And the second time around eventually became a beauty but for now let's focus more on the first game of the Street Fighter series which also went by the name Fighting Street for the Turbo Grafx  CD/PC-CD. The name change was possibly to avoid confusion with the game Street Fighter 2010 for the NES which was totally unrelated except for the main character being named Ken. I'll cover both bases involving the Arcade and TGCD/PC-CD versions since there are some things to note on the latter.
  
OVERVIEW
 
Street Fighter takes place in 1981 with teenage boys Ryu and Ken entering the Street Fighter tournament to test out their skills against opponents all over the globe. In reality, it was only Ryu who participated in this tournament while Ken decided to fight in a tournament that took place in the United States and won. Ryu on the other hand, fought opponents from his home country Japan, England, USA, and China. He then travels to Thailand to face off against the final two opponents, Adon and his master Sagat. Not only does Ryu emerge victorious against Sagat but his Dragon Punch is what led to iconic scar on Sagat's chest in later games. Not only that, it also led to Sagat adding the equally iconic Tiger Uppercut to his arsenal of special moves.
 
GRAPHICS - B-
 
The graphics are OK as the backgrounds are well structured and colorful. The best background of them all is Mike's stage which takes place in front of Mount Rushmore. The graphic designer did a terrific job of drawing out Mount Rushmore to perfection. Two other backgrounds that stand out great are the two in Thailand. Aside from the backgrounds, the nations flags are mostly pure color as opposed to some objects we see in most games where two or more colors are mixed in to simulate another color that is not in the palette. The graphics do get a bit of an upgrade on the Turbo CD. There is even an extra scene if you beat it on said system. It's a shot of Ryu or Ken boarding an airplane and waving farewell to you (breaking the fourth wall). The characters are uniquely styled with the exception of Ryu and Ken who are actually palette swaps in this game. In the sequel, they become only head swaps. In fact, if you play Street Fighter 2 on MAME or any other arcade emulator that lets you see the fighters graphics, go to Ken and look at him with Ryu's color scheme. He looks just like Ryu from Street Fighter 1 with the red hair, red slippers, and white gi. With the head swap, same won't be said if you tried to look at Ryu with Ken's color scheme. For the special moves graphics, you can obviously see how far the making of SF2 took it up a notch. The fireball in this game looks like an actual fireball. In SF2, the fireballs graphic is changed to where you will see a copy of Ryu or Ken's fists within a blue aura or red aura if the glitch comes out. Ryu's fireball eventually gets changed back to a traditional fireball in Super Street Fighter 2. The Dragon Punch looks ok but the Hurricane Kick looks super choppy as it was drawn with two frames that switched places several times to give off the effect of it spinning.
 
CONTROLS - D-
 
If not for the special moves, I would have gave the controls to this game a flat out F. Now I am aware that when Street Fighter first came out, the buttons consisted of two pressure pads which determined the type and strength of attack depending on how hard you hit it with your fist. It was kind of innovative but too stressful on the hand and the machine thus it did not work out so well. That is when the six button scheme we came to know and love in the sequels came into play. You would think that things would have gotten better, right? Wrong. Capcom made the mistake of using the button scheme to simulate the pressure pad rather than be instant attack. The end result? The attack does not come out until after the button is released and that spells disaster during an important fight where you need to attack the opponent at the opportune moment but the delay will make you miss it. Worse yet, the special moves are super hard to pull of because the timing will be super strict.
 
The Turbo CD version of the game did the controls no justice. In fact, it made things hell of worse. The button attacks are based on how long the button was held down before released. So good luck on getting anywhere in this game. 
 
GAMEPLAY - D+
 
Now onto the gameplay. There are a total of 10 stages to fight: USA, England, Japan, China, and Thailand each with a set of two fights. Out of the first four sets, you can choose where to start from then you will randomly travel to the next country before you head to Thailand to fight the final two opponents. The opponents are: Japan - Retsu (fellow student of Gouken who has basic attacks) and Geki (a ninja who can throw ninja stars and disappear in a puff of smoke). China - Lee (His most notable attack is the lunging punch that can catch you offguard) and Gen (Lee's father and Chun Li's sensei who fights with a barrage of tricky attacks). USA - Joe (The first person you at the title screen, he attacks with jump kicks and gut punches) and Mike (not the same Mike Bison/Balrog in SF2 but still a boxer who has heavy damaging punches). England - Birdie (he's officially black but he is white in this game because of sickness. Attacks with lunging headbutts and overhead smashes) and Eagle (carries two tonfas that can block several attacks easily especially fireballs. His spinning attack can sometimes glitch where he goes through you when you attack him). Once you defeat them all, you face Thailand - Adon (His Jaguar Kick is deadly and he can hit you with it in rapid succession) and Sagat (final boss who has a devastating Tiger Knee and Tiger Shot which can be ducked under as he had no Low Tiger Shot either).
 
My reason for such a low score is mostly in part due to the controls and the cheapness of the bosses. There is also the fact that you can only play as Ryu or Ken. In order to play as Ken, you must play a two-player game and have Ken beat Ryu before you continue on. Once again, the special moves are a saving grace from being an F. Fortunately for the console version, there is a code to make special moves come out instantly.
 
Here is how you perform the moves.
 
Fireball (Hadouken): d, df, f + any Punch
Dragon Punch (Shoryuuken): f, d, df + any Punch
Hurricane Kick (Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku): d, db, b + any Kick

The each do good damage on contact and if you are lucky, you can defeat the opponent if you perform the latter two close enough as they hit multiple times.
 
SOUND - C-
 
Don't get me started on the sound. I'll give it some slack because the music is great especially on the Turbo CD but everything else is totally laughable. This game is full of Engrish. Since the Japanese Ls and Rs sound are virtually the same, ROUND sound almost he said LOUND. For those wondering what is being said at the start of the fight. The guy is saying FAITO which is the Japanese way of shouting FIGHT. The most atrocious sounds of all are the win quotes which depends on if you win or lose where the voice tries its hardest to say what is being quoted on the screen.

Win: What strength but don't forget there are many guys like you all over the world = What strin but don't forget there are many girls like you all oba da warld.

Lose: You got a lot to learn before you beat me. Try again, kiddo. <-- he actually says kid and kiddo is the Japanese way of saying kid.
 
Beat Sagat: You outlast the best, you are the strongest street fighter in the world = You outrun the best, you are the strangest street fight in da warld.

Beat Ryu or Ken in 2-player mode: I wish you good luck = I wish you good ruck.

Depending on the region you are playing this game, when a special move is performed Ryu or Ken will say it in English or Japanese. 

Japanese = English
Hadouken = Fight Fire
Shoryuuken = Dragon Punch
Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku = Hurricane Kick

In the sequel, only the Japanese names are shouted out and we all grew accustomed to saying them.
 
REPLAYABILITY - D
 
This is a two-player game so if you want to play this game again for that purpose then go ahead but playing it as normal is not worth it after the first time. For the Turbo CD, you can listen to the tracks in a CD player which I consider awesome because the music is the biggest highlight of that version of the game. Heck, any version for that matter.
 
OVERALL - D
 
The final grade is a D. It was a coming out party that were full of mistakes that thankfully, the sequel corrected heavily and blew this game out of the water. However, I will give it credit for introducing the concept of using special moves in a hand to hand combat game and using special joystick motions to do so. Other than that it was nearly a total bust the first time around.

Azul Fria :  I was not aware of the name change but, glad they did change
it as Street Fighter has stuck with me for years. I own I and II for Super
Nintendo and those are the only ones I am familiar with.

Overview- I like how you explained the background story in a
very organized way. It took me back to the movie so that was well explained.

Graphics- really like how you compare different versions of
the same graphic. I was not aware of the palette swaps of Ryu and Ken. I do
agree with how nice the backgrounds are specially the national flags since it
to me serves as a reminder that it is a world tournament.

Controls- I actually really liked those controls but, yes
they were difficult to play with. It was indeed stressful and would not make it
very long. I did not try the latter remote but, can see how it would hinder any
progress in the fight- not sure why they felt the need to carry over the
pressure pad, seems like a major setback on the new control.

Gameplay- Judging by the control problems, I am not surprise
you rated it low. Nice to see you put time into naming the opponents, their
role, and attacks. A bit confusing on character swap seems like a hassle just
to play as Ken.

Sound-  Although, I kind of like the Engrish. Haha reading your writing of what the voice says- sounded like an
episode of South Park. Hadouken to my siblings and I was the main thing we got
out of this game, I think it became quite a popular characteristic.
Replayability- I only play this with someone else. I can
watch my brother play it over and over but, as for me, I don’t find it that
interesting to continue to replay it.

Yes this game definitely got some much needed upgrades.
I liked your game review; I think it covered every aspect in
full details and left very little up for questioning. Again, really like the
background stories, moves, translation, and character information you provided.
I don’t know if I missed it or not but, if I did my apologies- I would have
like more information on the special moves for Ryu and Ken. Other than that I
really understood what you explained and took some information I did not know
such as the name change, the controller (pressure pad), and the very annoying
character swap feature. Nice job!

I am not a fan of fighting games, but I salute your courage of going through such a torturous game! You went into plenty of details as to why it was terrible. And this time, giving the tricks for the special moves was justified because of the terrible gameplay.

This is a pretty well-structured review. As far as I can tell, there aren't any major problems with it whatsoever. About the game, I still have no idea what they were thinking with the pressure-sensitive pads. It's like they forgot to playtest their own game to make sure the controls worked properly before they released it!