Capcom’s Street Fighter II is a nostalgic touchstone for a lot of people, conjuring up images of dimly lit arcades and frantically pounding combos, kicks, and Hundred Hand Slaps. And, like any motherlode of fertile feelings, it’s been well-mined by advertisers looking to flip the “Oh yeah, that!” switch in our dumb animal brains. Take, for instance, this new Honda commercial, which is currently airing in Japan:
It’s a weird ad, both because of the soundtrack, courtesy of Queen, and the fact that headbanded hero Ryu doesn’t so much fight people as drive around them, at least until he encounters the evil M. Bison (or Vega, as he’s known in Japan.) The strangest thing about Honda’s effort is that there’s already a canonical non-fighter role for a car in Street Fighter II, one that made its way (sort of) into a Volvo ad a few years back:
But neither of these commercials capture the sheer joy of the car bonus round from SFII: Fucking the dang thing up. For that, we need to turn to a commercial about stuff getting broken, not a pristine machine. Luckily, there’s this licensed Turkish car commercial, which sees Ryu finally do what he does best: beating the crap out of things with magical martial arts fireballs and shouting-based uppercuts.