The Evolution of Street Fighter's revolutionary health bars and interface

Well I would think its because SF2 did it and everyone is used to that.

i like vidoes like these. they make you appreciate some of the little things that get overlooked a lot. egoraptors megaman sequelitis is also fun and insightful to watch

interesting video on the whole video life bars aspect. love the lil bit at the end after the whole video is done

i like 3s' thinner health bar, the eyes in second impact without a giant portrait

Hm. I'd like to see an analysis as to why the super meters are almost always at the bottom. That seems counter intuitive to what's presented here.

ive always though a better super/EX meter would be a circle in the bottom corner of the screen with a meter bar that goes around clock wise with a large # in the center signifying how many bars you have stored. rather than a bar that blocks the characters' feet and bottom portion of the screen.

This guy is amazing also did you know that on Game Theory he proved that we are connected to the video game world thanks to Mike Tyson(Punch Out and character Balrog)

Sorry... just a few things that need to be pointed out. The whole thing about the arcade cabinet and the sides is irrelevant considering they were made for Japanese style arcades where people sit across from each other. Also, the ultra meter has very little to do with your actual life total.

@ 8 Sitting across from each other is a fairly new advent and since this is more on the history of lifebars I think it fits, and generally speaking as your life gets lower the ultra meter grows. I don't think this video was aimed at the fgc it's more of an overview so the technicalities and whatnot were left to the side.

Overall this was pretty interesting look into how fighting game interfaces work and the way we interpret them.

I learned something new today

Cool stuff.

Seems to elligehtly ignore the whole super ultra bar placement thang... Oh well

IMO, this analysis is really done in hindsight. I bet if the lifebars were to be at the sides in SF2T than every fighting game would have the life bars at the side. I don't find it a compelling reason not to have them on top of each other, one of the problem of LIFEBAR-TIMER-LIFEBAR is that it is hard to compare how much life you have to your opponent. This would not be an issue if the format was
TIMER
LIFEBAR
LIFEBAR

Also, focus attack can allow you to accumulate revenge meter without taking damage. And if the designers REALLY wanted to distinguish life at 50%, they would have made the life bar much more visually different at the 50% mark, or a different color. I would argue lifebar in SF4 is just for aesthetic reasons. Also, if the designers really want to tell the amount of health that badly, why is the health bar in SFxT completely straight? In SFxT, one combo can take out half your health.

This video makes it sounds like we literally have the best lifebar ever in existance, which I think is complete false. They designed the basics when they made SF2, before there is any fighting games. Are you telling me they knew everything about lifebar designs in fighting games ever when they made it? We most likely just stuck to it because it works, and no one ever really complains about it. Not providing any alternative to an otherwise empty praise makes this a shallow and uninteresting commentary.

Imagine there is an option to turn off lifebar. So player can't see our opponent nor self lifebar while fighting. That will bring whole new playing.

@14

you can. go to options and and turn HUD display off.

I'd love to watch the video, but I cannot listen to that guy. I can't do it.

good video but he should have mentioned how kof13 has sections between the health indicating how much 100's of health you have

Capcom could have given the life bar 4 sections that descend so players can gauge 3/4, 1/2 and 1/4 life easier,

I always liked Double Dragon (neo geo) life bars with the super bar layered on top, so you get super faster when your life is low but it took getting use to, apart from having to look down at least SF4 ultra gauge flashes when it's full but IMO SF3 had the worst super bars.

An interesting side note is that Final Fight (released 2 or 3 years before Street Fighter 2) was the first real implementation of this lifebar style.

In that game, they had to deal with the problems of enemies having certain amounts of health, while making it so the player could understand the damage of their attacks based on how much life each attack drained.

The way they stacked deeper colors on the lifebar was a very cool solution imo, and this did not carry over to Street Fighter 2 and other games, which instead began to put individual health "ratings" to each character. In SF4, two characters can share the same exact health bar graphic, but in reality their health can be more than 1/4 a length apart, if shown in a linear fashion.

I think some kind of graphical representation of actual character health could be the next innovation to this system, but then again, it's near perfect already.