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Street Fighter II RideSure, we've all played our share of Street Fighter II, but how often have you actually gone inside of the game itself?  Let's journey back to the end of the twentieth century and join Ryu, Ken, Guile, and your other favorite World Warriors as you climb aboard the Street Fighter II Ride created by Shadix Media and Showscan as licensed by Capcom.  Depicting the cast of Super Street Fighter II as 3D Virtua Fighter-type models rather than 2D sprites, riders are thrust into the game to take on M. Bison and his Shadowlaw gang before they can escape into the real world.  It's charmingly dated and appropriately cheesy.  Here's what IGN's Douglass Perry had to say about the experience back in July 1999:

For $5 a pop, any joe on the street can take a ride on Street Fighter the Ride. A sit-down simulation style "ride," Street Fighter the Ride was hands-down the worst ride of my life. Abysmal is putting it nice. The whole idea of a Street Fighter ride is, well, ludicrous. Think about it. How are you going to make a ride with fighting characters? It's a flawed idea from the get-go. Lucky for Capcom, it didn't do a thing, except agree to let these other companies make the ride, so most folks can look the other way when it comes to blame.

The ride itself takes place in a futuristic hovercraft that zooms in and out of several dark, nefarious environments, that happen to have floating platforms with Street Fighter characters on them. The ride is all CG rendered, so everything appears in complete 3D.

You'll probably have a difficult time finding one of these motion simulator rides still functioning in good condition, but at least we have a YouTube video of the experience with which to vicariously experience it.  It looks a lot like the kinds of motion rides such as The Simpsons Ride and Transformers that you'll find at Universal Studios theme parks.  Much of the tone seems to be channeling the 1994 Street Fighter film starring Raul Julia and Jean-Claude Van Damme, particularly the bit where Ryu threatens to rip out Bison's heart to which the dictator replies that he doesn't have one.  How Tuesday of him.

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