Street Fighter Artwork

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.