Best Street Fighter games, ranked from best to worst

Which Street Fighter game should you be playing? Find out in our list

The Street Fighter series is often considered the grandfather of the fighting game genre, with almost all character archetypes being offshoots of Ryu’s iconic style. Which is ironic, because the original game is pretty low down in this list of the best Street Fighter games.

If you want to learn the basics of playing a fighting game, you should sit down in Street Fighter, pick Ryu, and just play. It’s the defining way to interact with an entire genre, and all of the rules of the game are more easily explained once you have a degree of mastery over the cast.

Being a series that has been around for years, there are dozens of titles to choose from, and even more when you consider spin-offs and iterations on sub-series. So to narrow down the best Street Fighter games, we’re only choosing actual fighting games developed by Capcom, and we’re limiting our choices to two picks from a sub-series at most, and only if they’re particularly memorable. Now you don’t have to scroll through seven different versions of Street Fighter II.

These are the best Street Fighter games of all time, ranked.

Street Fighter 3: Third Strike

Is this the best Street Fighter game? The argument is pretty convincing. When Street Fighter 3 first launched, fans weren’t very impressed, but by the time Third Strike was the main game, opinion was starting to shift. Third Strike was punishing, but that meant only the best players made it look truly impressive.

Once fighting game fans had witnessed the kind of combos that were possible, they started sharpening their Third Strike skills, and before you knew it, Third Strike was legendary. These days you should fish out a PS3 and get online with Third Strike Online Edition, which has shockingly great netcode and is still online today.

Ultra Street Fighter IV

Street Fighter IV brought 2D fighting games back into the mainstream after a generation of floundering after the closure of arcades. Ultra Street Fighter IV is the best version of the game, with a huge roster of 44 playable characters.

The Focus Attack was IV’s main gimmick, but the game was loved because of its sharp, fast gameplay, which opened the way for long, damaging combos.

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers

Yes, this is the Street Fighter II entry we put on the list. The first Turbo game is arguably the one that made fighting games what they are, but if you’re to return to the early arcade or SNES era, you should go for The New Challengers.

As the title implies, there are more characters, but it’s just as sharp as Turbo, with fans still playing this one to this day.

Street Fighter Alpha 3

If you want to play a Street Fighter game from the days before the characters learned to dash, you want Alpha 3. Street Fighter II is the classic, but the Alpha series updates that gameplay and improves on it, making this feel like the best way to enjoy a classic style of a Street Fighter gameplay.

The series has had huge influence on the games that followed since, not least with the characters it introduced. Alpha also has one of the most charming artstyles in the franchise’s history.

Street Fighter V: Champion Edition

Launch be damned, Street Fighter V: Champion Edition is fantastic. It was rough for the start there, but as of the latest patch, the game boasts a large roster, great mechanics, and plenty of content to work your way through if you’re a single-player purist. If you want to get started with 2D fighters, there are still few games better than Street Fighter V.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars

If you don’t know what Tatsunoko is, you can’t be blamed. Tatsunoko is home to some of the most beloved children’s manga and anime characters, and this game was a unique chance to bring them together with Capcom’s fighting roster. And yes, it was a huge success, despite being limited to a Wii-only release outside of Japan. One of the most fun Capcom VS. games, and one of the most niche.

X-Men vs. Street Fighter

The sequel to X-Men: Children of the Atom, this game saw Cyclops, Wolverine, and the rest of the X-Men face off against Ryu, Ken, and the best of the Street Fighter cast. This game truly kicked off the Capcom VS. series, introducing players to fast-paced fighting, with characters that became fighting game staples, such as Magneto. This game also introduced the infamous Cyber Akuma as a boss.

Capcom vs. SNK 2

Some of the character art in this game looks a little bit out of place, especially since some of the sprites were originally made for other games, but Capcom vs. SNK 2 is a great fighter, with the EO version adding an option for easy controls, on top of four new, extra-powerful characters. The 3D stage backgrounds and 2D character sprites can look at of place at times, but Capcom vs. SNK 2 still manages to feel like a title from the glory days of fighting game crossovers.

Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter

Released very shortly after X-Men vs. Street Fighter, this game adds more Marvel characters, of course. This would later morph into the beloved Marvel vs. Capcom series, but this entry feels like a lazy stop-gap as opposed to a true sequel.

Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers

A weird entry in the Street Fighter II series, this was released exclusively on Nintendo Switch. It features the option to play with the graphical style of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix – which you shouldn’t – and a bunch of new features. Combo timing has been changed, grapple breaks are in, and it plays in widescreen. All nice features, but the best addition has to be Violent Ken’s first appearance in a Capcom-developed fighter. Plus, playable Shin Akuma. 

Street Fighter EX 3

The Street Fighter EX series wasn’t actually developed by Capcom, but it’s such a strange entry in the series that it had to be on the list. For this one Capcom enlisted the help of Arika to make a 3D entry in the Street Fighter series. The series changed slowly over time, but EX 3 was the final entry, and introduced tag mechanics, similar to Tekken Tag Tournament. If you want to revisit this style of gameplay in the modern day, take a look at Arika’s Fighting EX Layer. 

Street Fighter X Tekken

In fairness, Street Fighter X Tekken isn’t actually a terrible game at its core, and seeing Street Fighter faves face off against Tekken classics creates some interesting match-ups. However, the Gems system essentially turned the game on its head for players, making it confusing for newbies, and highly customizable for experienced players. Not that any of that matters when Gems were being sold for real money – yes, you can even go on Steam and buy some Street Fighter X Tekken Gems right now. Don’t.

Street Fighter

The original Street Fighter is… well… the series has humble beginnings, let’s put it that way. The game is now known for three punch buttons and three kicks buttons, but the original arcade game had only one button for punches and one for kicks, which you could press more firmly for a light/medium/heavy attack. This led to a lot of buttons being smashed in as players attempted to find a secret even more powerful attack. You can guess why many of these original arcade cabinets do not exist now.

Street Fighter: The Movie

Originally an attempt to take some of the wind out of Mortal Kombat’s sails, Street Fighter: The Movie (the actual live-action movie) already had a cast of characters and costumes ready, so it only made sense to capture some movements and implement them into a fighting game. Unfortunately, the arcade game itself wasn’t great, and even the home console port that Capcom led the development of is just okay at best. This one won’t be showing up in any compilations from Capcom any time soon.

Capcom Fighting Evolution

A fair few of the crossover games in this list take sprites from other Capcom titles, which can make things look a bit out of place. Capcom Fighting Evolution truly does not care about cohesion. It slaps together characters and mechanics from completely different generations of 2D Capcom fighters, making for an impressive fighting game roster, and an unfortunate visual experience – a bit like a fan-made Mugen fighter, but official, for some reason. But also, it’s one of the only places you can see Ryu fight a T-Rex outside of Monster Hunter, proving that even the worst and weirdest Capcom fighter has some redeeming qualities.