Grave Gamer News & Views — street fighter: assassin's fist

Primetime Shoryuken: Live-Action Street Fighter TV Series in Development

Following the impressive success of the short fan-made film Street Fighter: Legacy (which has gone on to amass a staggering eight million views), Capcom has enlisted the talents of Legacy‘sJoey Ansah and Christian Howard in order to create an on-going TV series based on the fighting game’s iconic characters.

Called Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, the show is centered on an original storyline featuring Ryu and Ken during their early days secluded in Japan.  The narrative focuses on the boys’ ability to harness a powerful and extremely dangerous martial art known as Ansatsuken (which translates to, coincidentally, “assassin’s fist”).  Through the tutelage of their master Gouken, the two learn more about the coveted style and its twisted history.  “This takes the story right back to the start - the origins and motivations of Ryu, Ken, Gouken and Akuma. This will become the definitive back-story from which further epic adventures will follow,” says Ansah.

There’s a lot of damage control this series has to manage in order to rebuild Street Fighter’s live-action reputation, though. As “so-bad-it’s-good” as the '90’s Van Damme/Raul Julia film was, it was still, above all, pretty fuckin’ bad. Then, after all hope of a good flesh n’ blood adaptation was abandoned, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li released in 2009…and succeeded (if not exceeded) in matching the 1994 film’s level of utter shitiness.

Christian Howard – who’s pulling his weight in scripting duties along with Ansah – has a mission statement that might ease nervous fans, though.  “Our priority is to stay true to the appearance, fighting techniques and canon of the Street Fighter game. At the same time we’ve managed to make this an emotion and character driven story."  And Joey Ansah…well, simply put, he seems confident about the new series. ”Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist will be what fans have been waiting for.“