A lot of popular things over the years often get imitated. For every Transformer there is a Gobot. For every Halloween there is a Friday the 13th. For every Pokemon there is a Digimon. As you may already know, throughout the early 90s Capcom struck serious gold with Street Fighter II. It rejuvenated the once dying arcade scene and made competitive fighting games way more popular. Companies like SNK, Midway, and so on right away wanted their own Street Fighter II. Games like Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, World Heroes, Mortal Kombat started to pop up in the arcade scene. Data East back in early 1993 released their own fighting game called Fighter’s History which Capcom thought it look way too similar to their own Street Fighter II. Drama occurred and they took Data East to court for plagiarism. Long story short Capcom USA lost the case.
A YouTube channel called Restart Fanzine recently uploaded the now defunct Data East USA’s video tape that most likely had them win the court case. The woman who worked for Data East in that video goes into full detail on how Fighter’s History is different form Street Fighter II. You can watch the video below. It is a very amusing part of video game history and huge thanks to Restart Fanzine for digging this video out to the public!
From Restart Fanzine’s video:
“This video comes from a VHS tape original given to DieHard GameFan Magazine by Data East as media outreach regarding the 1994 lawsuit Capcom U.S.A. Inc. v. Data East Corp. In this first tape of evidence, a representative from Data East compares seven characters from Fighter’s History to ones that Capcom says Data East infringed upon from Street Fighter II. Video captured from VHS by mollipen. At some point, I found the video interesting, took it home, and had it in storage until I just recently found it again.”
David Medina is a hardcore gamer and Japanese import collector owning dozens of systems and games from Famicom to Nintendo Switch. He has an active YouTube channel called "The Karnov Jr Show" and posts retro gaming content there weekly showing off collections, random store tours, and gameplay clips.