Street Fighter made its debut in the arcades in 1987. It was designed by Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto. The player took control of martial artist Ryu, who competed in a worldwide martial arts tournament, spanning five countries and ten opponents. A second player could join in at any time and take control of Ryu's rival, Ken.

The player could perform three types of punch and kick attacks (which varied in speed and strength) and three special attacks: the Hadouken, Shoryuken and Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku. These were performed by executing special button combinations with the controls.

Street Fighter was ported to many popular home computer systems of the time including PC. In 1988, it was released on the NEC Avenue TurboGrafx-CD console under the new name Fighting Street. Street Fighter was later included in Capcom Classics Collection: Remixed for the PlayStation Portable and Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, released in 1991, was the first true sequel to the original Street Fighter, following an unsuccessful attempt to brand the 1987 fighting action game Final Fight as a Street Fighter sequel, and an officially commissioned spin-off Human Killing Machine on the ZX Spectrum and other home computers. It was one of the earliest arcade games for Capcom's CP System hardware and was designed by Akira Nishitani (Nin-Nin) and Akira Yasuda (Akiman), who were previously responsible for Final Fight and Forgotten Worlds. The release of the game had an unexpected impact on gaming and was the beginning of a massive phenomenon.

Street Fighter II was the first one-on-one fighting game to give players a choice from a variety of player characters with different moves, an option which created hitherto unknown levels of depth and replay value for an arcade game. Each player character had a fighting style with approximately 30 or more moves (including then-new grappling moves such as throws) as well as two or three special attacks per character.

In the single-player mode, the player's chosen character is pitted sequentially against the seven other main characters before confronting the final four 'boss' opponents, who were CPU-controlled characters not selectable by the player.

As in the original, a second player could join in at any point during single player mode and compete against the other player in competitive matches, with the multiple available characters allowing for more varied matches.

The original Japanese version of Street Fighter II introduced an African-American boxer named "Mike Bison" (abbreviated as "M. Bison") as a boss character, a parody of real-life boxer Mike Tyson. In order to avoid any likeness infringement lawsuit from Tyson, Capcom rotated the names of three of the boss characters for international versions of the game: The final boss, called Vega in the Japanese version, was given the M. Bison name; the talon-wielding Spanish warrior known as Balrog in the Japanese version was renamed Vega; and the boxer became Balrog.

Street Fighter II proved to be popular due to all these factors, eclipsing its predecessor in popularity, eventually turning Street Fighter into a multimedia franchise.

The first official update to the series was Street Fighter II′ - Champion Edition (pronounced Street Fighter II Dash in Japan, as noted by the prime notation on the logo), which allowed players to play as the Four Devas (the computer-controlled boss characters) and also allowed two players to choose the same character (with one character drawn in an alternate color pattern). The game also featured slightly improved graphics (including differently colored backgrounds) and refined gameplay. A second upgrade, titled Street Fighter II′ - Hyper Fighting (or Street Fighter II Dash Turbo in Japan), was produced in response to the various bootleg editions of the game. Hyper Fighting offered faster gameplay than its predecessors, different character colors and new special techniques (such as Chun-Li's Kikoken or Dhalsim's Yoga Teleport).