Yes. It was inside of a small video rental store near my home. When i saw the attract screen, i swore the machine was broken😅😅but once i played it, i started to get good at it, and lured unsuspecting friends to the game so i could dominate them 😂😂
I found it on a ferry crossing the English Channel sometime in the 90s, remember the gameplay looking absolutely bonkers, haven't seen a Rainbow Edition cab ever since.
I never played the Rainbow edition but I remember saving up for SNES Super Street Fighter 2. It was $70 way back which would be $$152.37 today (that's insane)! I spent my own money. I also loved the TMNT & Clay Fighters games but sadly my love of fighting games ended there. I became a sci-fi nerd. 😂
I did . I found it in a shop that an " arcade" it was a flat that put a sign on and called in it an arcade. The same place later became my friends house. The first time I played re it was set to max difficulty. I was stood thinking wtf? I beat the game after many pounds because of maximum difficulty, I needed a towel to wipe off the sweat ( not for that ) I then asked what do I win? Then I started playing the mortal kombat next to it, again set to max, I asked the guy what is wrong with you? Lol ..
I remember kids in school telling me about throwing fireballs in air and all kinds of weird things. I thought they were just making stuff up until I saw Rainbow in a shady arcade. I honestly didn't like it because it was too crazy but it's a fond memory and one of the first mainstream bootlegs that I can remember.
@@blackflagqwertyback in the day at the ski place in Marquette, Michigan, they had a cabinet with Rainbow Edition in the lodge, and it was a great time.
I remember hearing about it too and thinking kids were crazy because I never saw it myself. It blew my mind years later to find out that it actually existed.
We found a rainbow edition of Street Fighter 2 in the Manchester Laser Quest. I remember Jon played it and was WTF when he did a dragon punch and there were 10+ golden fireballs. That day visit to Laser Quest nobody played the laser gun game and everybody crowded around the machine to play this ridiculousness. It also appeared in a video rental place in Radcliffe Manchester before it was bought out by Blockbuster, then turned into a gym, last time I was in Manchester (7 years ago it was a Tesco), and the same machine moved to another video shop further up the road. The last time it was seen when it moved to a Kebab shop opposite the Blockbuster. It always attracted a fairly small crowd. The machine owners were making bank as we no longer had to travel to Manchester city centre to play. The local residents got scared of big groups of yoofs seemingly hanging around. All these arcade machines vanished when there was a stabbing over a heated game. Essentially it came down to who did a dragon punch first and unleashed 10+ golden fireballs. It was 10p a go back in the 1990s and everybody'd spend everything on it.
3:56 I Think you mean 1988 not 1998 for the cps-1 release. Used to repair arcade boards from 89-2002. Rainbow was fun to play. The bootleg cps-1 boards were a lot more temperamental than ones that re-used original hardware with replacement mask-roms.
I remember playing the hell out of Rainbow Edition in Adelaide's central market back in the day. I recall finding out that Capcom was upset with the speed of this hack because it took the game from methodically reacting to opponent moves, to actually having to anticipate or predict future opponent moves. It truly broke the game, but it made it as fun as hell. Capcom responded with a more balanced Hyper Fighting and the rest is history.
Honestly, X-Men vs Street Fighter is fast, you can do supers like crazy, and you can play it aggressively. I can see where they might have gotten it from
Mid 90s in Pakistan, I played the hacked Street Fighter extensively, for years the bootlegs were the only edition of game available in arcades. The kids all called them different names, Street Fighter 3, 4, 5 and so on. My favorite one was called Kouryu edition, the name I later found out of course. Thank you for making a video on this subject.
It is a common misconception that there is one "Rainbow Edition" but in reality there are dozens of SF II CE hacks that while similar have different mods done to the game. They were Grey Market boards from Tiawan that were hacked by a multitude of people.
That's true, but Rainbow was most likely the most widely distributed one in America back in 1992. I believe it was available as an "upgrade" kit for legit Champion Edition boards. There's a very good chance that this was the one that inspired Hyper Fighting, which Capcom also made made available as a CE upgrade kit. In other countries, it wasn't uncommon to get a whole bootleg board with these hacks already applied.
@@MrSlowestD16Even then, I think it has several iterations. I mean look at even official Capcom. The first 5 entries in the Versus series have like 5 revisions a piece. Some adjustments would be pretty easy to make and then just slap on boards for a while until the next revision.
I remember walking into the local arcade (Birdcage Arcade in Northern California) and seeing the Rainbow Edition and thinking "WTF" and not comprehending how fast it was. I was initially turned off by it, but grew on me as I spent my quarters..
First time I played Rainbow Edition it was on Callus in the late 90s when I was using my PC to emulate arcade games for the first time. I was downloading every SF2 rom I could find and came across Rainbow Edition and I had no idea what it was. After booting it up, it was obvious that it was a hack but I assumed someone had made it for emulators. It wasn't until many years later that I found out it was used in actual arcade cabinets in the mid 90s.
Just to say there were made at least 10 different "Raimbow Editions", probably from different hackers/bootleggers. Broken, but WAY to fun to play (Ryu shoryuken covering the entire screen was fantastic). Great video as always MVG.
I was able to play a couple versions back in day. I remember one had no cooldown time or charge time for attacks so you could go nuts with sonic booms and razor kicks mid-air, etc. Also, I immediately preffered these versions over vanilla. I called one crazy edition and another super crazy edition.
And I just remembered that there were differences in whether the projectiles followed the player, went wavy up and down, or flew at a fixed extreme angle, or just straight.
Randomly walked into a local restaurant and pub in Lakewood, Washington, back in 94. They had an SF2 cabinet that had rainbow edition. I never saw it again after that in the wild.
Alfy's Pizza in Lynnwood, WA had it as well. Our baseball team would have the end of season party there and one year they had RE and the next year it had been switched to either CE or Turbo. I remember the charge attacks didn't compensate for the speed up so they could be pulled off instantly. As I recall, we discovered that spamming Chun-Li's upside down kick was unstoppable (at least for our little tween brains).
Holy crap dude! I saw the reflection of that guy in the cabinet screen at around the 8:00 mark and I about flew out of my chair because I thought someone was behind me!
Ah this brought back a core memory for me! My brother and I played a lot of SF2: Turbo on the SNES back in the mid-90's, so I felt like I knew that game like the back of my hand. Then one day I was at a birthday party in a play gym place that had a few arcade cabs, including Street Fighter 2. Naturally I couldn't resist and had a go - only to get absolutely demolished by the AI who was throwing out fireballs left and right, teleporting, changing character, etc. I had zero idea what the hell was going on and honestly left a little deflated, because even though everything said it was Street Fighter 2, it didn't play anything like it. I appreciate looking back why rainbow edition was popular but for a pure "casual" like me, I felt a bit swindled.
My best friend in high school had two arcade cabinets at his place. I have no idea how he got them, but one of them was Champion Edition and the other was Rainbow Edition. We spent many hours on both games.
You can just buy them, back then there were more expensive, but now a days they are quite cheap. Also, my cousin's uncle does the local arcades in my area, so when I was younger we used to go over and play them. He actually when asked moved his Terminator 2 pinball machine into our back porch, we played the hell out of it until almost everything was brokeb
Such a nice take on how the game is different from the standard. Here in Brazil we called it "Street Fighter de rodoviária" (bus station), but it could actually be found in bars, bakeries, gas stations, snooker joints, and various random places that would have arcade machines.
I only learned of this from Whangs gaming mysteries video covering it a few years ago. The thing I love most about this edition is all the stories everyone has about their mystery encounters with it at random locations. Today the mystery is easily solved with the internet but back in the 80s and 90s this would have felt like the gaming equivalent of a UFO or bigfoot sighting. Unless they were there or had their own encounter no one would believe you.
Never saw a Rainbow edition in the wild but Street fighter 2 was one of the key moments in arcade and home console gaming history, most of us who played it back then in the arcades could barely believe just how good the SNES version was in terms of how close it was to the arcade, which was the gold standard for home conversions at the time. An admittedly expensive £70 cart did a good job of being as good as a £2000 arcade machine. I still play them today and even have grown to prefer the slower pace of the original game, as good as the turbo versions are as well.
Dude! One day in 1997 my older brother and I were walking down the street when we peaked through the window and saw a lot of kids playing a new weird street fighter game and we were amazed by how many hadukens were on the screen. We saw Blanka stay in the air and go up and down the screen. We were amazed
SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC BOOM! Was my experience in the arcades with this. lol
IIRC you could also chain flash kicks, they were chargeless and could be done in mid-air (again like MvC would do later), so that you could infinitely kick yourself off the top of the screen, lol
Most arcade operators just wanted to get Street Fighter 2 for cheap. A lot of them probably didn't even realize they were getting a hacked version, especially in poorer countries. There were modified program chips you could buy for an original Champion Edition board, but I believe those were not as common outside of America.
@@RomantiqueTpThese were riff in the UK. Especially in launderettes, fruit machine amusements, video rental stores, snooker/pool clubs, etc. These establishments didn't care what version they were getting, so long as the money kept coming in. The bigger more established arcade amusements didn't have these, I believe.
Its s new version of sf2 more quicker and dificult, play sessions are more quicker and because that more profitable. The owner not care if is official or not
it influenced a whole genre like MVG points out pretty much entire mvc game was based off of this or so ppl believe since the entire marvel serie is basically rainbow on crack.
And Turbo arrived in the arcades way sooner than the end of 1993. Super came out in 1993 and Turbo became available on the consoles in the summer of 1993.
10:18 I'm sorry I must... you know... it's Ryu, not Rayoo. Think "shoryuken" and it should fix that for life :) Great video, I had never seen the arcade game, WW or CE, but couldn't believe those who did and reported things like homing fireballs. Rainbow was everywhere.
I remember visiting Sega World back in 1994, located within the Trocadero in Picadilly Circus, London. A row of SF2 cabinets were lined up all unlocked so no money was needed to play. All were playing 'Rainbow Edition' and none of us knew what we were witnessing. It was amazing and something I have sought to play eversince.
@@Cooperboy1976 I miss that place. I remember spending most of my time in Funland arcade amusements and Sega World. Funland, for some reason, always attracted so many girls LOL!! Maybe because they knew all the boys went there. Fun times as a teen. Girls and games 😂
@@8-bitJoe Ah the memories...yup when we were first allowed out during breaks, it wasn't long before us lads could always be found here. It became such a popular hang out at that age.
the most ubiquitous hack back in the day in London, UK was Blackbelt Edition, oddly enought I've not seen this dumped: it had the text characters for Champion Edition altered to read Black Belt Edition on the title screen and a more balanced set of hack/s applied including directional fireballs (slow = ultra slow) medium went up and hard punch went down (fireballs) and no charge for charge moves. Someone did a SNES bootleg with the same name but it was very different in comparison :) the more hilarious common one we had was called 'alpha edition' and featured a metallic effect over the SFII logo and absolutely silly amounts of fireballs/sonic booms on screen at once and ridiculous speed :) I actually have a board for Alpha knocking around somewhere as its a great party arcade game :D nice vid
I remember a version that let Zanggief perform infinite Lariats on air, each one making him levitate higher until he reached the top of the screen and, in Pac-Man style, come back from the bottom of the screen, making him invincible but Zangief could still grab his opponent and perform a multi-screen piledriver 😂
The first time I saw this version in the arcade, I thought the machine was glitched out, but kept playing it because it was so interesting. I was actually worried that the game would fix itself, not realizing that it wasn't glitched or broken, but learning years later that it was a ROM hack.
Well remembered here in the UK in the early-mid 90s. Practically every seaside town had a chip shop with a dodgy SF2 or MK2 hack (like Challenger Edition). However it's often suggested that Capcom got the idea for Dhalsim's teleport from Rainbow edition, but this is overlooking that Street Fighter 1 had the ninja with a teleport move!
I don't remember ever seeing this rainbow version in particular, but there was another version we locally called "street fighter 2 and a half altered", where Ryu and Ken would shoot 2 fireballs at once that would move in a syne/cosyne trajectory, criss-crossing all the way. Other projectile attacks would do the same, like Guile's Sonic Boom. You could also jump, throw a fireball, jump again, throw another fireball, and so on, until you dissapeared from the top of the screen and reappeared at the bottom. Even characters that didn't throw any projectile attacks would throw fireballs, like E. Honda or Balrog. I remember I used to love playing with the last one, you didn't have to charge back his most powerful punch, just back-forward and strong punch, and you would cross the entire screen in less than a second, hiting your opponent for a third or more of their health bar, while also throwing 2 criss-crossing fireballs. You could clear the entire game in a couple of minutes lol.
My friends and I used to throw a game genie on the world warriors! Trying out and discovering all kinds of crazy codes. Mid air moves, palette swapped characters. Unlimited fireballs ect. We would each experiment at home then share our latest findings with one another at the arcade or school.. Great times..
Here in Colombia this was the defacto version of SFII in the arcades, I can't recall more than one "original" SFII board in my city. The speed of the game was noticeably different from that of the Capcom version and sure it changed the game for good. Thanks also for mentioning the tedium that people eventually felt towards SFII, the game was everywhere and after two years or so, people grew tired of it. Then, Mortal Kombat appeared and it refreshed the arcades for two weeks, but after two weeks of seeing the same fatalities, we learned to appreciate the way deeper gameplay of Street Fighter and went back to where quality was.
I remember a hacked version that was labeled Street Fighter III on the decals. The characters were colored differently and the moves were all mixed up, for example Blanks shot Sonic Booms out of his eyes and his roll went diagonally. Rainbow Edition looks very similar to it but there were certain moves that I remember seeing that weren't present in your video.
There were a ton of different hacks that all were known as rainbow edition. I believe the one in the video here is the original rainbow edition, the others were derived from that and just kept getting wackier as they went.
There was this little family owed video star I used to go to as a kid called Lincoln Video back in Cali. That place was so great, and I miss going there so much these days. Anyways, they had a couple arcade games there and one day this game showed up. I remember watching this kid fill the screen with sonic booms. It was wild watching all the crazy things that could be done. I played it every time I went while it was still there. This was pre-internet days so when I would tell my friends on the playground they didnt believe me. I thought I was crazy for so long until videos of it started popping up on youtube and it became infamous in the community. Im so glad people are still talking about this version, and making me not feel like I just imagined it.
Reminds me a lot of Project M and how Nintendo ended up using some things from that game in future, official Smash titles. Great video, definitely learned some more gaming history.
I remember the first time encountering Rainbow Edition! My cousin took me and my brother to a small, almost hidden arcade in Mexico. They had a lot of SNK arcades, but in the center was Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, except it was very weird from what me and my brother usually played! We saw stuff like Zangief throwing dozens of fireballs, characters doing special moves in mid-air, Vega climbing nonexistent cages in mid-air, and characters being swapped mid-game. I was actually creeped out by this! So much so that I didn't even try to play it. My brother and I just played Fatal Fury Special there (our first time ever seeing and playing this version of Fatal Fury). This happened in the early 90s, but it always stuck in my head how weird that Street Fighter game was. In the late 90s/early 2000s when we finally got home internet, I looked up what that game was!
First came across this in a chippy in spittles cross opposite the now gone Eden Valley School in Edenbridge, Kent UK. Must have been 1992/93. The multiple fireballs and characters morphing and zipping around the screen was mental! Ahhhh. SF2 Rainbow edition and a bag of chips...nice 👍
My local arcade had a big screen arcade machine (I think the screen was about 65") that went through a few different games. I went there almost every weekend when I was a kid and I remember being completely floored when I saw it was updated with this weird version of SFII with a rainbow logo. I was watching people play, and it was INSANE. Chun Li was flying across the screen with her helicopter kick, causing a loss of half your health if you happened to try blocking it. E. Honda and Guile could do their Back-Forward-Punch attacks with NO warm up required, and with infinite fireballs, Guile could fill the entire screen with slow mooving sonic booms. Ken's shoryuken would fly half way across the screen. People could glitch into the ceiling by jumping, throwing a fireball, then jumping again in mid air over and over to get several screens worth in the air, and then fall down. It was hilarious and amazing. I spent SOOOOO much money playing that game. I was so sad when it disappeared from the arcade, and I wasn't able to play it again until I was grown up and learned about MAME. Still just as fun to play today as it was back then!
I remember it like it was yesterday a local 7-Eleven in the Pacific NW USA. I explored it and loved it as much as my fistful of quarters would allow, then I never saw it again.... that was no public internet or anything other than word of mouth...... But for decades it was in the back of my mind and after we All got PCs in the late '90s, But it's was decades before we sought out that version of Street fighter 2....
I remember the rainbow editions, there were quite a few different variations if I recall. One of them was crazy, you could fill up the screen with fireballs or sonic booms. I played it for amusement but never took it too seriously.
Was never a fan of the sped up gameplay, as Champion Edition is peak street fighter for me. Side note, I remember taking the 1st SNES game, and my friend and I getting some Game Genie codes that brought a lot of these features on the SNES World Warrior game. Made it feel like a new game with the codes that added air fireballs, air hurricane kicks, sped up gameplay or fireballs, etc.
I remember using the Game Genie codes that would let you play as the bosses on the 1st SNES version. If I remember right, it would glitch out after like 15 seconds and you'd have a jumbled mess of random sprite bits as a character, but it was still playable.
@hwogrillo Yep, I did the same. It basically swapped out Ryu with one of the bosses sprites and move sets, but still moved like Ryu, which is why it was so glitchy.. I also remembering something where I turned the game genie off on that front switch, and the computer would then play through the entire game as that boss character after using those codes. It was neat to watch. Especially Vega who did the climbing the background move on everyone's stages. Then if that "boss" managed to beat Bison at the end, the game would freeze since there was no ending programmed for those characters.
@@itchyisvegeta Those were the days. I couldn't even count the number of hours I spent with game genie and just seeing what random chaos you could create
I had a Game Genie on the Genesis where it had "Dead Codes" and one of them was so long to type in, but you could choose the hidden character Smoke, the game crashed if you tried to perform any special moves BUT if you just kept to leg sweeps, uppercuts kicks and punches the game would run fine. I miss the days when you had access to Action Replay and Game Genie to try and hack your games. (PS I bought the cart because I wanted to play Ash and Shiva from Stage 1 on Streets Of Rage 3)
My rainbow story - about 20 years ago I picked up a Jamma cab with a Neo Geo one slot from an arcade repair shop and the friendly chap said he'd throw in a street fighter 2 for me as well. Having played it to death in a sleazy bar in Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe where I was living for a year, I was pretty excited to have it at home, especially since, ironically enough, the cab that I had played it on all that time ago was also a regular Jamma so I was used to playing with four buttons. So I fired it up and immediately thought it looked a bit strange, and sure enough it was the rainbow edition, though I didn't know it at the time. I couldn't believe what was going on, and was especially surprised to discover that you could literally climb up off the screen with jump / fireball. I found it almost impossible to get past even a single level, until i started to cheat as much as the computer did. Even then, their punches and kicks seemed to do ten times as much damage as mine. As I recall however It was certainly a lot of fun when i had friends over just to see their confused faces when they tried it.
I spent a long time looking for this version of SF. I remember the multiple fire balls with one in orange being a special moment. It’s been at least 30 plus years. Thanks for the video.
I saw this version in a lot of arcades when I was in my early teens. I never knew the name of this version of SF2. Thanks for sharing and bringing me back good memories. Totally forgot about it until this video.
I remember playing something like this and Guile was massively OP as sonic booms were effectively instant. You could fire then out with ease and fill the screen with sonic booms. So everyone would go Guile. But then the controller on the right in my little arcade was superior so the person on the right would usually win.
I remember encountering it a couple of times in the wild after hearing kids at school talk about it. I was a huge SF2 player so I picked it up pretty quickly, even though it was cheap it was a heck of a lot of fun. In the version I played the fireballs weren't enemy-seeking, they just floated up and down. You could also do a mid-air fireball and then jump from that position and I remember my cousin doing it like 30 times and screen wrapping a bunch of times. I think there were some other things not listed, but I'm sure there were many versions. Thanks for the nostalgia!
YES!!! I remember this version as a kid/teen... I didn't know it was called "Rainbow" edition at the time, but I do recall the rainbow logo. The speed of this game was intense and it was so much fun and indeed, when going back to the original Road Warrior, it was much slower. Thanks for sharing!
Some companies: take content from mods, acknowledge it, pay/hire the creator Others: take content from mods, pretend it was all their idea, sue the creator
That was fun, thanks. I do remember seeing this at my local arcade, was amazed to see ken/ryu's hurricane kick going off mid-air, and taking them even higher-up. I didn't know at the time it was due to such an unauthorized update. I wonder if the arcade owners knew they had bootleg tech?
"You made our boring game BETTER?!?! Here! Have a draconian DRM mod with a fuggin' BATTERY THAT DESTROYS THE WHOLE GODDAMNED ARCADE GAME!!!" -Capcom, probably
The cab in Netherworld Brisbane (a great night out with good beers too) is not CE, it's Hyper Fighting, which was Capcom's answer to Rainbow. I only ever saw it in corner stores and video stores in Sydney, and sometimes was gone a few months after it appeared. It was so much fun. So glad it's now on Fightcade
Thanks MVG for this video. Most of my childhood money went into this arcade machine with this version of street fighter. I've been looking for this for quite a while.
There's a version which was really popular here in Brazil, where Ken/Ryu cast two hadoukens at once. My brother and I liked to play as Zangief since you can Lariat in the air (and the lariat itself has a yoga flame that is launched from its feet), jump and do so that you can loop the screen infinitely, so you can just piledrive the enemy where he can't touch you. But Guile, Ken and specially Balrog (boxer) are more fun to use, specially Balrog, you can crush enemies within 3 or 4 seconds.
I remember playing a hacked version of SF2 in an arcade on a hotel we were staying in many years ago, it was very likely to be the Rainbow Edition, I remember it had "fire hadoukens", mid air jumps and all sorts of craziness that later became canon in future Capcom games, as broken as it was, that arcade was indeed very addicting and we just couldn't go back to playing SF2 on the SNES, lmao.
There was a world warrior rainbow edition I had in my arcade 93-94. It was only lightly modded with a little more speed, air moves and the second skins were dark grey. I’ve been searching but can’t find the roms. By far the best version I played
We had a rainbow edition at the convenience store across from my school. I was blown away at how fast and nuts it was the first time I tried it. I remember my favorite thing was the insanely fast hurricane kicks that sent you across the screen. I loved watching players use it to get out of being cornered, but also to add some stylistic flourishes to the game.
I remember "Ian the arcade guy" went out of his way to source this Street Fighter for us. Everyone stood around it for hours. Slow Sonic Booms were the best. Rainbow came out just before Darkstalkers, from memory.
this was a big source of discussion and speculation amongst those of us in second grade recess who liked to yell "hadouken" or were excited about mortal monday
The one thing I miss the most about growing up was Arcades. So many good memories in them as a kid. I had A LOT of big birthday parties in the 90's in Aladdin's Arcade.
In Australia, my local grocery shop had a bootleg SF2 cab out front. It wasn't Rainbow Edition though. The Marquee was modified to say "Street Fighter II: Final Victory". I would find out decades later that the rom hack was in fact called "accelerator pt II" and it was sold as "Final Victory" in Australia. This rom hack had a number of different things about it, including the removal of charge delays for most of the special moves, i.e. Blanka could do a spinning ball attack by just pressing B-F-Punch, same with E Honda. Chun Li's spinning bird kick was just D-U-Kick .. etc. Medium Projectile attacks went down towards your feet, Heavy Projectile Attacks moved up into the air. Blanka's Electricity was changed to QCF Punch and also shot out a sonic boom. Final Victory was everywhere where I grew up, I don't remember even seeing Rainbow edition.
Rainbow edition was very profitable for arcade owners. As the game is faster, means more coins would end up in the machine in much shorter time. Some versions had Ryu or Ken able to do 1 move kill dragon punch at 99 seconds.
I bought a cabinet from a guy in California back in 2017. Today I watched your video and found out it’s a rainbow edition in the same cabinet. Now I know why it plays different from the one at my local barcade. It was a pleasant surprise and I wouldn’t trade it for a regular championship edition as it is painfully slow compared to the one I have at home.
I remember running into this edition at a Laundromat as a kid. I was 14 or 15 at the time and it blew my mind. Midair fireballs or even throwing consecutive fireballs only existed in my imagination prior. Sadly, that arcade machine wasn't there for long. They had replaced it back to the original version a few weeks later. It wasn't until years later when I got into emulation that I was able to rediscover this game.
My dad owned a Music shop in the early 90s and used to rent video games etc. At one point he had a street fighter 2 arcade machine in there as well which turned out to be this rainbow edition (took me years to find out what it actually was)… kids used to come far and wide to check it out and I remember it vividly. The shop was usually pretty dead most of the time but this machine made the place pretty busy for a while !
I remember the rainbow edition at the Manteca Water Slides in Manteca, California in the 90s. It was the first time I had ever seen the wavy fireballs endlessly thrown while Ryu slowly descended back to the ground. It the ultra slow low punch sonic boom followed by blazing fast high punch ones, or his full screen HK flash kick. Chun-Li ha Ryu's fireballs. It was insane.
KOF2002 had a ton of bootleg games as well when it later came out. They had KOF’02 2004 version which was kinda explicit lol. Then they had another KOF’02 version where you could increase your speed like crazy with max mode activation multiple times. Anyway great video covering SF rainbow edition history, MVG.
Yep I remember this vividly... 10 year old me was blown away and instantly fell in love with this hacked version. 30 years later and still lovin this hack.
I would play Ryu and do fireball in the air and jump up again each time until I was multiple times passed through the top of the screen and you couldn't even see the fireball anymore and enemy couldn't get to me. Only vega had ability to grab my character off the air back down to base level.
There are actually several versions of the Taiwan hack, and all have different features and modifications. There was one in one of my local bars, and I actually managed to get a copy of that ROM for my emulators. It's the version in which Ryu and Ken launch Hadokens when doing the Shoryuken, Guile launches super slow Sonic Booms, Blanka can perma-electrocute while moving, Zangief can do the Piledriver from anywhere in the stage, in Vega's stage you can climb the fence even though it looks ridiculous for any non-Vega character, Sagat does a Buddha Flame along with his Tiger uppercut, and many others.
Growing up it was crazy how Rainbow Edition news spread pre-Internet. The only Rainbow Edition SFII machines in my town were at pool halls that were 21+ only so I had to get my brother to take me to one during the day. The Game Genie later allowed us to then experience a Rainbow Edition like experience at home on Super Nintendo with Street Fighter II.
I definitely remember seeing these modded SFII games in the arcade back in the ‘90s. Back when everyone would go to the arcade and play games late into the night. Good times.
This made its way down to South Florida back in the early 90s as i was visiting a friend and we went to the local arcade there, i just thought i was plunking in quarters to play SFII and next thing you know the characters were all throwing fireballs, doing moves in the air that you couldn't before.. it was shocking and then became really fun once you figured out what was going on.
I remember playing Rainbow edition at the local ice rink, it was completely nuts, I ended up getting Blanka going straight up so much that he looped back around onto the screen and game up through the bottom. It was extremely easy if you just spammed fireballs but it left a lasting impression, so much so that I recall that edition of the game's few play sessions before the machine disappeared far more so than the numerous standard SF2 games I played over the years.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
Did you play Rainbow Edition back in the day? Lemme hear your stories!
Yes. It was inside of a small video rental store near my home. When i saw the attract screen, i swore the machine was broken😅😅but once i played it, i started to get good at it, and lured unsuspecting friends to the game so i could dominate them 😂😂
I found it on a ferry crossing the English Channel sometime in the 90s, remember the gameplay looking absolutely bonkers, haven't seen a Rainbow Edition cab ever since.
I never played the Rainbow edition but I remember saving up for SNES Super Street Fighter 2. It was $70 way back which would be $$152.37 today (that's insane)! I spent my own money. I also loved the TMNT & Clay Fighters games but sadly my love of fighting games ended there. I became a sci-fi nerd. 😂
I remember the first time I saw this in a small taco joint in Sacramento. I was blown away and played for a few hours.
I did . I found it in a shop that an " arcade" it was a flat that put a sign on and called in it an arcade. The same place later became my friends house. The first time I played re it was set to max difficulty. I was stood thinking wtf? I beat the game after many pounds because of maximum difficulty, I needed a towel to wipe off the sweat ( not for that ) I then asked what do I win? Then I started playing the mortal kombat next to it, again set to max, I asked the guy what is wrong with you? Lol ..
Here in Brazil this game is most known as "Street Fighter de Rodoviária", meaning that is a street fighter to be played on a bus station
I was coming here just to say this hahahaha
This. It was a heavy hit on everyone. 🤣
Heavily modified 😂
@@ricardonacif5426 it was absolute fun back in the days.
Eu chamava de Street Loco
I remember kids in school telling me about throwing fireballs in air and all kinds of weird things. I thought they were just making stuff up until I saw Rainbow in a shady arcade. I honestly didn't like it because it was too crazy but it's a fond memory and one of the first mainstream bootlegs that I can remember.
Lo,l It's like these were only available in 'shady' arcades.
I first saw the cabinet in a local cab station waiting area, not sure if that qualifies as a shady arcade.
@@blackflagqwertyback in the day at the ski place in Marquette, Michigan, they had a cabinet with Rainbow Edition in the lodge, and it was a great time.
Lmao likewise
I remember hearing about it too and thinking kids were crazy because I never saw it myself. It blew my mind years later to find out that it actually existed.
In Brazil rainbow edition was known as: "Bus station Street Fighter" - as it was usually found at cheap bars in these places. Good times
???
@enrique7934 silêncio
@enrique7934 I care and you're making an ass out of yourself.
@enrique7934You're on a video where everyone worth a damn cares. That only excludes you, yet here you are.
@enrique7934
you clearly seem to care enough to be commenting here, so go figure.
We found a rainbow edition of Street Fighter 2 in the Manchester Laser Quest. I remember Jon played it and was WTF when he did a dragon punch and there were 10+ golden fireballs. That day visit to Laser Quest nobody played the laser gun game and everybody crowded around the machine to play this ridiculousness. It also appeared in a video rental place in Radcliffe Manchester before it was bought out by Blockbuster, then turned into a gym, last time I was in Manchester (7 years ago it was a Tesco), and the same machine moved to another video shop further up the road. The last time it was seen when it moved to a Kebab shop opposite the Blockbuster.
It always attracted a fairly small crowd. The machine owners were making bank as we no longer had to travel to Manchester city centre to play. The local residents got scared of big groups of yoofs seemingly hanging around. All these arcade machines vanished when there was a stabbing over a heated game.
Essentially it came down to who did a dragon punch first and unleashed 10+ golden fireballs. It was 10p a go back in the 1990s and everybody'd spend everything on it.
3:56 I Think you mean 1988 not 1998 for the cps-1 release. Used to repair arcade boards from 89-2002. Rainbow was fun to play. The bootleg cps-1 boards were a lot more temperamental than ones that re-used original hardware with replacement mask-roms.
you are correct!
@@ModernVintageGameroriginal thumbnail might be better
Was that what some of them were? Because the ROM out there plays nothing like what I remember playing at the pizza place
I remember playing the hell out of Rainbow Edition in Adelaide's central market back in the day. I recall finding out that Capcom was upset with the speed of this hack because it took the game from methodically reacting to opponent moves, to actually having to anticipate or predict future opponent moves.
It truly broke the game, but it made it as fun as hell. Capcom responded with a more balanced Hyper Fighting and the rest is history.
Honestly, X-Men vs Street Fighter is fast, you can do supers like crazy, and you can play it aggressively. I can see where they might have gotten it from
They have the Rainbow Edition at the beach house in Glenelg last time I was there.
I think I remember this vaguely!
Mid 90s in Pakistan, I played the hacked Street Fighter extensively, for years the bootlegs were the only edition of game available in arcades. The kids all called them different names, Street Fighter 3, 4, 5 and so on. My favorite one was called Kouryu edition, the name I later found out of course.
Thank you for making a video on this subject.
SF2 Turbo is the best Street Fighter ever made. Now I know that we have modders to thank for it.
Modders been saving gaming since the dawn of time.
Modders gave us Ms Pacman too.
Bethesda wouldn't exist without modders.
Street Fighter on the Xbox, and I think Chuck E Cheese when I was a kid was too bueno bossman when they mod them they're still excellent.
Third strike is the best.
@@basshead. Bethesda shouldn't exist
It is a common misconception that there is one "Rainbow Edition" but in reality there are dozens of SF II CE hacks that while similar have different mods done to the game. They were Grey Market boards from Tiawan that were hacked by a multitude of people.
But I think in this context "rainbow edition" refers explicitly to the release created by this company.
That's true, but Rainbow was most likely the most widely distributed one in America back in 1992. I believe it was available as an "upgrade" kit for legit Champion Edition boards.
There's a very good chance that this was the one that inspired Hyper Fighting, which Capcom also made made available as a CE upgrade kit.
In other countries, it wasn't uncommon to get a whole bootleg board with these hacks already applied.
@RomantiqueTp I am in LA and there were DOZENS of them I encountered all over the place
@@MrSlowestD16Even then, I think it has several iterations.
I mean look at even official Capcom. The first 5 entries in the Versus series have like 5 revisions a piece.
Some adjustments would be pretty easy to make and then just slap on boards for a while until the next revision.
and also came out for multiple platfoms my very first exposure to SF2 was through a 8b famicom console which was a bootleg port of SF2.
I remember walking into the local arcade (Birdcage Arcade in Northern California) and seeing the Rainbow Edition and thinking "WTF" and not comprehending how fast it was. I was initially turned off by it, but grew on me as I spent my quarters..
First time I played Rainbow Edition it was on Callus in the late 90s when I was using my PC to emulate arcade games for the first time. I was downloading every SF2 rom I could find and came across Rainbow Edition and I had no idea what it was. After booting it up, it was obvious that it was a hack but I assumed someone had made it for emulators. It wasn't until many years later that I found out it was used in actual arcade cabinets in the mid 90s.
Just to say there were made at least 10 different "Raimbow Editions", probably from different hackers/bootleggers. Broken, but WAY to fun to play (Ryu shoryuken covering the entire screen was fantastic). Great video as always MVG.
Yeah, it's actually quite difficult to get all 10.. I tried lol (ended up downloading 3 of the same version)
I was able to play a couple versions back in day. I remember one had no cooldown time or charge time for attacks so you could go nuts with sonic booms and razor kicks mid-air, etc. Also, I immediately preffered these versions over vanilla. I called one crazy edition and another super crazy edition.
And I just remembered that there were differences in whether the projectiles followed the player, went wavy up and down, or flew at a fixed extreme angle, or just straight.
@@Addictedtocollecting01 "Red 6" is the best version IMO - That's what we also had at our local arcade.
@@Default_Dave Thank you! 😁
Randomly walked into a local restaurant and pub in Lakewood, Washington, back in 94. They had an SF2 cabinet that had rainbow edition. I never saw it again after that in the wild.
Alfy's Pizza in Lynnwood, WA had it as well. Our baseball team would have the end of season party there and one year they had RE and the next year it had been switched to either CE or Turbo. I remember the charge attacks didn't compensate for the speed up so they could be pulled off instantly. As I recall, we discovered that spamming Chun-Li's upside down kick was unstoppable (at least for our little tween brains).
Holy crap dude! I saw the reflection of that guy in the cabinet screen at around the 8:00 mark and I about flew out of my chair because I thought someone was behind me!
😂
I was behind u indeed
Ah this brought back a core memory for me! My brother and I played a lot of SF2: Turbo on the SNES back in the mid-90's, so I felt like I knew that game like the back of my hand. Then one day I was at a birthday party in a play gym place that had a few arcade cabs, including Street Fighter 2. Naturally I couldn't resist and had a go - only to get absolutely demolished by the AI who was throwing out fireballs left and right, teleporting, changing character, etc.
I had zero idea what the hell was going on and honestly left a little deflated, because even though everything said it was Street Fighter 2, it didn't play anything like it. I appreciate looking back why rainbow edition was popular but for a pure "casual" like me, I felt a bit swindled.
My best friend in high school had two arcade cabinets at his place. I have no idea how he got them, but one of them was Champion Edition and the other was Rainbow Edition. We spent many hours on both games.
You can just buy them, back then there were more expensive, but now a days they are quite cheap.
Also, my cousin's uncle does the local arcades in my area, so when I was younger we used to go over and play them. He actually when asked moved his Terminator 2 pinball machine into our back porch, we played the hell out of it until almost everything was brokeb
Yeah and my friend had a jet plane, that took us home after school to play competetive digger on his robotron in his mansion on his private island.
@@gfdgdfgdfgdfggfdgdfgdfgdfg9709 aint that rare to have a rich friend.
@@gfdgdfgdfgdfggfdgdfgdfgdfg9709 Some people, like my friend, are very blessed. Sorry that triggers you.
Yeah well my friend's dad was NASA and we'd play Nintendo 128 on the moon
Street fighter de playa (beach street fighter), that was the name here in Chile years ago 😂
Love that name
Such a nice take on how the game is different from the standard. Here in Brazil we called it "Street Fighter de rodoviária" (bus station), but it could actually be found in bars, bakeries, gas stations, snooker joints, and various random places that would have arcade machines.
I only learned of this from Whangs gaming mysteries video covering it a few years ago.
The thing I love most about this edition is all the stories everyone has about their mystery encounters with it at random locations. Today the mystery is easily solved with the internet but back in the 80s and 90s this would have felt like the gaming equivalent of a UFO or bigfoot sighting. Unless they were there or had their own encounter no one would believe you.
Never saw a Rainbow edition in the wild but Street fighter 2 was one of the key moments in arcade and home console gaming history, most of us who played it back then in the arcades could barely believe just how good the SNES version was in terms of how close it was to the arcade, which was the gold standard for home conversions at the time. An admittedly expensive £70 cart did a good job of being as good as a £2000 arcade machine. I still play them today and even have grown to prefer the slower pace of the original game, as good as the turbo versions are as well.
Dude! One day in 1997 my older brother and I were walking down the street when we peaked through the window and saw a lot of kids playing a new weird street fighter game and we were amazed by how many hadukens were on the screen. We saw Blanka stay in the air and go up and down the screen. We were amazed
SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC, SONIC BOOM! Was my experience in the arcades with this. lol
IIRC you could also chain flash kicks, they were chargeless and could be done in mid-air (again like MvC would do later), so that you could infinitely kick yourself off the top of the screen, lol
Yes. Guile was unbeatable. LOL. Throw a hundred sonic booms. Profit.
That was the jam, being 8 years old and just flicking the control stick back and forth and killing everyone
Exactly!!!!! One that knows , knows!
What a bizarre version, i don't understand how any arcade owner would use it, but I didn't know it had influenced Hyper and Turbo like that, cool!!
Most arcade operators just wanted to get Street Fighter 2 for cheap. A lot of them probably didn't even realize they were getting a hacked version, especially in poorer countries.
There were modified program chips you could buy for an original Champion Edition board, but I believe those were not as common outside of America.
@@RomantiqueTpThese were riff in the UK. Especially in launderettes, fruit machine amusements, video rental stores, snooker/pool clubs, etc. These establishments didn't care what version they were getting, so long as the money kept coming in. The bigger more established arcade amusements didn't have these, I believe.
Its s new version of sf2 more quicker and dificult, play sessions are more quicker and because that more profitable. The owner not care if is official or not
it influenced a whole genre like MVG points out pretty much entire mvc game was based off of this or so ppl believe since the entire marvel serie is basically rainbow on crack.
if you watch the video he explains why
10:18 It's funny how people keep mispronouncing Ryu's name in 2024, especially when everyone can pronounce the word "ShoRYUken" correctly.
I will never call him Ree-ew.
@@brizoni Rye-You it is, then. ;D
It's not a big deal really. It will always be raiu for me.
Awesome video! Small correction at 5:42, Champion Edition was released in 1992. The Genesis port, however, was released in 1993
And Turbo arrived in the arcades way sooner than the end of 1993. Super came out in 1993 and Turbo became available on the consoles in the summer of 1993.
10:18 I'm sorry I must... you know... it's Ryu, not Rayoo. Think "shoryuken" and it should fix that for life :)
Great video, I had never seen the arcade game, WW or CE, but couldn't believe those who did and reported things like homing fireballs. Rainbow was everywhere.
I remember visiting Sega World back in 1994, located within the Trocadero in Picadilly Circus, London. A row of SF2 cabinets were lined up all unlocked so no money was needed to play. All were playing 'Rainbow Edition' and none of us knew what we were witnessing. It was amazing and something I have sought to play eversince.
@@Cooperboy1976 I miss that place. I remember spending most of my time in Funland arcade amusements and Sega World. Funland, for some reason, always attracted so many girls LOL!! Maybe because they knew all the boys went there. Fun times as a teen. Girls and games 😂
@@8-bitJoe Ah the memories...yup when we were first allowed out during breaks, it wasn't long before us lads could always be found here. It became such a popular hang out at that age.
the most ubiquitous hack back in the day in London, UK was Blackbelt Edition, oddly enought I've not seen this dumped: it had the text characters for Champion Edition altered to read Black Belt Edition on the title screen and a more balanced set of hack/s applied including directional fireballs (slow = ultra slow) medium went up and hard punch went down (fireballs) and no charge for charge moves. Someone did a SNES bootleg with the same name but it was very different in comparison :) the more hilarious common one we had was called 'alpha edition' and featured a metallic effect over the SFII logo and absolutely silly amounts of fireballs/sonic booms on screen at once and ridiculous speed :) I actually have a board for Alpha knocking around somewhere as its a great party arcade game :D nice vid
I remember a version that let Zanggief perform infinite Lariats on air, each one making him levitate higher until he reached the top of the screen and, in Pac-Man style, come back from the bottom of the screen, making him invincible but Zangief could still grab his opponent and perform a multi-screen piledriver 😂
😂
The first time I saw this version in the arcade, I thought the machine was glitched out, but kept playing it because it was so interesting. I was actually worried that the game would fix itself, not realizing that it wasn't glitched or broken, but learning years later that it was a ROM hack.
Well remembered here in the UK in the early-mid 90s. Practically every seaside town had a chip shop with a dodgy SF2 or MK2 hack (like Challenger Edition).
However it's often suggested that Capcom got the idea for Dhalsim's teleport from Rainbow edition, but this is overlooking that Street Fighter 1 had the ninja with a teleport move!
Modern Street Gamer
I don't remember ever seeing this rainbow version in particular, but there was another version we locally called "street fighter 2 and a half altered", where Ryu and Ken would shoot 2 fireballs at once that would move in a syne/cosyne trajectory, criss-crossing all the way. Other projectile attacks would do the same, like Guile's Sonic Boom. You could also jump, throw a fireball, jump again, throw another fireball, and so on, until you dissapeared from the top of the screen and reappeared at the bottom. Even characters that didn't throw any projectile attacks would throw fireballs, like E. Honda or Balrog. I remember I used to love playing with the last one, you didn't have to charge back his most powerful punch, just back-forward and strong punch, and you would cross the entire screen in less than a second, hiting your opponent for a third or more of their health bar, while also throwing 2 criss-crossing fireballs. You could clear the entire game in a couple of minutes lol.
I liked the SNES version of SF2 because you could modify the speed and difficulty. Still my favourite fighting game
My friends and I used to throw a game genie on the world warriors! Trying out and discovering all kinds of crazy codes. Mid air moves, palette swapped characters. Unlimited fireballs ect. We would each experiment at home then share our latest findings with one another at the arcade or school..
Great times..
@@plaztik767Still got those codes? Lol
Here in Colombia this was the defacto version of SFII in the arcades, I can't recall more than one "original" SFII board in my city. The speed of the game was noticeably different from that of the Capcom version and sure it changed the game for good.
Thanks also for mentioning the tedium that people eventually felt towards SFII, the game was everywhere and after two years or so, people grew tired of it. Then, Mortal Kombat appeared and it refreshed the arcades for two weeks, but after two weeks of seeing the same fatalities, we learned to appreciate the way deeper gameplay of Street Fighter and went back to where quality was.
I remember a hacked version that was labeled Street Fighter III on the decals. The characters were colored differently and the moves were all mixed up, for example Blanks shot Sonic Booms out of his eyes and his roll went diagonally. Rainbow Edition looks very similar to it but there were certain moves that I remember seeing that weren't present in your video.
There were a ton of different hacks that all were known as rainbow edition. I believe the one in the video here is the original rainbow edition, the others were derived from that and just kept getting wackier as they went.
There was this little family owed video star I used to go to as a kid called Lincoln Video back in Cali. That place was so great, and I miss going there so much these days. Anyways, they had a couple arcade games there and one day this game showed up. I remember watching this kid fill the screen with sonic booms. It was wild watching all the crazy things that could be done. I played it every time I went while it was still there. This was pre-internet days so when I would tell my friends on the playground they didnt believe me. I thought I was crazy for so long until videos of it started popping up on youtube and it became infamous in the community. Im so glad people are still talking about this version, and making me not feel like I just imagined it.
Reminds me a lot of Project M and how Nintendo ended up using some things from that game in future, official Smash titles. Great video, definitely learned some more gaming history.
I remember the first time encountering Rainbow Edition! My cousin took me and my brother to a small, almost hidden arcade in Mexico. They had a lot of SNK arcades, but in the center was Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, except it was very weird from what me and my brother usually played! We saw stuff like Zangief throwing dozens of fireballs, characters doing special moves in mid-air, Vega climbing nonexistent cages in mid-air, and characters being swapped mid-game. I was actually creeped out by this! So much so that I didn't even try to play it. My brother and I just played Fatal Fury Special there (our first time ever seeing and playing this version of Fatal Fury). This happened in the early 90s, but it always stuck in my head how weird that Street Fighter game was. In the late 90s/early 2000s when we finally got home internet, I looked up what that game was!
First came across this in a chippy in spittles cross opposite the now gone Eden Valley School in Edenbridge, Kent UK. Must have been 1992/93.
The multiple fireballs and characters morphing and zipping around the screen was mental! Ahhhh. SF2 Rainbow edition and a bag of chips...nice 👍
My local arcade had a big screen arcade machine (I think the screen was about 65") that went through a few different games. I went there almost every weekend when I was a kid and I remember being completely floored when I saw it was updated with this weird version of SFII with a rainbow logo. I was watching people play, and it was INSANE. Chun Li was flying across the screen with her helicopter kick, causing a loss of half your health if you happened to try blocking it. E. Honda and Guile could do their Back-Forward-Punch attacks with NO warm up required, and with infinite fireballs, Guile could fill the entire screen with slow mooving sonic booms. Ken's shoryuken would fly half way across the screen. People could glitch into the ceiling by jumping, throwing a fireball, then jumping again in mid air over and over to get several screens worth in the air, and then fall down. It was hilarious and amazing. I spent SOOOOO much money playing that game. I was so sad when it disappeared from the arcade, and I wasn't able to play it again until I was grown up and learned about MAME. Still just as fun to play today as it was back then!
I remember it like it was yesterday a local 7-Eleven in the Pacific NW USA.
I explored it and loved it as much as my fistful of quarters would allow, then I never saw it again.... that was no public internet or anything other than word of mouth...... But for decades it was in the back of my mind and after we All got PCs in the late '90s, But it's was decades before we sought out that version of Street fighter 2....
I remember the rainbow editions, there were quite a few different variations if I recall. One of them was crazy, you could fill up the screen with fireballs or sonic booms. I played it for amusement but never took it too seriously.
Was never a fan of the sped up gameplay, as Champion Edition is peak street fighter for me.
Side note, I remember taking the 1st SNES game, and my friend and I getting some Game Genie codes that brought a lot of these features on the SNES World Warrior game. Made it feel like a new game with the codes that added air fireballs, air hurricane kicks, sped up gameplay or fireballs, etc.
I remember using the Game Genie codes that would let you play as the bosses on the 1st SNES version. If I remember right, it would glitch out after like 15 seconds and you'd have a jumbled mess of random sprite bits as a character, but it was still playable.
@hwogrillo Yep, I did the same. It basically swapped out Ryu with one of the bosses sprites and move sets, but still moved like Ryu, which is why it was so glitchy..
I also remembering something where I turned the game genie off on that front switch, and the computer would then play through the entire game as that boss character after using those codes. It was neat to watch. Especially Vega who did the climbing the background move on everyone's stages. Then if that "boss" managed to beat Bison at the end, the game would freeze since there was no ending programmed for those characters.
@@itchyisvegeta Those were the days. I couldn't even count the number of hours I spent with game genie and just seeing what random chaos you could create
@@hwogrillo I think that boss code was the reason I bought the Game Genie
I had a Game Genie on the Genesis where it had "Dead Codes" and one of them was so long to type in, but you could choose the hidden character Smoke, the game crashed if you tried to perform any special moves BUT if you just kept to leg sweeps, uppercuts kicks and punches the game would run fine. I miss the days when you had access to Action Replay and Game Genie to try and hack your games. (PS I bought the cart because I wanted to play Ash and Shiva from Stage 1 on Streets Of Rage 3)
My rainbow story - about 20 years ago I picked up a Jamma cab with a Neo Geo one slot from an arcade repair shop and the friendly chap said he'd throw in a street fighter 2 for me as well. Having played it to death in a sleazy bar in Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe where I was living for a year, I was pretty excited to have it at home, especially since, ironically enough, the cab that I had played it on all that time ago was also a regular Jamma so I was used to playing with four buttons.
So I fired it up and immediately thought it looked a bit strange, and sure enough it was the rainbow edition, though I didn't know it at the time. I couldn't believe what was going on, and was especially surprised to discover that you could literally climb up off the screen with jump / fireball. I found it almost impossible to get past even a single level, until i started to cheat as much as the computer did. Even then, their punches and kicks seemed to do ten times as much damage as mine. As I recall however It was certainly a lot of fun when i had friends over just to see their confused faces when they tried it.
Arcade hardware security mistakes where made...
I spent a long time looking for this version of SF. I remember the multiple fire balls with one in orange being a special moment. It’s been at least 30 plus years. Thanks for the video.
As an adult, it looks totally janky and broken but as a silly kid, I could imagine being completely amazed by it.
I saw this version in a lot of arcades when I was in my early teens. I never knew the name of this version of SF2. Thanks for sharing and bringing me back good memories. Totally forgot about it until this video.
Where any mistakes made? Every video must answer this question. Love this channel.
How are there two comments in a row that say "where" instead of "were"?
I remember playing something like this and Guile was massively OP as sonic booms were effectively instant. You could fire then out with ease and fill the screen with sonic booms. So everyone would go Guile. But then the controller on the right in my little arcade was superior so the person on the right would usually win.
I remember encountering it a couple of times in the wild after hearing kids at school talk about it. I was a huge SF2 player so I picked it up pretty quickly, even though it was cheap it was a heck of a lot of fun. In the version I played the fireballs weren't enemy-seeking, they just floated up and down. You could also do a mid-air fireball and then jump from that position and I remember my cousin doing it like 30 times and screen wrapping a bunch of times. I think there were some other things not listed, but I'm sure there were many versions. Thanks for the nostalgia!
It's always a treat when hackers force the big companies hand and results in a better official releases..
YES!!!
I remember this version as a kid/teen... I didn't know it was called "Rainbow" edition at the time, but I do recall the rainbow logo. The speed of this game was intense and it was so much fun and indeed, when going back to the original Road Warrior, it was much slower. Thanks for sharing!
Reminder that the horse in Minecraft was also taken from a mod, but at least they hired the guy that time 😅
Some companies: take content from mods, acknowledge it, pay/hire the creator
Others: take content from mods, pretend it was all their idea, sue the creator
That was fun, thanks. I do remember seeing this at my local arcade, was amazed to see ken/ryu's hurricane kick going off mid-air, and taking them even higher-up. I didn't know at the time it was due to such an unauthorized update. I wonder if the arcade owners knew they had bootleg tech?
"You made our boring game BETTER?!?! Here! Have a draconian DRM mod with a fuggin' BATTERY THAT DESTROYS THE WHOLE GODDAMNED ARCADE GAME!!!" -Capcom, probably
I had no idea this was ever a thing, so this video was very educational! Thank you for your high standards of work, MVG!
Another MVG banger.
The cab in Netherworld Brisbane (a great night out with good beers too) is not CE, it's Hyper Fighting, which was Capcom's answer to Rainbow. I only ever saw it in corner stores and video stores in Sydney, and sometimes was gone a few months after it appeared. It was so much fun. So glad it's now on Fightcade
They didn’t fix it, they broke it beyond belief
They really did. For the casual player, it was unplayable.
Thanks MVG for this video. Most of my childhood money went into this arcade machine with this version of street fighter. I've been looking for this for quite a while.
Rainbow Edition of Street Fighter II is somehow a bootleg which was very different.
Wasn’t that what the video was about? 😂
Never heard of rainbow so this was fantastic! Loved turbo edition on the Snes.
That's not fixing the game, its modifying, and even breaking it.
In the video, he said that some of these changes were later incorporated into the game. If it was all bad, that wouldn't have happened.
There's a version which was really popular here in Brazil, where Ken/Ryu cast two hadoukens at once. My brother and I liked to play as Zangief since you can Lariat in the air (and the lariat itself has a yoga flame that is launched from its feet), jump and do so that you can loop the screen infinitely, so you can just piledrive the enemy where he can't touch you. But Guile, Ken and specially Balrog (boxer) are more fun to use, specially Balrog, you can crush enemies within 3 or 4 seconds.
_fixed_
Great video MVG :) I always wondered why there were so many versions of the hacks in M.A.M.E. This explains it all well so thanks for that :)
"fixed"
I remember playing a hacked version of SF2 in an arcade on a hotel we were staying in many years ago, it was very likely to be the Rainbow Edition, I remember it had "fire hadoukens", mid air jumps and all sorts of craziness that later became canon in future Capcom games, as broken as it was, that arcade was indeed very addicting and we just couldn't go back to playing SF2 on the SNES, lmao.
I wouldn't call rainbow edition a "fix" 😂
I love your videos. The technical details are lost on me, but it's very interesting. You are a great orator.
Love it, 11mins of my favourite youtuber talking about my favourite thing! Im going to enjoy this.
There was a world warrior rainbow edition I had in my arcade 93-94. It was only lightly modded with a little more speed, air moves and the second skins were dark grey.
I’ve been searching but can’t find the roms. By far the best version I played
We had a rainbow edition at the convenience store across from my school. I was blown away at how fast and nuts it was the first time I tried it. I remember my favorite thing was the insanely fast hurricane kicks that sent you across the screen. I loved watching players use it to get out of being cornered, but also to add some stylistic flourishes to the game.
We had 'Blackbelt Edition' in our local arcade... I believe there was also SF2 Red/Gold Editions.
LOL at 1:12, just letting the PCB hang by the JAMMA harness. What could possibly go wrong? LOL!
I remember "Ian the arcade guy" went out of his way to source this Street Fighter for us. Everyone stood around it for hours. Slow Sonic Booms were the best. Rainbow came out just before Darkstalkers, from memory.
didn't even realize i was this early , great work as always bro
this was a big source of discussion and speculation amongst those of us in second grade recess who liked to yell "hadouken" or were excited about mortal monday
The one thing I miss the most about growing up was Arcades. So many good memories in them as a kid. I had A LOT of big birthday parties in the 90's in Aladdin's Arcade.
In Australia, my local grocery shop had a bootleg SF2 cab out front. It wasn't Rainbow Edition though. The Marquee was modified to say "Street Fighter II: Final Victory". I would find out decades later that the rom hack was in fact called "accelerator pt II" and it was sold as "Final Victory" in Australia.
This rom hack had a number of different things about it, including the removal of charge delays for most of the special moves, i.e. Blanka could do a spinning ball attack by just pressing B-F-Punch, same with E Honda. Chun Li's spinning bird kick was just D-U-Kick .. etc.
Medium Projectile attacks went down towards your feet, Heavy Projectile Attacks moved up into the air.
Blanka's Electricity was changed to QCF Punch and also shot out a sonic boom.
Final Victory was everywhere where I grew up, I don't remember even seeing Rainbow edition.
Cool vid dude, i remember playing this and ninja turtles at the fiah and chip shop back in the early 90's, im getting old...😅
Rainbow edition was very profitable for arcade owners. As the game is faster, means more coins would end up in the machine in much shorter time. Some versions had Ryu or Ken able to do 1 move kill dragon punch at 99 seconds.
I bought a cabinet from a guy in California back in 2017. Today I watched your video and found out it’s a rainbow edition in the same cabinet. Now I know why it plays different from the one at my local barcade.
It was a pleasant surprise and I wouldn’t trade it for a regular championship edition as it is painfully slow compared to the one I have at home.
I remember running into this edition at a Laundromat as a kid. I was 14 or 15 at the time and it blew my mind. Midair fireballs or even throwing consecutive fireballs only existed in my imagination prior. Sadly, that arcade machine wasn't there for long. They had replaced it back to the original version a few weeks later. It wasn't until years later when I got into emulation that I was able to rediscover this game.
My dad owned a Music shop in the early 90s and used to rent video games etc. At one point he had a street fighter 2 arcade machine in there as well which turned out to be this rainbow edition (took me years to find out what it actually was)… kids used to come far and wide to check it out and I remember it vividly. The shop was usually pretty dead most of the time but this machine made the place pretty busy for a while !
Very interesting insights. Thanks for putting this together 👍
Loved the timing of me clicking the thumbs up button right before MVG said not to forget leaving a thumbs up. XD
I remember the rainbow edition at the Manteca Water Slides in Manteca, California in the 90s. It was the first time I had ever seen the wavy fireballs endlessly thrown while Ryu slowly descended back to the ground. It the ultra slow low punch sonic boom followed by blazing fast high punch ones, or his full screen HK flash kick. Chun-Li ha Ryu's fireballs. It was insane.
KOF2002 had a ton of bootleg games as well when it later came out. They had KOF’02 2004 version which was kinda explicit lol. Then they had another KOF’02 version where you could increase your speed like crazy with max mode activation multiple times.
Anyway great video covering SF rainbow edition history, MVG.
Yep I remember this vividly... 10 year old me was blown away and instantly fell in love with this hacked version. 30 years later and still lovin this hack.
I would play Ryu and do fireball in the air and jump up again each time until I was multiple times passed through the top of the screen and you couldn't even see the fireball anymore and enemy couldn't get to me. Only vega had ability to grab my character off the air back down to base level.
Encountered this version once and wondered what the hell was going on. You played it mostly to see what other crazy stuff it would do! 😄
There are actually several versions of the Taiwan hack, and all have different features and modifications. There was one in one of my local bars, and I actually managed to get a copy of that ROM for my emulators.
It's the version in which Ryu and Ken launch Hadokens when doing the Shoryuken, Guile launches super slow Sonic Booms, Blanka can perma-electrocute while moving, Zangief can do the Piledriver from anywhere in the stage, in Vega's stage you can climb the fence even though it looks ridiculous for any non-Vega character, Sagat does a Buddha Flame along with his Tiger uppercut, and many others.
Growing up it was crazy how Rainbow Edition news spread pre-Internet. The only Rainbow Edition SFII machines in my town were at pool halls that were 21+ only so I had to get my brother to take me to one during the day.
The Game Genie later allowed us to then experience a Rainbow Edition like experience at home on Super Nintendo with Street Fighter II.
I definitely remember seeing these modded SFII games in the arcade back in the ‘90s. Back when everyone would go to the arcade and play games late into the night. Good times.
This made its way down to South Florida back in the early 90s as i was visiting a friend and we went to the local arcade there, i just thought i was plunking in quarters to play SFII and next thing you know the characters were all throwing fireballs, doing moves in the air that you couldn't before.. it was shocking and then became really fun once you figured out what was going on.
Always Interesting n always great topics. Wish you had time to do more videos. Hats off to you sir
I remember playing Rainbow edition at the local ice rink, it was completely nuts, I ended up getting Blanka going straight up so much that he looped back around onto the screen and game up through the bottom.
It was extremely easy if you just spammed fireballs but it left a lasting impression, so much so that I recall that edition of the game's few play sessions before the machine disappeared far more so than the numerous standard SF2 games I played over the years.