitive. Depending on how hard you smashed the buttons, you would get different level of punch and kick (one button for kick and one button for punch). So to do a hard punch, you would have to literally throw a hard punch onto the punch button.

Capcom subsequently remove the two buttons variant and the rest is history. The six buttons variant is now what you see in arcades around the world. The removal was allegedly due to injury by fervent players who started smashing the buttons too vigorously.

Have you ever played the two button arcade machine before? If so let us know about it in the comments.