Street Fighter Ultimate Fight Two-Pack

By Acer

The year 1994 was one where Hasbro was making a few gambles, two of which predicated on the success of two movies based on two popular fighting video game franchises: Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Street Fighter, which tied in to the 1994 film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia (in his final film role), saw Hasbro reuse a majority of their G.I. Joe figure, accessory, and vehicle molds to compose the entirety of the toyline, with multiple Guile variants included. Of the figures released in the line, all but one of the Guiles and one of the three M. Bison figures had head sculpts based on their actors’ likenesses. One item in particular was released as a way to allow kids to immediately reenact the film’s big fight between Van Damme’s Col. Guile and Julia’s imposing M. Bison: a two-pack named “The Ultimate Fight”.

The Guile figure is a repaint of the Sonic Boom Guile single-carded figure, though in a color scheme more accurate to his movie uniform (down to the tampographed logo you can barely see on his chest). Unlike the other Guiles, this one (and its source figure) use a construction and articulation scheme more akin to the 1993 G.I. Joe Ninja Force Snake Eyes and Scarlett figures (along with the 1993 Chun-Li and Edmond Honda and the 1994 Shadow Ninjas Snake Eyes and movie edition Edmond Honda). Further showing the similarities to the Snake Eyes figure is his action feature–squeeze the legs, and his arms move to make a ‘two-hit combo punch’, though just barely.

M. Bison also reuses a mold, though in this case, that of the new one he received as a single-carded figure in the movie line and the version included with the Shadowloo Headquarters playset. The mold is more accurate to Bison’s character model in the game than his 1993 G.I. Joe figure was, and includes a cloth cape. The hands are made of a plastic that was supposed to glow in the dark, mimicking his ‘psycho-power’ bolts. What differentiates this figure from the other two movie line ones is his mostly blue and gold color palette, and his head sculpt, which has a barely passable resemblance to the late Raul Julia. JAD regular Skymate warned me of this Bison figure’s susceptibility to the dreaded ‘Gold Plastic Syndrome’, but so far the figure remains intact. Twisting the waist to the left and letting go allows him to unleash his ’roundhouse slam’, though realistically it doesn’t have much ‘oomph’.

The two-pack included a bevy of the reused Ninja Force weapons prevalent throughout both the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat lines, in black: two swords, a sickle, an axe, a large knife, and twin dueling prongs. Also included was a plastic raised platform with a brick floor pattern and the Street Fighter movie logo in the center, meant to be the stage for Guile and Bison’s fight.

Overall, I feel that this set’s main reason for acquiring would mainly be for a sense of historical completion, though the more adventurous could find custom uses for the figures, and give the ninja weapons to the many ninja figures released in the new sculpt era. Me personally though, I won these two figures by themselves off of Listia, mainly for the novelty.