Retro Gaming Moves: Spinning Bird Kick

In 1987, Capcom created a new winner with the Street Fighter series. Knowing the demographic, they went for teenage boys with the desire to play fighting games in the arcade in competitive fashion. But is a good fighting game without some eye candy?

Chun-Li was the star, with her Spinning Bird Kick. Actually, Chun-Li never saw the first Street Fighter title… only Ken and Ryu (mainly Ryu) were available in the first series installment. This got our taste wet for battle, and Street Fighter II introduced us to a whole range of great moves and character designs.

Out of all the characters, Chun-Li held her own as a cute skinny yet muscular female with moves like no other. Her Spinning Bird Kick would allow her to flip upside down and whack the opponent upside the head a few times as they fall to their back on the stone.

Chun-Li, or “spring beauty” in Mandarin, was famous for her sexy anime legs and their spinning doom. Gamers would perform the move that the worse possible time for their opponent, such as in mid-jump when your opponent had nothing but death and peril awaiting their landing.

Ken and Ryu had spinning kicks too, but without the inverted impossible moves of Chun-Li it fell short of awesome. When it comes to animated violence, perceived hot chicks and young boys battling for ego and rights to be the winner, the Spinning Bird Kick and Chung-Li was a great choice.

The British rock band Arctic Monkeys have an instrumental song titled “Chun Li’s Spinning Bird Kick” and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance (wikipedia).

It does without doubt, every Street Fighter II player remembers the crazy spinning kicks of Chun-Li and this is what makes her have retro gaming moves!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Game Publishers Hate RiskGame Publishers Hate Risk

It’s clear publishers like Electronic Arts hate to take risks on video games. They’re not alone in their opinion, look how many sequels we’ve got for the holidays compared to new creative titles like Little Big Planet, or how publishers push out sequels to hot titles until we can’t take it anymore; how many Guitar Hero titles will arrive before we scream “enough!”?

Speaking to rocking music, Electronic Arts may pass on the chance to pickup Brütal Legend, a title originally being published by Vivendi Games prior to the Activision Blizzard merger. The title was left without a home when the merger was complete along with other dropped titles.

Why would EA not take the chance with the game? Risk factor. Brütal Legend is a game title developed by Double Fine Productions and has been designed by Tim Schafer, with past games like Monkey Island, NES’s Maniac Mansion and the fantastic title Full Throttle. With such sweet titles under his belt, why wouldn’t a game designed by Tim Schafer be a hot commodity in the market?

The game brings music and action adventure together in a creative twist. No, it’s not Rock Band and it’s not Guitar Hero, thus, MTV and Activision don’t care about it. However, the game plot and storyline are music related and, supposedly, the main character is voiced by Jack Black, vocalist of Tenacious D and popular actor (School of Rock anyone!?)

Creator Tim Schafer has said that roadies have long fascinated him. Schafer originally thought of the game’s title over fifteen years ago. “I was riding a bus, thinking about a game that would be the complete opposite of what we were working on, The Secret of Monkey Island. And Brütal Legend leapt into my head. (wikipedia)

It appears a series of publishers have walked away from Brütal Legend without much hesitation. “I have seen it,” EA CEO John Riccitiello told Gamasutra. “I am well aware of what the game is. It’s a very significant creative risk.” (joystiq)

Where would the game be without significant creative risks? In many ways, World of Warcraft was a risk… it’s only got 9 million or more players.

Episode 303: BioShock Infinite Giveaway TimeEpisode 303: BioShock Infinite Giveaway Time

This week we’re giving away a free copy of BioShock Infinite for the Xbox 360! How do you win? Well, simply post a good comment! The contest winner will be announced two weeks from now.

In the meantime, the Gaming Flashback this time is the PlayStation One classic Chrono Cross, while Paul tries desperately to avoid listening to BioShock Infinite spoilers.

This week’s news includes:

  • THQ’s UDraw failure “invalidatedSaints Row: The Third‘s success
  • Levine: BioShock Infinite cost $100M to develop, and $100M to market
  • American McGee doesn’t “see anything meaningful” in the PS4, SimCity players “need to relax”
  • Schafer’s Double Fine Adventure project from Kickstarter is now Broken Age
  • Capcom announces DuckTales Remastered, developed by WayForward

All this and some Reader Feedback.

Gaming Podcast 116: We Can’t Get To The Cloud!Gaming Podcast 116: We Can’t Get To The Cloud!

This week’s gaming podcast covers a wide variety of news, we also argue a bit about the Wow restrictions on taking donations and cash (again) and touch on some gaming history involving The Sims and the history of Infocom. For news, we’ve tackled

  • podcast-200x200EA Leaves SecuRom out of Sims 3
  • Sony Enticing Independent Developers to be Exclusive to PlayStation Network
  • Steam Makes DRM Obsolete
  • Blizzard Rolling Out New Game Franchise?
  • OnLive to Kill off Consoles as we know them?
  • PS3 Rumors and Price Drops

This weeks question, is the Nintendo Wii killing off gaming as we know it?