I don't have any useful skills to offer society, but I'm pretty good at finding small glimpses of merit in awful things. That's why I'm pretty forgiving towards bad cartoon adaptations of popular video game series. For instance, I kind of liked the Street Fighter cartoon series. Parts of it were just foul, but there were small examples of effort. The 1995 movie did shameful things to the Street Fighter story continuity, which the cartoon struggled to repair with some success. Guile's failed marriage haunted him (interestingly, not a theme you found often in '90s era cash-in cartoons), Ken was a rich boy who didn't get along with his father, Dhalsim returned to mysticism and meditation, and Cammy defected to Bison and did strange things with him when the lights went out.
But even my patience wears thin sometimes. I will gladly hand out gold stars to game cartoons that try, but I'll turn my back on an episode when it's obvious the writers said, “Hey guys, let's just come up with any crazy shit and go to a hockey game.” I had always figured the Street Fighter cartoon episode “The Warrior King” was such an example of writer apathy/drunkenness/depression. The episode involved a king from another planet who pops by Earth to pick up an orb that grants powers to its user. Bison gets a hold of the orb, and uses it to blackmail world leaders. Chun-Li falls in love with King Axl Rose, who must eventually return home to his regret and hers, etc.
For years, the episode left me irritated. Street Fighter has sumo wrestlers, green mutants, ninjas, crazy haircuts. If you need to supplement the story by bringing in characters from Dimension X, you're not a very good writer.
But I discovered recently that my irritation was misplaced. “The Warrior King” was not an instance of a junior writer using Street Fighter as an outlet for his Heavy Metal fanfiction. It was a Capcom crossover.
Random Action Hour, a game cartoon archive thoughtfully provided by Random Hoo Haas, has a summary of “The Warrior King.” It's peppered generously with screenshots for those of you who have trouble following narrative without pictures.
It seems very possible that “The Warrior King” is a tribute to a Capcom bare-chested beat-em-up called Magic Sword. In that game, a barbarian fights through a tower to reclaim and destroy an orb of power.
Of all the obscure Capcom games to pay tribute to, why Magic Sword? Why not, I guess. The Street Fighter cartoon series also crossed over with Final Fight, so maybe the writers decided to try for something less obvious. Indeed, there was nothing surprising about seeing Cody and Guy alongside Guile, Bison, and the rest, though it was interesting to see Cody be treated like an underdeveloped second grader with anger issues.
“Now Cody, you know you should let Ken and Ryu rescue Jessica. Here's some crayons. Why don't you draw a picture of mommy and daddy lying in the gutters of Metro City, bleeding from bullet wounds?”
Related Links:
Where, Specifically, Did the Street Fighter Movie Go Wrong?
Licensing Tragedies: Malibu's Street Fighter Comic
Street Fighter IV's Fighting Spirit in Painstaking Detail